| Activity | Winters was born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Jewish parents Rose (née Winter), a singer with The Muny, and Jonas Schrift, a designer of men's clothing. Her family moved to Brooklyn, New York when she was three years old. She studied in the Hollywood Studio Club, sharing the same bedroom with another beginner, Marilyn Monroe.
As the New York Times obituary noted, "A major movie presence for more than five decades, Shelley Winters turned herself into a widely respected actress who won two Oscars." Winters originally broke into Hollywood as "the Blonde Bombshell", but quickly tired of the role's limitations. She washed off her makeup and played against type to set up Elizabeth Taylor's beauty in A Place in the Sun, still a landmark American film. As the Associated Press reported, the general public was unaware of how serious a craftswoman Winters was. "Although she was in demand as a character actress, Winters continued to study her craft. She attended Charles Laughton's Shakespeare classes and worked at the Actors Studio, both as student and teacher."
Her first movie was What a Woman! (1943). Working in films (in mostly bit roles) through the forties, Winters' first achieved stardom with her breakout performance as the victim of insane actor Ronald Colman in George Cukor's A Double Life, in 1948. She quickly ascended in Hollywood with leading roles in The Great Gatsby (1949) and Winchester 73 (1950), opposite James Stewart. But it was her performance in A Place in the Sun, a departure from the sexpot image that her studio, Universal Pictures, was building up for her at the time, that first brought Shelley Winters acclaim, earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Throughout the 1950s, Winters continued in films, most notably in Charles Laughton's masterpiece, 1955s Night of the Hunter, with Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish. She also returned to the stage on various occasions during this time, including a Broadway run in A Hatful of Rain. In 1959, she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for The Diary of Anne Frank and another for A Patch of Blue (1965).
Notable later roles included her lauded performance as the man-hungry Charlotte in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, opposite Michael Caine in Alfie, as the once gorgeous, alcoholic former starlet "Fay Estabrook" in Harper (both 1966), in The Poseidon Adventure (1972) as the ill-fated Belle Rosen (for which she received her final Oscar nomination), and in Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976). She also returned to the stage during the 1960s and 1970s, most notably in Tennessee Williams' Night of the Iguana. Unfortunately, her prestigious work during this period tended to be undermined by her forays into camp kitsch with films like 1968s Wild in the Streets and 1971s Whoever Slew Auntie Roo. Always conscious of her Jewish heritage—she had first learned her trade in the Borscht Belt—she donated her Oscar for The Diary of Anne Frank to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
As the Associated Press reported, "During her fifty years as a widely known personality, Winters was rarely out of the news. Her stormy marriages, her romances with famous stars, her forays into politics and feminist causes kept her name before the public. She delighted in giving provocative interviews and seemed to have an opinion on everything."
That led to a second career as a writer. Though not an overwhelming beauty, her acting, wit, and "chutzpah" gave her a love life to rival Monroe's. In late life, she recalled her conquests in autobiographies so popular they undermined her reputation as a serious actor. She wrote of a yearly rendezvous she kept with William Holden, as well as her affairs with Sean Connery, Burt Lancaster and Marlon Brando.
Winters suffered a significant weight gain later in life, frequently stating that it was a marketing tool, since there were plenty of prominent normal-weight older actresses but fewer overweight ones, and her obesity would enable her to find work more easily. In 1973 Winters even put on a short-lived Broadway musical revue entitled "The Hoofing Hollywood Heifer", co-starring Charles Nelson Reilly and Bongo, a tap-dancing chimp. Although it closed after only eight performances, this show was applauded for its sheer campy bravado by many critics, one of whom stated that Winters was a "Whale of a Talent looking for a sea of applause big enough to rest her massive girth."
In the 1980s she primarily undertook autobiographies and television work, in which she played a humorous parody of her public persona. In a recurring role in the 1990s, Winters played the title character's grandmother on the ABC sitcom Roseanne. Her final film roles were supporting ones, as John Gielgud's wife in The Portrait of a Lady (1996), and as a bitter nursing home administrator in 1999s Gideon.
Academy Awards
Best Supporting Actress:
1959 The Diary of Anne Frank
1965 A Patch of Blue
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Lead Actress - Miniseries/Movie 1964 Two is the Number
Golden Globe Awards
Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture 1973 The Poseidon Adventure |