Biography for
Shelley Winters

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Date of Birth

18 August 1920, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Date of Death

14 January 2006, Beverly Hills, California, USA (natural causes)

Birth Name

Shirley Schrift

Height

5' 4" (1.63 m)

Mini Biography

One of the most respected actresses of the golden age of Hollywood. Although she didn't have stunning looks, she competed against the best of them. She proved to everyone that great work would never go unnoticed. She wrote several "tell all" biographies that ruffled a few feathers throughout the industry. She was known for being very vocal about her opinions, even if that means offending a few people. She studied at The Actor's Studio in New York.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Brian Michael Tracy

Mini Biography

According to Hollywood folklore, Shelley Winters was one dame who knew how to take the ball and run with it. This gutsy, uncompromising, overzealous film star who was prone to playing the game of Hollywood while exposing it at the same time, never apologized for any of it. While her on-camera and off-camera antics remained just thisside of cheesy, her later audiences for the most part loved the way she flaunted her garish characters who were often created from her own in-bred audacity and frankness.

Shelley Winters was born Shirley Schrift of very humble beginnings on August 18, 1920 (some sources list 1922) in East St Louis, Illinois. Her father moved the family to Brooklyn when she was still young so that he, a tailor's cutter, could find steadier work closer to the city's garment industry. An unfailing interest in acting happened quite early for Shelley, who initially appeared in high school plays. By her mid-to-late teens she had already been employed as a Woolworth's store clerk, model, borscht belt vaudevillian and nightclub chorine, all in order to pay for her acting classes. During a nationwide search for Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939), she was advised by auditioning director George Cukor to get acting lessons, which she did. Apprenticing in summer stock, she made her Broadway debut in the short-lived comedy "The Night Before Christmas" in 1941 and followed it with the operetta "Rosalinda" (1942) initially billing herself in both shows as Shelley Winter (without the "s").

Within a short time, Shelley was pushing for a career out west in Hollywood but it proved to be quite a tough road. Toiling in a number of bit or unbilled roles for years, many of her scenes were excised altogether during her early days. Obscurely used in such movies as What a Woman! (1943), The Racket Man (1944), Cover Girl (1944) and Tonight and Every Night (1945), her breakthrough did not occur until 1947 and it happened on both the stage and big screen. Not only did she win the replacement role of Ado Annie Carnes in "Oklahoma!" on Broadway but around the same time she scored excellent notices on film for her party girl waitress who ends up a victim of deranged strangler (and Oscar winner) Ronald Colman in the critically-hailed A Double Life (1947) directed by Cukor. From this Shelley went on to achieve earthy film stardom as both a second-lead dame who often met an untimely end in such movies as Cry of the City (1948) and The Great Gatsby (1949), and as a tawdry black stockings-and-feather boa lead, notably South Sea Sinner (1950), in which her eclectic co-stars included Macdonald Carey and Liberace!

As a tarnished glamour girl and symbol of working class vularity in Hollywood, Shelley was just about to be written off in pictures when one of her finest movie roles arrived on her front door. Her best hard luck girl storyboard came up in the form of the depressed, frumpy-looking Alice Tripp, a factory girl seduced and abandoned by wanderlust Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun (1951). Favoring instead gorgeous society girl Elizabeth Taylor, who is totally out of his league, Clift is subsequently blackmailed by Winters' pathetic (and now pregnant) character into marrying her and restoring her honor. For her desperate efforts, she is purposely drowned by Clift after he tips their canoe. The role, which garnered Shelley her first Oscar nomination, finally plucked her out of the sordid starlet pool and into the ranks of serious femme star contenders. But not for long.

Tough, Brooklyn-raised Shelley could not escape the lurid bottle-blonde quality she instilled in her characters. During what should have been her peak time she was unfortunately misguided into a host of badly-scirpted "B" films. Playing way too many two-dimensional chorines, barflies, floozies and saloon girls for her own good, film titles such as Behave Yourself! (1951), Frenchie (1950), Playgirl (1954) and Mambo (1954), which co-starred second husband Vittorio Gassman, pretty much said it all. Shelley grew extremely disenchanted and decided to return to dramatic study. Earning membership into the famed Actor's Studio, she became quite the exponent of Lee Strasberg's "Method" acting technique. On Broadway, Shelley earned kudos and reestablished her reputation as a strong actress with the drug-themed play "A Hatful of Rain" (1955). Co-starring in the show was the up-and-coming hunk Anthony Franciosa, whom she took as her third husband in 1957. Shelley's renewed dedication to pursuing quality work came by her appearances in a number of heavyweight theater roles including Blanche in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1955). In later years, the Actors Studio enthusiast became one of its most respected coaches. She proved instrumental in shaping up a number of today's fine talent.

By the late 1950s Shelley had started growing in girth and wisely eased into colorful character supports. The switch paid off. After a sterling performance as the ill-fated wife of sadistic killer Robert Mitchum in Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955), she scored big in the Oscar department when she won "Best Supporting Actress" for her shrill and hypertensive role of Mrs. Van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). From this period sprouted a host of bad mamas, blowsy matrons, and grotesque madams in such film fare as Lolita (1962), The Chapman Report (1962), The Balcony (1963) Wives and Lovers (1963), and A House Is Not a Home (1964). She topped things off as the vitriolic prostie mom in A Patch of Blue (1965). Despite the revolting nature of her character, who was not above pimping her own blind daughter (the late Elizabeth Hartman) for household money, Shelley managed to place a second Oscar on her mantle for her startling and riveting support work.

With advancing age and increasing size, Shelley found a comfortable niche in the harping Jewish wife/mother category with loud, flashy, unsubtle roles in Enter Laughing (1967), Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976) and, most notably, The Poseidon Adventure (1972). She earned another Oscar nomination for "Poseidon" while portraying her third drowning victim. At the same time she scored quite well as the indomitable Marx Brothers' mama in "Minnie's Boys" on Broadway in 1970.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Shelley developed into a gabby, blatant and oddly-distracted personality on TV, making countless talk show appearances and becoming quite the raconteur and namedropper with her juicy tales of Hollywood-behind-the-scenes. Candid would be an understatement when she published two scintillating tell-all autobiographies that reached the best seller's list: "Shelley, Also Known as as Shirley" (1981) and "Shelley II: The Middle of My Century" (1989) which detailed her notorious dalliances with such famous movie stars as Errol Flynn, Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando, William Holden, Sean Connery and Clark Gable, to name a few.

Thrice divorced (her first husband was a WWII captain, while her only child, Vittoria, came from her second union to Italian stallion Gassman), Shelley remained footloose and fancy free after finally breaking it off with the volatile Franciosa in 1960. Her stormy marriages and notorious affairs, not to mention her ambitious forays into politics and feminist causes, kept her name alive for decades. She worked in films until around the beginning of the millennium, her last film being the easily-dismissed Italian feature Bomba, La (1999). She also enjoyed her Emmy-winning TV work and had the recurring role of Roseanne's tell-it-like-it-is grandmother on the comedienne's self-styled sitcom. Shelley's last years were marred by failing health and, for the most part, was confined to a wheelchair in her final years. Suffering a heart attack in October of 2005, she died in a Beverly Hills nursing home of heart failure on January 14, 2006. Only hours earlier on her deathbed she had entered into a spiritual, if not legal, union with her longtime companion of 19 years, Gerry McFord. Gregarious, ambitious and completely unpredictable, Shelley's amazing career lasted over six colorful decades.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Spouse

Gerry DeFord	(13 January 2006 - 14 January 2006) (her death)
Anthony Franciosa	(4 May 1957 - 1960) (divorced)
Vittorio Gassman	(28 April 1952 - 1954) (divorced) 1 child
Paul Meyer	(1 January 1942 - 1948) (divorced)

Trivia

Her father was Jonas Schrift, her mother was Rose Schrift, and her sister was Blanche Schrift.

Her early acting training was under the tutelage of actor Charles Laughton.

Was roommates with Marilyn Monroe when they were both starting out in Hollywood.

Taught Marilyn Monroe how to "act" pretty by tilting her head back, keeping her eyes lowered and her mouth partly opened

Born at 12:05am-CDT

Godmother of actor Sally Kirkland. Kirkland, also an ordained minister, conducted the wedding ceremony between Winters and Gerry DeFord ten hours before Winters died.

Made her Broadway debut as Ado Annie in "Oklahoma!" - five years into its run.

Has the distinction of currently being the highest ranked female performer on The Oracle of Bacon's list of the top 1000 performers based upon their "center of the film universe" average number. Winter's average link number is 2.696842, placing seventeenth on the list. This places her well above Kevin Bacon, who is currently ranked 1161st, despite being the original focus of the quirky game of linking actors through their co-stars.

Measurements: 37-26 1/2 -36 (as a pin-up starlet in the 1950s)

Godmother of Laura Dern.

She donated her Oscar for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) to the Anne Frank museum.

In The Poseidon Adventure (1972), she plays an award winning swimmer and in A Place in the Sun (1951), she can't swim and drowns.

Daughter with Vittorio Gassman, Vittoria Gassman AKA Vittoria-Gina is a physician.

Played the Marx Brothers' mother Minnie in the Broadway musical "Minnie's Boys," which ran at the Imperial Theatre for 80 Performances from Mar 26 to May 30, 1970. It was the penultimate performance of her eight Broadway appearances. She appeared in only one more Broadway show, "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds," which ran at the Biltmore Theatre for 16 performances March 14-26, 1978.

In her most important films such as A Place in the Sun (1951), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Lolita (1962), A Double Life (1947), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and many others, her character is murdered.

Fan of the TV show "Babylon 5" (1994).

Suffered a heart attack on October 14, 2005.

On the 6 July, 1972 episode of "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962), she grew tired of Oliver Reed's attitude towards women. They had a heated conversation and, after Winters told Reed what she thought of his opinions, she left the set. The show continued with Reed going on about women while Johnny Carson looked at him in a daze. Shortly afterward, Winters appeared from stage left, unannounced to Reed and to the shock of Carson. She was carrying a champagne bucket of ice and water and surprised Reed by dumping it over his head. Reed was furious over this and tried to attack her but crew members intervened. The show broke for commercial break. When it resumed, both actors were gone.

Her marriage to Anthony Franciosa broke up when he had an affair with Lauren Bacall. During their affair, Bacall called up Winters and complained, "I've been waiting for Tony for an hour. Where the hell is he?" Shelley said, "You're complaining to me because my husband is late for a date with you?" Bacall answered, "If your husband doesn't respect your marriage, why should I?"

She had a part in Always (1985) and filmed a few scenes, but at one point she had a tantrum and left the set. Her agent pleaded with her to go back and resume her role, but she refused and her character was replaced. She does not appear in the final film.

Shirley Schrift took her mother's maiden name (Winter) as her stage name and added Shelley for her favorite poet. When she saw the call sheet for A Double Life (1947) she discovered that Universal had added an "s", making her Shelley Winters.

Attended Thomas Jefferson High School in New York City.

Showed up drunk on her first day of shooting of The Linguini Incident (1991) and was fired by director Richard Shepard.

When Shelley and Marilyn Monroe were roommates in the late 1940s in Hollywood, Shelley said that one day she had to step out and asked Marilyn to "wash the lettuce" for a salad they were to share for dinner. When she got back to the apartment, Marilyn (aparently new to the art of cooking) had the leaves of lettuce in a small tub of soapy water and was scrubbing them clean.

In Italy, most of her films were dubbed by either Lidia Simoneschi, Dhia Cristiani or Rosetta Calavetta. She was once dubbed by Wanda Tettoni in Cry of the City (1948) and once by Miranda Bonansea in Behave Yourself! (1951). Gabriella Genta lent her voice to Winters in the role of Belle Rosen in The Poseidon Adventure (1972).

Personal Quotes

In Hollywood, all the marriages are happy. It's trying to live together afterwards that causes all the problems.

I did a picture in England one winter and it was so cold I almost got married.

The best way to find out about a man is to have lunch with his ex-wife

I had to gain forty pounds for this movie.

I have bursts of being a lady, but it doesn't last long.

(her career-longevity advice) "You gotta play mothers. If you don't you won't get a long career in Hollywood."

[on Fredric March] "He was able to do a very emotional scene with tears in his eyes, and pinch my fanny at the same time."

Anna Magnani could act anybody off the stage or screen.

My face was always so made up, it looked as though it had the decorators in.

It's sad that people are so open about their sexuality. Sex is much more fun when you have to sneak around and cover it up.

I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience.

[on Joanne Woodward] Joanne always made it her business to hold back her career while Paul Newman was on the up and up. And that girl is one helluva talented actress. But she knew what side her bread was buttered on and let Paul become the superstar of the family. The result? They're still happily married today.

[on director George Stevens] George photographs what goes on in the air between people.

[on Anthony Franciosa] I'll never forget the night I brought my Oscar home and Tony took one look at it and I knew my marriage was over.

[on Robert De Niro] Bobby needs someone to watch over him. He doesn't even know enough to wear a coat in the wintertime. When we did "Bloody Mama" he didn't even know how much money they were paying him. I found out how little it was and insisted they at least give him some expense money.

[on Oscar Levant] A tortured man who sprayed his loathing on anyone within range.

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