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
There's Something About a Soldier (1943). 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 turn as the once gorgeous, alcoholic former starlet "Fay Estabrook" in
Harper (1966) and in
The Poseidon Adventure (1972) as the ill-fated "Mrs. Belle Rosen", for which she received her final Oscar nomination. Viewers may notice Winters frequently pushing her hair away from her face while swimming. She later explained that this was to show that she did her own swimming without the use of a double. (She later reunited with her
Poseidon co-star,
Jack Albertson in a number of episodes of Albertson's sitcom
Chico and the Man during the mid-1970s.) Always conscious of her Jewish heritage—she had first learned her trade in the
Borscht Belt—she donated her Oscar for
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
Burt Lancaster and
Marlon Brando.
Winters suffered an enormous 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 review 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."
Audiences born in the 1980s knew her primarily for the autobiographies and for her television work, in which she played a humorous parody of her public persona. In a recurring role in the early 1990s, Winters played the title character's
grandmother on the
ABC sitcom Roseanne.
rss feed