Shelley Winters

Early life

Shelley Winters was born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Rose (née Winter, 1896–1966), a singer with St. Louis Municipal Opera Theatre ("The Muny"), and Jonas Schrift (1890–1955), a designer of men's clothing. Her parents were Jewish; her father migrated from Grzymałów, Galicia, Austria-Hungary, (later Ukraine), and her mother was born in St. Louis to Austrian immigrants who were also from Grzymałów. Her parents were third cousins. Her Jewish education included attendance at the Jamaica Jewish Center and learning Hebrew songs at her public school. Her family moved to Brooklyn, New York, when she was nine years old, and she grew up partly in Queens and New York city. She worked in the Garment Center and did some modeling while she was still in high school. Already drawn to acting, she participated as a singer and dancer in a popular amateur revue, Pins and Needles, staged by the Garment Workers Union.

When Winters was just three her Zeideh [grandfather] taught her the lesson of the Talmudic Rabbi Hillel: “If I’m not for myself, then who is for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?” It seems to have been her motivation for helping people when she worked in Woolworth.

While Winters was trying her hand at drama she worked in Woolworth's selling hardware. During her time there she led a strike for unrestricted access to women's toilets with other female workers. The strike was a success, but she lost her job as a result. Years later she pointed out that the padlocks were removed from the Woolworth's bathrooms due to her success as a union organizer.

As a young woman, she worked as a model. Her sister Blanche Schrift (1916–2000) later married George Boroff (1912–1968), who ran the Circle Theatre (since named El Centro Theatre) in Los Angeles, California. At age 16, Winters relocated to Los Angeles where, as a newcomer to Los Angeles, she lied to studio head Harry Cohn when she signed with Columbia, saying she was born two years earlier than she actually was. Later she returned to New York to study acting at the New School. In the late 1940s she shared an apartment with Marilyn Monroe.

Career

1940–1946: Broadway debut and early films

Winters made her Broadway debut in The Night Before Christmas (1941) which had a short run. She had a small part in Rosalinda, an adaptation of Die Fledermaus (1942–44) which ran for 611 performances. As Fifi in that show she drew the attention of Harry Cohn who noticed her attractiveness and comedic flare. He invited her to do a test, gave her a $150.00 contract, which led to her role in What a Woman! (1943), saying to Rosalind Russell: “You can’t go in there now, miss.” Meanwhile, Winters first received acclaim when she joined the cast of Oklahoma! in the role of Ado Annie, replacing Celeste Holm.

She received a long-term contract at Columbia and moved to Los Angeles. Winters' first film appearance was an uncredited bit in There's Something About a Soldier (1943) at Columbia. She had another small bit in What a Woman! (1943) but a bigger part in a B movie, Sailor's Holiday (1944). Winters was borrowed by the Producers Releasing Corporation for Knickerbocker Holiday (1944). Columbia put her in small bits in She's a Soldier Too (1944), Dancing in Manhattan (1944), Together Again (1944), Tonight and Every Night (1945), Escape in the Fog (1945), A Thousand and One Nights (1945), and The Fighting Guardsman (1946). Winters had bit parts in MGM's Two Smart People (1946), and a series of films for United Artists: Susie Steps Out (1946), Abie's Irish Rose (1946) and New Orleans (1947). She had bit parts in Living in a Big Way (1947) and Killer McCoy (1947) at MGM, The Gangster (1947) for King Brothers Productions and Red River (1948). She played Brenda Martingale in Siodmak's Cry of the City (1948).

1947–1954: Breakthrough and acclaim

Winters first achieved stardom with her breakout performance as the victim of insane actor Tony John played by Ronald Colman in George Cukor's A Double Life (1947). It was distributed by Universal, which signed Winters to a long-term contract. She had a supporting role in Larceny (1948) then 20th Century Fox borrowed her for Cry of the City (1948). Winters was second-billed in Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949) with Howard Duff, and Take One False Step (1949) with William Powell. Paramount borrowed her to play Myrtle in The Great Gatsby (1949) with Alan Ladd. Back at Universal she was in Winchester 73 (1950), opposite James Stewart, a huge hit. Universal gave Winters top billing in South Sea Sinner (1950). She co-starred with Joel McCrea in Frenchie (1950).

Winters originally broke into Hollywood films as a blonde bombshell type, but quickly tired of the role's limitations. She claims to have washed off her make-up to audition for the role of Alice Tripp, the factory girl, in A Place in the Sun, directed by George Stevens, now 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 as well as the Hollywood Studio Club in Los Angeles and later studied and worked at the Method actors' haven Actors Studio in New York, both as student, moderator and teacher." While studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actors' Studio, she worked towards gaining the ability to reveal her inner self, to act with her scars. According to Winters, in order to get the best performance, one had to fight for it. She left Hollywood for Broadway and did not go back until 1959, when she had found her truer self. Lee Strasberg called Winters the actor of her generation; she could use his Method the most accurately. Winters also taught at the Circle in the Square and at colleges like Barnard. "UCLA has offered me a professorship -- not a full one -- and I never even finished high school!"

While on a publicity tour in 1950, she visited the two-year-old State of Israel. Also in the early 1950s, Winters rejected a trip to Germany to film the exterior scenes of the movie I Am a Camera. It reminded her too much of her uncle Yaekel who survived the Holocaust and his subsequent fruitless search for his family. A double was used in her place for the scenes needed to be shot in Germany.

1955–1969: Establishment

Winters returned to Broadway in A Hatful of Rain, in 1955–1956, opposite Ben Gazzara and future husband Anthony Franciosa. It ran for 398 performances. Girls of Summer (1956–57) was directed by Jack Garfein and co-starred George Peppard but only ran for 56 performances. On TV she reprised her Double Life performance in The Alcoa Hour in 1957. She appeared in episodes of The United States Steel Hour, Climax!, Wagon Train, Schlitz Playhouse, The DuPont Show of the Month, and Kraft Theatre.

In 1960, she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Mrs. Van Daan in George Stevens's film adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). As Petronella van Daan, Winters emulated one of eight real-life Jewish refugees in the Netherlands during World War II who spent two years hiding in small attic quarters until they were betrayed and sent to Nazi death camps. She understood the significance of sharing Anne Frank's tragic story with its tough lessons of cruelty and dignity under duress, heightening her own awareness of antisemitism and the historic deep rooted past of Jewish suffering. In preparation for doing this film, the entire cast watched movies taken by the American soldiers who liberated the concentration camps. For Winters, she was never able to read or watch anything related to the Holocaust again. During the filming, she met Anne’s father, Otto Frank. She promised him that in the event that she won an Oscar for that role, she would donate it to the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. Making good on her promise Winters donated her award statuette to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam in 1975. On the last day of shooting for the film, she spoke at an Israel bonds event that evening in Los Angeles. In her memoir she remembers asking the Jewish audience: "Who knows when you or your children or grandchildren will need the country of Israel?" The event raised millions of dollars. Winters called The Diary of Anne Frank her most important film. She attended its New York premiere accompanied by Harry Belafonte, Martin Luther King Jr., and their wives.

Winters was in much demand as a character actor now, getting good roles in Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960) and The Young Savages (1961). She received excellent reviews for her performance as the man-hungry Charlotte Haze in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962).

Winters returned to Broadway on The Night of the Iguana (1962), playing Bette Davis' role. She performed Off Broadway in Cages by Lewis John Carlino in 1963. Many of her roles now had a sexual component: in The Chapman Report (1962) she played an unfaithful housewife and she played madams in The Balcony (1963) and A House Is Not a Home (1964). She appeared in Wives and Lovers (1963) and episodes of shows such as Alcoa Theatre, Ben Casey, and Thirty-Minute Theatre. Winters was featured in the Italian film Time of Indifference (1964) with Rod Steiger and Claudia Cardinale, and had one of the many cameos in the religious epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), again for George Stevens.

1970–1999: Later roles

Winters played Ma Barker in Bloody Mama (1970) a big hit for Roger Corman. She had roles in How Do I Love Thee? (1970) and Flap (1970) for Carol Reed. She returned to the stage to play Minnie Marx, mother of the Marx Brothers in the Broadway musical Minnie's Boys (1970), which ran for 80 performances. Winters wrote an evening of three one-act plays titled One Night Stands of a Noisy Passenger (1970–1971), which ran for seven performances; the cast included Robert De Niro and Diane Ladd. Winters had the lead in two horror films, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1971), and What's the Matter with Helen? (1971), and two TV movies, Revenge! (1971), and A Death of Innocence (1971). She had supporting roles in Adventures of Nick Carter (1972) and had a co-starring role in Something to Hide (1972) with Peter Finch. She starred in The Vamp for ITV Sunday Night Theatre. In The Poseidon Adventure (1972), she was the ill-fated Belle Rosen, a Jewish grandmother who dies in the course of a successful attempt to lead her fellow passengers to safely escape the confines of the cruise ship. For this film she received her final Oscar nomination. She put on weight for the role and never got rid of it.

Winters was top-billed in The Devil's Daughter (1973) for TV. She had a supporting role in Blume in Love (1973) for Paul Mazursky and Cleopatra Jones (1973) and leading parts in Big Rose: Double Trouble (1974) and The Sex Symbol (1974). Winters guest-starred on McCloud and Chico and the Man and was seen in Poor Pretty Eddie (1975), That Lucky Touch (1975), Journey Into Fear (1975), Diamonds (1975), Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976) for Paul Mazursky, The Tenant (1976) for Roman Polanski, Mimì Bluette... fiore del mio giardino (1977) with Monica Vitti, Tentacles (1977), An Average Little Man (1977) with Alberto Sordi, Pete's Dragon (1977), The Initiation of Sarah (1978), and King of the Gypsies (1978). She starred in a 1978 Broadway production of Paul Zindel's The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, which only had a short run. Winters starred in the Italian horror film Gran bollito (1977) and played Gladys Presley in Elvis (1979) for TV. She was in The Visitor (1979), City on Fire (1979), The Magician of Lublin (1979) for Menahem Golan, The French Atlantic Affair (1979) and an episode of the ABC series Vega$, with Vega$ star Robert Urich.

Winters' 1980s performances included Looping (1981), S.O.B., episodes of The Love Boat, Sex, Lies and Renaissance (1983), Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984), Ellie (1984), Déjà Vu (1985), Alice in Wonderland (1985), and The Delta Force (1986). She did The Gingerbread Lady on stage. She had a starring role in Witchfire (1986) and was credited as executive producer. She was in Very Close Quarters (1986), Purple People Eater (1988), and An Unremarkable Life (1989).

Honors

For her contributions to motion pictures, Winters has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1752 Vine Street.

She received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1998 Hollywood Film Festival, commenting “this award is bigger than the Oscars! It’s about time Hollywood started to pay less attention to … violence, and more attention to human beings and relationships.”

1948 and 1951 Photoplay Award: Best Performances of the Month (November/September): winner

1954 Special Jury Prize: winner

Golden Laurel: Top Female Supporting Performance (1960) "The Diary of Anne Frank" winner; Best Supporting Performance, Female, in for "A Patch of Blue" (1966) winner

Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award (1967) Best Supporting Actress i "A Patch of Blue" winner

1977 Special David award: winner

Personal life

Winters was married four times. Her husbands were:

Captain Mack Paul Mayer, whom she married on December 29, 1943, in Brooklyn. Winters and Mayer were divorced in October 1948. Mayer was unable to deal with Shelley's "Hollywood lifestyle" and wanted a "traditional homemaker" for a wife. Mayer wore his wedding ring up until her death and kept their relationship very private. There is some debate as to who kept wearing their wedding ring until the other's death because Mayer died in 1990. At least 2 external sources claim it was Shelley who continued to wear the ring.

Vittorio Gassman, whom she married on April 28, 1952, in Juárez, Mexico; they divorced on June 2, 1954. They had one child: Vittoria, born February 14, 1953, a physician in Connecticut. She is Winters' only child.

Anthony Franciosa, whom she married on May 4, 1957; they were divorced on November 18, 1960. He died five days after Winters, having had a stroke the day she died.

Gerry DeFord, whom she married on January 13, 2006.

Hours before her death, Winters married long-time companion Gerry DeFord, with whom she had lived for 19 years. Though Winters' daughter objected to the marriage, actress Sally Kirkland performed the wedding ceremony while Winters was on her deathbed, declaring that Deford was the love of Shelley's life. Kirkland, a minister of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, also performed Winters's non-denominational last rites.

Winters had a much-publicized romance with Farley Granger that became a long-term friendship (according to their respective autobiographies). She starred with him in the 1951 film Behave Yourself! as well as in a 1957 television production of A. J. Cronin's novel Beyond This Place.

She was a great supporter of her friends in Hollywood. She participated in an 1983 exercise video created by Debbie Reynolds. Reynolds called it a workout for ladies: older women who might appreciate occasional low-impact leg lifts. To make sure she was noticed, Winters wore sweats pants with a sweatshirt that read “I’m Only Doing This for Debbie," then spent her time making jokes from the back row while she half heartedly participated in the routine. The filming took place in a studio decked out in bubble-gum-pink carpeting and a crystal chandelier, Debbie's name written in giant lights, the set looking like a Barbie Dreamhouse. Reynolds, fifty-one at the time, dressed in a burgundy leotard, matching tights, and a matching choker around her neck ready to show off her routine called “Do It Debbie’s Way.”

Death

Winters died at the age of 85 on January 14, 2006, of heart failure at the Rehabilitation Center of Beverly Hills; she had suffered a heart attack on October 14, 2005. She is interred at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Filmography

Stage credits

Summer Stock plays

Awards and nominations