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Oscar winner Shelley Winters dies at 85
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-15 09:21
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Shelley Winters, the forceful, outspoken star who
graduated from blond bombshell parts to dramas, winning Academy Awards as
supporting actress in "The Diary of Anne Frank" and "A Patch of Blue," has died.
She was 85.
This handout
picture from MGM shows Shelley Winters in character in the 1965 film
'Patch of Blue' portraying a hateful, foul-mouthed mother who tries to
keep her blind daughter, who is white, apart from the kind black man who
has befriended her. Winters, the forceful, outspoken star who graduated
from blond bombshell parts to dramas, has died Saturday, Jan. 14, 2006.
She was 85. [AP] |
| Winters
died of heart failure early Saturday at The Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly
Hills, her publicist Dale Olson said. She had been hospitalized in October after
suffering a heart attack.
The actress sustained her long career by repeatedly reinventing herself.
Starting as a nightclub chorus girl, advanced to supporting roles in New York
plays, then became famous as a Hollywood sexpot.
A devotee of the Actors Studio, she switched to serious roles as she matured.
Her Oscars were for her portrayal of mothers. Still working well into her 70s,
she had a recurring role as Roseanne's grandmother on the 1990s TV show
"Roseanne."
"Shelley was idol of mine — and many — an extraordinary woman with powerful
charisma, enormous talent and a keen, perceptive mind," said longtime friend and
actress Connie Stevens.
In 1959's "The Diary of Anne Frank," she was Petronella Van Daan, mother of
Peter Van Daan and one of eight real-life Jewish refugees in World War II
Holland who hid for more than a year in cramped quarters until they were
betrayed and sent to Nazi death camps. The socially conscious Winters donated
her Oscar statuette to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
In 1965's "Patch of Blue," she portrayed a hateful, foul-mouthed mother who
tries to keep her blind daughter, who is white, apart from the kind black man
who has befriended her.
Ever vocal on social and political matters, Winters was a favored guest on
television talk shows, and she demonstrated her frankness in two
autobiographies: "Shelley, Also Known as Shirley" (1980) and "Shelley II: The
Middle of My Century" (1989).
Winters wrote openly in them of her romances with Burt Lancaster, William
Holden, Marlon Brando, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable and other leading men. She also
said after she came to Hollywood in the mid-1940s she was roommates with another
rising starlet — Marilyn Monroe.
"I've had it all," she exulted after her first book became a best seller.
"I'm excited about the literary aspects of my career. My concentration is there
now."
Typically Winters, she also had a complaint about her literary fame: While
reviewers treated her book as a serious human document, she said, talk show
hosts Phil Donohue and Johnny Carson "only want to know about my love affairs."
Winters, whose given name was Shirley Schrift, was appearing in the Broadway
hit "Rosalinda" when Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn offered her a screen
test. A Columbia contact and a new name — Shelley Winters — followed, but all
the good roles at the studio were going to Jean Arthur in those days.
Winters' early films included such light fare as "Knickerbocker Holiday,"
"Sailor's Holiday," "Cover Girl," "Tonight and Every Night" and "Red River."
When her contract ended, Winters returned to New York as Ado Annie in
"Oklahoma!"
She would soon be called back and signed to a seven-year contract at
Universal, where she was transformed into a blonde bombshell. She vamped her way
through a number of potboilers for the studio, including "South Sea Sinner,"
with Liberace as her dance-hall pianist, and "Frenchie," as wild saloon owner
Frenchie Fontaine, out to avenge her father's murder.
The only hint of her future as an actress came in 1948's "A Double Life" as a
trashy waitress strangled by a Shakespearian actor, Ronald Colman. The role won
Colman an Oscar.
"A Place in the Sun" in 1951 brought her first Oscar nomination and
established her as a serious actress. She desperately sought the role of the
pregnant factory girl drowned by Montgomery Clift so he could marry Elizabeth
Taylor. The director, George Stevens, rejected her at first for being too sexy.
"So I scrubbed off all my makeup, pulled my hair back and sat next to him at
the Hollywood Athletic Club without his even recognizing me because I looked so
plain. That got me the part," she recalled in a 1962 interview.
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