Migawd she was a piece of work. That is meant in the best and worst of ways. I would see her in some film and would marvel at what a damned good actress she was. Then I would see her on a talk show and think I cannot stand this boisterous woman. I read her two autobiographies (the first one is massive) and while they were juicy as hell and utterly readable, I came away wondering how anyone could like her. Thankfully now, years after her death, we're really left with just the films and I am grateful. They were the best part of her.
An opening word or two on those films... she received credit in 103 of them and she worked a lot. A lot. Most of her work, no matter the film, was very, very good. A dozen or so of her films were also quite notable. She started her career by receiving no credit in a number of them. In the last decade or two of her life, folks said she would hire on to do absolutely anything. Many of the films were atrocious. She loved to work although I'm guessing she needed the dough.
Shelley Winters wanted to be an entertainer of some sort since very early childhood. She and her little buddies put on plays for family, friends and neighbors in her native St. Louis where she was born as Shirley Schrift in 1920. Her father was a designer of men's clothing and had his own shop for a number of years. Her mother was a singer with the St Louis Municipal Opera Theatre commonly known as the Muny and mother and daughter were extraordinarily close, too much so for a couple of Winters' husbands.
When Shelley was nine, the family, including an older sister, Blanche, moved to Brooklyn. She continued acting out her little plays and soon was telling everyone she was going to be an actress. No one particularly doubted it because her determination was well-known in her small circle. After a few gigs as a model and in a few chorus lines, she managed to get work in a number of Broadway plays in small roles.
In 1942 she married army captain Paul Mayer and although when the marriage ended in 1948 due to her movie star lifestyle, it would turn out to be the longest of her four marriages.
When she was 18, she auditioned to play Scarlett O'Hara, although I personally am given to fits of uncontrolled giggling thinking about it. Director George Cukor, in his rejection, told her to go to acting school. So during her earliest residence in Los Angeles, she did just that. At the same time, she had a roommate as eager to make it as Winters was. Her new name was Marilyn Monroe. For the rest of her life, Winters would talk incessantly about Monroe. Of course, for the rest of her life, Winters would talk incessantly about everything.
She had a great year in 1947 when she became a hit on Broadway replacing Celeste Holm as Ado Annie in Oklahoma and appeared as a waitress who is strangled by Ronald Colman (in his Oscar-winning role) in A Double Life (1947).
With her divorce in 1948, she also landed a contract with Universal-International... as you know, if you've followed along in these pages, was not always a good thing. It was especially not a good thing for those who considered themselves more than a pretty face. Winters knew she was not that but she did rightly think she could act most of them off the screen.
One other thing she landed was Burt Lancaster. The gods were smiling that day when two eternally-horny people ran into each other on the U-I lot. As she titillatingly tells in her first book, they had one-night stands, one-morning stands and after lunch stands for decades. They didn't have so many of them in beds. Outdoor action was good as were romps on darkened sound stages. Burt liked quickies. He was a sometimes rough but always a passionate lover and that's why Winters signed up. She needed passion... in the sack, before a camera, sharing a dinner table. It's why she would marry two Italians.
Winters' usual soulful, woe-is-me look was perfect for victim roles in films and that meant film noirs such as Larceny (1948) and Cry of the City (1948). She played Myrtle in my favorite version of The Great Gatsby (1949) opposite Alan Ladd. She was a perfect western heroine in Winchester 73 (1950) with James Stewart... she always impressed me in her westerns... sassy (always a Dietrich-like sexual innuendo) and brave.
I always thought Universal was more closely aligned with a modeling agency... they wanted gorgeous... thespian duties were added later. So out came the hair dye, the close-cropped cut, the push-up bras came in a series of pastels and the blouses and dresses left her bare-shouldered. Winters always called it her blonde bombshell period. I'm guessing Burt liked it but she claimed she never did. I say oh yes she did, she did indeed. For one thing her vanity had never been so stroked and what actress would refer to that as a bad period? I think the truth is closer to this... the future student at the Actors' Studio was embarrassed to explain to studio dignitaries her appearances in such U-I epics as South Sea Sinner, Frenchie, Untamed Frontier and Playgirl. Another knee-slapper on this bombshell business... since she disliked her look and this period orchestrated by her studio so much, why she did never EVER stop talking about it?
She did manage to scrub off the war paint and borrow her sister's short brown wig to apply to director George Stevens to play the mousy factory girl Alice Tripp in A Place in the Sun 1951). She never wanted a role so badly. Her famous death scene in the rowboat is a most compelling one for both her and Montgomery Clift. Alice is pregnant by him and pressuring him to marry her. He wants to marry the rich and beautiful Elizabeth Taylor instead and live the high life. The boat scene is about Clift planning to drown her but she ends up drowning herself by falling overboard.
Winters, who craved her own place in the sun, received an Oscar nomination and the best working experience of her life with director Stevens and would work with him twice more. She and Clift became fast friends. It is probably his influence that took her to New York and the Actors' Studio.
Before we get there, at Paramount while Taylor was making cow-eyes at Clift, Winters was doing the horizontal ho-down with William Holden, who was also making at picture at the studio. It gave Lancaster a chance to rest and pay more attention to his wife, but Holden didn't care about such stuff. They would have a wild go at it at first but eventually their thing was to bring in the New Year together. They did it for years in a number of locales. She only took time off with him and Lancaster during her brief Italian marriages.
Winters loved partying and she'd never met a party or a mink stole she didn't love. MM taught her how to laugh with her mouth wide open and Winters practiced at Hollywood parties.
Clark Gable took her to Errol Flynn's party and Flynn took her off to his lair. They rejoined the guests later.
She studied with Charles Laughton... often at his home. She treated him like a god, which was exactly what he had in mind. He thought she was tremendously talented. One day he would hire her for the only film he ever directed.
Farley Granger was in the mix somehow, too. They may have become physically involved but he was a gay man and whatever they had wasn't evolving past a friendship. Winters always ran toward the paparazzi and she thought pics of her with her handsome friend was just what the doctor ordered. MGM came after her to work in Behave Yourself (1951), a routine comedy about young married life, and she got Granger as a costar. In truth, she always looked after her friends.
Coming home to New York a certifiable star did a lot for her. So did her joining the Actors' Studio. She loved learning about acting. She had found her home, the best friends she'd ever know and unconditional love and support. She was uncharacteristically quiet sitting at the feet of the great man, Lee Strasberg, and he considered her a fine actress. She met up with Clift, James Dean, Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton, Eli Wallach and Marlon Brando. She would quickly engage in a sexual relationship with Brando that would also span the decades, although never as frequent as with Lancaster and Holden.
Another Actors' studio alum was John Garfield. She adored him and was thrilled when they were both signed to costar in the New York production of He Ran All the Way (1951), a grim noir about a bankrobber/cop killer who holes up in a young woman's apartment that she shares with her parents. When I finally saw it as a kid, I turned on so much to Garfield that I made an effort to see all his films.
In late 1951 while she was visiting Rome with Granger, she met Vittorio Gassman and the spaghetti years had begun. I could never particularly understand their attraction to one another beyond one thing. Okay, maybe two things... he wanted to broaden his Neapolitan charm to America and Miss Eager Beaver could help. For awhile they even suffered a language barrier.
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| Rare happy times with Vittorio Gassman |
They married in 1952, had a daughter in 1953 and costarred together in 1954's Mambo in Italy. The film was essentially about a young Italian's (Silvana Mangano) desire to join a dance company and her relationship with two men. Winters had surprising fourth billing.
Furthermore, the Gassmans were considering divorce. For one thing they were frequently apart making a movie but the constant arguing messed with the kind of passion she was seeking. Frankly, neither was easy to live with. In the U.S. he was known as Mr. Shelley Winters, not a good recipe for them.
While MGM starred Gassman in four films, his American career never truly ignited and he was for years disdainful of American movies and apparently mainly the kind made at MGM. The marriage would be over by 1954. For sure, though, he was the one who got away.
She was part of one of those glittering casts in MGM's Executive Suite (1954), about the sudden death of the head of a manufacturing corporation and the quick maneuvering of his underlings to take over. Winters was in good company with Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, June Allyson, Paul Douglas... and William Holden. The two were very circumspect on the set but they'd soon be sharing some New Year's Eves together again.
Laughton directed her in the scary Night of the Hunter (1955) as the ill-fated mother who meets her end at the hands of the sadistic Robert Mitchum. The film was not a success when it was released but has since been regarded as a classic.
She was overshadowed by Jack Palance and Rod Steiger in a drama about Hollywood, The Big Knife (1955) although everyone in this film turned in a colorful performance. That same year she joined Palance again in I Died a Thousand Times (1955), a good remake of Bogie's High Sierra.
Also in 1955 she returned to Broadway to star in a searing drug drama, A Hatful of Rain with Ben Gazzara and Anthony Franciosa that ran for nearly 400 performances. She was pissed that she didn't get the movie role in 1957 (Eva Marie Saint did) but Franciosa did repeat his role. The consolation prize was the pair marrying in 1957.
She put on some pounds to play the shrill and hypersensitive Mrs. Van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), a blockbuster, and won a supporting Oscar for her efforts. Winning an Oscar had always been paramount to her and she was beyond thrilled when it happened. She also said that doing so spelled the end of her marriage to Franciosa. The truth is they were both volatile people and the marriage never had much of a chance of surviving. It was like Gassman all over again.
She dated Sean Connery for awhile, claiming he was the best lover she ever had.
A tough-talking, blowsy sexuality seemed to permeate her next several films. I may be inclined to name Lolita (1962) as her best work. Costarring with James Mason and newcomer Sue Lyon, she rents a room out to a new college professor. Winters is the mother with a ravenous sexual appetite who doesn't realize that her roomer and soon husband is actually lusting after her teenage daughter. Her performance is deliciously over-the-top, something it needed to be and something Winters could provide in her sleep.
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| With Claire Bloom, Glynis Johns & Jane Fonda in The Chapman Report |
She was an unfaithful housewife whose sex life was being studied in The Chapman Report (1962). In 1963 and 1964 she played madams in The Balcony and A House Is Not a Home. She was positively riveting as a vicious, bigoted, prostitute mother of a blind teenage daughter in A Patch of Blue (1965) and won a second supporting Oscar for her efforts. She said she always found something to like in her characters but not this one.
She plays a fading, alcoholic actress in the star-laden crime caper, Harper (1966), and had a fun role as one of Michael Caine's sexual conquests in Alfie (1966). Her smartass role in a western I fancied, The Scalphunters (1968), is made all the more interesting by the appearance of her leading man, Burt Lancaster. They were civil to one another despite the fact that, she says, he broke her heart.
She was funny as a harried wife and mother in the military reunion comedy in Italy, Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell (1968), a film I have always treasured, although mostly for its title star, Gina Lollobrigida.
She moved into exploitation films such as playing the vicious public enemy era mother Ma Barker in Bloody Mama (1970). The following year she starred in a spooky retelling of the Hansel & Gretal tale, Who Slew Auntie Roo? She joined Debbie Reynolds as two music teachers whose sons have been convicted of a horrific murder in What's the Matter with Helen? I thought it was great fun.
Finally comes The Poseidon Adventure (1972), the last of her films up for discussion and one of her best. She packed on a lot of pounds to play an overweight wife who must make a valiant swim in the overturned cruise ship. The film was a sensation at the box office and Winters would cop her final Oscar nomination. The downside to the experience is she could never lose the weight.
She became a respected teacher at the Actors' Studio and was always on the lookout for new talent she could promote. She continued to make movies through 1999 and included some television work. Many of the movies were far below her talents.
For six decades she was rarely out of the news. If there wasn't a movie, TV show or play to promote, she talked about her amazingly colorful life with reckless abandon.
Writer Kevin Thomas said of her: Shelley was a mass of contradictions, as only a Method actress can be. Nobody could be more down to earth or quicker to fall back on a star's perquisites. She was mercurial, adorable, infuriating, loyal, brave.
For the last 19 years of her life, she lived with a much younger companion named Gerry DeFord (much disliked by Winters' daughter). It was doubly longer than her three marriages combined. Even though she was very ill, they married on January 13, 2006, and Winters died the following day in California of heart failure. She was 85. It had been a very full life.
Singer-actress Connie Stevens said Shelley was an extraordinary woman with powerful charisma, enormous talent and a keen perceptive mind who lived life and spoke of it as she saw it. She was loving, fun and I'm so glad to know her and love her as a true friend.
Again, one thing she became famous for was her visits to late night talk shows, especially Johnny Carson. Here is one of her most famous, alongside actor Oliver Reed. Be sure to watch til the end.
Next posting:
A movie biography
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