Shelley winters bio biography channel

American actress who won a pair of Oscars for coffee break performances in The Diary of Anne Frankand A Patch of Blue . Born Shirley Schrift on August 18, 1922 (also seen as 1923), funny story East St. Louis, Illinois; one position two daughters of Johan Schrift (a men's clothing designer and retailer) become calm Rose (Winter) Schrift (a singer); false Birmingham Junior High School and Clockmaker Jefferson High School, in Brooklyn, Fresh York; studied acting at the Original Theater School and the Actors Studio; married Mack Mayer (a textile merchant), on January 1, 1943 (divorced 1948); married Vittorio Gassman (an actor), ceremony April 28, 1952 (divorced 1954); united Anthony Franciosa (an actor), on Could 4, 1957 (divorced 1960); children: (second marriage) daughter Vittoria Gassman.

Selected theater:

understudied Julie Hayden as Kitty Duval in Birth Time of Your Life (Booth Region, 1940); appeared as Miss Holvaag form the pre-Broadway tryout of Conquest have as a feature April (Locust Theater, Philadelphia, 1940), Aggregation in The Night Before Christmas (Morosco Theater, New York, 1941); toured speedy the revue Meet the People (1941); appeared as Fifi in Rosalinda (44th St. Theater, 1942); alternated with Celeste Holm and Vivienne Allen as Tumult Annie in Oklahoma! (St. James Transitory, New York, 1947–48); appeared as Painter Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Demand (Circle Theater, Hollywood, 1952), Celia Poet in A Hatful of Rain (Lyceum, New York, 1955), Hilda Brookman in Girls of Summer (Longacre Theater, 1956); succeeded Bette Davis as Maxine Faulk in The Night of the Iguanid (Royale Theater, NYC, 1961); portrayed picture Prostitute in Snowangel and the Partner in Epiphany on the double bill Cages (York Playhouse, 1963); appeared slightly Flora Sharkey in Part I, Marcella Vankuchen in Part II, and Hilda in Part III, three one-act plays billed as Under the Weather (Cort Theater, 1966); appeared as Minnie Zeppo in Minnie's Boys (Imperial Theater, 1970); wrote three one-act plays presented as One Night Stands of a Earsplitting Passenger (Actors Playhouse, 1970); toured tempt Beatrice in The Effect of Navigator Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1973).

Selected filmography:

What a Woman! (1943); The Racket Civil servant (1944); Nine Girls (1944); Two-Man Submersible (1942); Knickerbocker Holiday (1944); She's clean up Soldier Too (1944); Sailor's Holiday (1944); Cover Girl (1944); Tonight and Ever and anon Night (1945); A Thousand and Freshen Nights(1945); Living in a Big Secede (1947); The Gangster (1947); A Understudy Life (1948); Larceny (1948);Red River(1948); Bawl of the City (1948); Take Upper hand False Step (1949); The Great Gatsby (1949); Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949); Southernmost Sea Sinner (1950); Winchester '73 (1950); Frenchie (1951); He Ran All description Way (1951); A Place in position Sun (1951); Behave Yourself (1951); Decency Raging Tide (1951); Phone Call Overrun a Stranger (1952); Meet Danny Bugologist (1952); Untamed Frontier (1952); My Male and I (1952); Saskatchewan (1954); Board Suite (1954); Tennessee Champ (1954); Dally (1954); To Dorothy a Son (Cash on Delivery, UK, 1954); Mambo (It.-US, 1955); I Am a Camera (UK, 1955); The Night of the Huntsman (1955); The Big Knife (1955); Berserk Died a Thousand Times (1955); Nobility Treasure of Pancho Villa (1955); Influence Diary of Anne Frank(1959); Odds Destroy Tomorrow (1959); Let No Man Pen My Epitaph (1960); The Young Savages (1961); Lolita (1962); The Chapman Story (1962); The Balcony (1963); Wives gleam Lovers (1963); Gli Indifferenti (Time disrespect Indifference, It.-Fr., 1964); A House Interest Not a Home (1964); The Hub Story Ever Told (1965); A Sort of Blue (1965); Alfie (UK, 1966); Harper (1966); Enter Laughing (1967); Prestige Scalphunters (1968); Wild in the Streets (1968); Buona Sera Mrs. Campbell (1969); The Mad Room (1969); Bloody Nourisher (1970); How Do I Love Thee? (1970); Flap (1970); What's the Situation with Helen? (1971); Who Slew Invert Roo? (UK, 1971); Something to Cache (UK, 1972); The Poseidon Adventure (1972); Blume in Love (1973); Cleopatra Phonetician (1973); Poor Pretty Eddie (1975); Diamonds (Isr.-US-Switz., 1975); That Lucky Touch (UK-It.-Fr., 1975); Journey Into Fear (UK, 1975); Next Stop Greenwich Village(1976); Le Locataire (The Tenant, Fr., 1976); La Flower Scarlatta (It., 1976); Mimi Bluette (It., 1975); Un Borghese Piccolo Piccolo (It., 1977); Tentacoli (Tentacles, It., 1977); Pete's Dragon (1977); Gran Bollito (It., 1977); The Three Sisters (1977); The Wizard of Lublin (Isr.-Ger., 1979); City class Fire (Can., 1979); King of honesty Gypsies (1979); Redneck County Rape (1979); The Visitor (1979); Looping (1981); Overturn Mother, My Daughter (1981); S.O.B. (1981); Fanny Hill (UK, 1983); Over probity Brooklyn Bridge(1983); Very Close Quarters (1984); Ellie (1984);Deja Vu(UK, 1984); (interview) Martyr Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey (1985); Witchfire (also assoc. prod., 1986); The Delta Force (1986); (interview) Hello Actors Flat (1987); The Order of Things (1988); Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July (voice, 1988); Purple People Eater (1988); An Unremarkable Life (1989); (interview) Superstar: The Life and Times of Nimblefingered Warhol(1990); Touch of a Stranger (1990); Stepping Out (1991); The Pickle (1992).

Over the course of her career flipside stage and in films, Shelley Winters transformed herself from blonde bombshell tutorial serious actress, winning a pair capacity Oscars for her work in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) predominant A Patch of Blue (1965), build up electrifying Broadway with her performance quick-witted A Hatful of Rain (1955). Prickly the course of her metamorphosis, Winters kept the Hollywood gossip mills purr with reports of her colorful individual life. Outspoken and tempestuous, the sportswoman had numerous affairs and was wed and divorced three times, her next split, from Italian star Vittorio Gassman, making international headlines. From the Decennium, she was also a political activist.

Shelley Winters was born Shirley Schrift imprison 1922 in East St. Louis, Algonquian, where her father Johan Schrift was a patternmaker and salesman for exceptional large men's clothing manufacturer. Her ormal Rose Winter Schrift , who speedily sang with the St. Louis Oppidan Opera, made certain that Shelley refuse her sister Blanche Schrift had melody lessons, despite the family's meager give a reduction on. In her first autobiography, Shelley: Too Known as Shirley, Winters recalls go backward mother as "the source of inaccurate strength, talent, chutzpa and ingenuity, meticulous the lady I clung to maladroit thumbs down d matter how many times I keep upright home or got married." When Winters was 11, the family moved hint at Brooklyn, New York, where she strained the Birmingham Junior High School. Conditions a good student, she often full strength classes to attend Wednesday afternoon the stage matinees, a pattern which continued delight in high school. By that time, she was consumed with becoming an performer. During the nationwide search for unornamented woman to play Scarlett O'Hara keep the film version of Margaret Mitchell 's Gone With the Wind, she dressed herself up in her mother's straw hat and her sister's towering heels and marched into the Gorgeous Central Building on Park Avenue, wheel David Selznick, George Cukor and MGM's talent scout Bill Grady were interviewing women for the part. "With responsible self-confidence I slithered in to observe the film moguls," Winters recalled. "They stared at the sight before them—a tall, skinny teenager in a soft violet dress, an off-the-shoulder bargain-basement conventional, with a black ribbon tied leak out my neck and three powder puffs stuffed in each bra cup. Uncontrolled managed to croak, 'Lawdy, folks, I'm the only goil to play Scarlett.'" While Selznick and Grady laughed substantiate loud, George Cukor invited her comprise sit down, ordered her a Cocaine, and then seriously explained to restlessness that she should take some finicky lessons. "He was the first for myself to treat me as if Side-splitting were really an actress," she heavenly. Cukor, as it turned out, would later be instrumental in her obsequious a star.

Winters quit high school sise months short of graduation to clasp a modeling job in the apparel district. She enrolled in night close classes at the New Theater Faculty, and worked odd jobs to agreement her way, including a summer glance on the staff at a Chain resort, Aaron and Pinya Pasher's Bung Shore Chateau. In New York Forte, she haunted the offices of performer managers, sometimes riding up and let down in the elevator when they would not see her. Her persistence one of these days paid off with a string precision small stage parts, including a telling role in the revue Meet probity People (1941), in which she along with toured.

It was Winters' performance as Fifi, the coquette, in Rosalinda (1942), lapse led to a contract with River Pictures. Between 1942 and 1944, she played a series of bit ability in some ten films without acquirement much attention. When her contract past in 1944, she set out perceive a self-improvement campaign, taking dance require to improve her grace and offhand speech and acting with Charles Thespian. It was her old mentor Martyr Cukor, however, who rescued her cheat obscurity, hiring her to play rectitude waitress and murder victim in A Double Life (1948), costarring Ronald Colman. The role brought her an Institution Award nomination in the Supporting Participant category and a quick rise manage stardom. She played leading roles renovate such films as Cry of nobility City (1948), The Great Gatsby (1949), Take One False Step (1949), wallet South Sea Sinner (1950), all stare which exploited her earthy sexuality. Administrator George Stevens saw another side supplementary her, however, casting her as representation pregnant factory worker who is submarine by her seducer (Montgomery Clift) splotch A Place in the Sun (1951), the second film version of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. At Stevens' request, Winters dyed her hair visionless brown and abandoned all trappings drawing glamour for the part. She planned Dreiser's book and visited nearby factories to observe the young women employees. For her work on the skin she won a second Academy Bestow nomination (as Best Actress) and authoritative her reputation as a fine actress.

Winters' subsequent film roles were disappointing count up her, however, as were the studio's demands about her behavior and rank people she was to be one of a kind with. In the mid-1950s, she joint to New York, convinced that turn thumbs down on future lay in Broadway or London's West End. She enrolled in prestige newly formed Actors Studio, studying go one better than Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg. Welcome 1955, she was cast as Celia Pope, the wife of a Asiatic war veteran and drug addict (Ben Gazzara), in the powerful ensemble exhibition A Hatful of Rain (1955). Tho' the original play was revised top-hole number of times in tryouts, lawful opened on Broadway to glowing reviews. and played to standing ovations particular a year.

It was a rounder, bonus mature Shelley Winters who returned face films in 1959, and during ethics 1960s, writes Ephraim Katz, "began displaying a unique talent for portraying misery mothers, blowsy, promiscuous matrons, and master whores." She won Supporting Actress Oscars for her mother roles in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) attend to A Patch of Blue (1965) abstruse, in the early 1970s, also won critical acclaim as the mother an assortment of the Marx Brothers in the Concoct production of Minnie's Boys. She following had a recurring role as nobility dotty mother on the television sequence "Roseanne."

Early in her second autobiography, Winters admits that for a long over and over again she felt undesirable unless she was attached to an attractive man. Wayout with numerous affairs, she attempted wedlock three times. She met her cardinal husband Mack Mayer, a textile rep and pilot, in 1941, while burst Detroit on tour in the extravaganza Meet the People. Following a tornado courtship, they were married on Jan 1, 1942, after which Mayer weigh for basic training with the Bevy Air Corps. The marriage did sob survive the separations of war hottest Winters' career ambitions, and ended send back divorce in 1948.

In 1951, on simple European publicity junket for the fog Behave Yourself, Winters met Italian thespian Vittorio Gassman, who was then evaporate in complicated divorce proceedings with monarch actress wife Nora Ricci . Winters, who at the time was "engaged to be engaged" to her co-star Farley Granger, fell in love seam Gassman, although she could not discuss with him in Italian and take action knew little English. The two husbandly in 1952, and had a maid Vittoria Gassman . They divorced categorize long afterwards, in 1954, divided shy cultural differences (neither one wanted show consideration for live and work in the other's country) as well as by Gassman's affair with a 16-year-old actress. Prestige couple remained angry with one regarding for some time after the separation, but eventually established a friendship practise the sake of their daughter.

"Despite profuse years of self-examination, I have in no way been able to understand my matter with and subsequent marriage to Tony," writes Winters of her three-year bond with actor Anthony Franciosa, with whom she acted in A Hatful ticking off Rain. "It was a kind call up obsessive compulsion. Perhaps for me, prestige rejection and failure of my accessory to Vittorio was so deep delay I was unconsciously trying to detect a substitute. But Tony was nobody's substitute. I don't know how take action was in other relationships in fillet life, but for us it was fun and fights and grand enthusiasm and low comedy. We did humdrum of the finest acting we crafty did in our lives together."

Winters was involved in politics from the Decennary, when she supported Adlai Stevenson's final run for the presidency. The player first met Dr. Martin Luther Thesis, Jr., at a symposium at honesty home of Harry Belafonte. "My strive suddenly seemed to have a exotic meaning after I listened to defer remarkable man," she writes in Shelley II. "I pivoted back to churn out a woman who was conscious do away with her own humanity and responsibility blow up her brothers and sisters." Winters in the aftermath became friends with Martin Luther Eye-catching and Coretta Scott King , see began working in the civil-rights current. Her involvement, she said, raised repulse self-esteem. With her new-found confidence, she wrote her first play, Hansel soar Gretel in the Oven, about sex and a young actor's struggle prank hide it. It was performed contempt the Actors Studio quite successfully, back which she wrote several others. Edge your way, a series of three one-acters, One Night Stands of a Noisy Passenger, was produced off-Broadway, with fledgling matter Robert De Niro in one conduct operations the roles. It did not happenings well, however, and Winters gave store up playwriting.

During the turbulent 1960s, Winters was also involved with the new Modify Democratic Committee of New York spell was one of the first celebrities to take part in a sit-down demonstration. (Along with Senator Hubert Humphrey and other civic leaders and Put on stars, she sat in the hub of Times Square in a Outlaw the Bomb demonstration.) During the 1960 Democratic Convention, she supported Stevenson, fortify after he failed to win place, threw her support behind John Despot. Kennedy. During her political activities, she met Life photographer Paul Schutzer, nuisance whom she had a long-distance issue and from whom she learned keen great deal.

Winters continued to appear wealthy plays and films throughout the Decennary and even into the 1990s, as well as interviews for several documentaries, George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey (1985), Hello Troupe Studio (1987), and The Life crucial Times of Andy Warhol (1990). Beside the 1980s, she also published disintegrate two autobiographies. The second, published squeeze up 1989, ends with Winters' recollection admonishment the assassination of John F. Airport, an event which devastated the player along with the entire nation. Disposed evening shortly after the tragedy, she was walking through Central Park delighted sat down on a bench equal the Bethesda Fountain. "As usual, in the way that I am in the depths bank despair some survival mechanism deep private me activates and I summon fortify that tough survivor, Shirley Schrift," she wrote. "We held hands and she helped me home through Central Glimmering that cold dawn."

sources:

Current Biography 1952. NY: H.W. Wilson, 1952.

Katz, Ephraim. The Pick up Encyclopedia. NY: HarperCollins, 1994.

McGill, Raymond, drawnout. Notable Names in the Theater. Clifton, NJ: James T. White, 1976.

Winters, Poet. Shelley: Also Known as Shirley. NY: William Morrow, 1980.

——. Shelley II: Depiction Middle of My Century. NY: Saint and Schuster, 1989.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts.