final credits - shelley winters
Leave it to Winters herself to sum up her own life as "a rocky road out of the Brooklyn ghetto to one New York apartment, two Oscars, three California houses, four hit plays, five Impressionist paintings, six mink coats and 99 films."
In 1996 she defined herself to an interviewer as "a senior-citizen sex bomb."
Winters died January 14, 2006 at the age of 85 from heart failure.
Nominated for four Oscars, she won two. She also won the fascination of audiences for over five decades in nearly 200 film and television roles.
Born Shirley Schrift in East St. Louis, Illinois, Winters's career started out playing a "dumb blond bombshell" (her own words). She once shared an apartment at 8573 Holloway Drive, Los Angeles with Marilyn Monroe whom she taught how to "act" pretty by tilting her head back, keeping her eyes lowered and her mouth partly opened.
Winters, after appearing in 15 uncredited roles, got her break in George Cukor's 1947 "A Double Life," in which she played a waitress who was murdered by Ronald Colman.
It was the first of numerous victim roles that she once recounted in a memoir: "I had been strangled by Ronald Colman, drowned by Montgomery Clift, stabbed and drowned by Robert Mitchum, shot by Jack Palance and by Rod Steiger in two different films and, oh yes, overdosed with heroin by Ricardo Montalban."
She was twice run over by a car, in 1949's "The Great Gatsby" and again in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 "Lolita."
It was when she shed her platinum looks and played against type alongside Elizabeth Taylor in George Stevens' 1951 "A Place In The Sun" that Winters' acting talent was recognised by the Academy, who nominated her for Best Actress.
Her first Oscar win, best supporting actress, was for her performance in 1959's "The Diary of Anne Frank" (she donated the statuette to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam).
Winters became the first actress to win two Oscars in the supporting category when she won again as the vicious mother of a blind girl in 1965's "A Patch of Blue."
She was again nominated in the category for 1972's "The Poseiden Adventure" for her role as an ex-underwater swimming champion who could hold her breath for two minutes, 47 seconds. A critic doubted she could keep her mouth shut that long.
In later years, the roles got smaller as she got larger, but Winters stayed in the public eye. Her career as talk show guest was bolstered by two kiss-and-tell memoirs which only added to the Mae West comparisons.
In the books it was revealed that both Winters and Monroe had made lists to sleep their way up the ladder. Monroe listed Zero Mostel, Albert Einstein and Arthur Miller, whom she later married, while Winters included Laurence Olivier among many other studio studs.
The original manuscripts for her books were cut to almost half their original size as lawyers believed at least 500 pages were libelous. When the books were published, her numerous romantic reminiscences prompted sales of T-shirts with the slogan "I haven't slept with Shelley Winters."
Winters recounted conquests that included Errol Flynn (she once said "I can assure you he was not a homosexual"), Farley Granger, William Holden (sharing an annual Christmas Eve rendezvous), Sterling Hayden, Sean Connery (she once lent him rent money and he paid her back later with a mink coat), Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando (who once had to escape via stairs to the roof when Burt came calling) and even President Kennedy’s father.
In her books, Winters admitted an addiction to food. "I lose track of the guys I've known," she said, "but I never forget the meals. Overeaters anonymous, it's my only religion."
She recalled an evening when she asked a young cartoonist over for dinner (pork with garlic and a well tossed salad).
"He drank his dinner," she said, "never ate a thing. I told him he ought to see a shrink and he told me he'd come to America to meet Charlie Chaplin and to touch the breasts of a starlet. I arranged both. It wasn't until after he died that I found out he was Dylan Thomas."
Winters confessed that she threatened to kill Ava Gardener by hiring a "hit-man" if she continued her affair with her then-husband Tony Franciosa.
"All my men cheated on me and that's kinda sad," Winters recalled. "All I ever got out of marriage, except my daughter, was some jewellery and a recipe for ravioli."
When in 1965 she travelled to England to star in "Alfie," playing a sexy widow opposite Michael Caine, she recalled "I couldn't understand a word Michael Caine said. I just waited for the gaps and then said my lines."
Despite her ditzy facade, Winters was active in politics, supporting Kennedy and the Democratic ticket. She was the only person to sign Norman Mailer's petition to reinstate "The Hollywood 10" -- writers who had been blacklisted by Senator McCarthy -- and regularly attended parties held for them.
In 1960, a controversial advertisement was taken out in the New York Times defending Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South. Only two white women signed the newspaper petition at the time. One was Eleanor Roosevelt, the other was Winters.
Audiences of today know of Winters primarily for the autobiographies and her television work, often appearing as a humourous parody of her public self. She played Roseanne Barr's grandmother on the sitcom "Roseanne," which oddly made her play Estelle Parsons' (who played Roseanne's mother) mother, even though Parsons was only 7 years younger.
Winter's last film was the 1999 Italian farce "La Bomba," which reunited her with her second husband, the Italian actor Vittorio Gassman.
After Winters' demise came word that she had very recently married. 10 hours before she died, Winters was wed to her companion of the past 18 years, Gerry DeFord.
Winters and DeFord had prepared for marriage once before, but Winters' daughter Vittoria-Gina, a successful physician, publicly opposed the union fearing losing access to her mother's fortunes.
The death bed wedding ceremony was performed by Winter's goddaughter Sally Kirkland. Kirkland is an ordained minister in the Church of The Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness.
Winters has a Bacon number of 2.
Five days after her death, former Winters husband Tony Franciosa died from a stroke.