Shelley Winters, two-time Oscar winner, dies at 85
By Los Angeles Times and The New York Times
LOS ANGELES — Shelley Winters, 85, a blond bombshell of the 1940s who evolved into a character actress best known for her roles as victims, shrews and matrons, died Saturday.
Miss Winters, the first actress to win two Oscars in the best-supporting category, died Saturday of heart failure at The Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly Hills, her publicist Dale Olson said. She was hospitalized in October after a heart attack.
A major movie presence for more than 50 years, Miss Winters turned herself from a self-described "dumb blond bombshell" in B pictures to a widely respected actress who was nominated four times for Academy Awards.
Her first Oscar, for best supporting actress, was for her performance in "The Diary of Anne Frank" (1959) as the middle-age Mrs. Van Daan, one of eight Dutch Jews hiding from the Nazis in an attic.
She won again for best supporting actress as Rose-Ann D'Arcy, the abusive mother who tries to turn her blind daughter into a prostitute in "A Patch of Blue" (1965).
The actress donated the first Oscar statuette to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
After a series of bit parts, Miss Winters received her first big break as the waitress who was strangled by Ronald Colman's jealous actor in "A Double Life" in 1947.
Four years later, she dyed her hair brown, rubbed the polish off her fingernails and convinced director George Stevens she could play the mousy factory girl who was made pregnant and then drowned by Montgomery Clift so he could marry the rich Elizabeth Taylor in "A Place in the Sun." She was nominated for an Oscar as best actress for that performance.
Vulnerable characters
Tough-talking and oozing sex appeal, Miss Winters was blowzy, vulgar and often pathetically vulnerable in her early films. In movie after movie, she played working-class women who were violently discarded by men who had used them.
When her gullible waitress couldn't lead the "preacher" to a cache of stolen money in "The Night of the Hunter" (1955), he slit her throat.
As a rich man's poor mistress in "The Great Gatsby" (1949), she was casually run over by her lover's wife.
In Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita" (1962), James Mason married her to get close to her young daughter; when she finds this out she runs in front of a car and is killed.
Even when she became the dominating force in many of her later movies, Miss Winters often played vulnerable monsters. As Ma Barker in the 1970 cult classic "Bloody Mama" — in which she is first seen giving her four grown sons their Saturday-night baths — she was murderously maternal while brandishing a tommy gun.
Pauline Kael, writing in The New Yorker about Miss Winters' performance as the "hysteric on the loose" mother in Paul Mazursky's "Next Stop, Greenwich Village" (1976), said: "With her twinkly goo-goo eyes and flirty grin, [she's)] a mother hippo charging — not at her son's enemies but at him. Fat, morose, irrepressible, she's a force that would strike terror to anyone's heart, yet in some abominable way she's likable."
Food and men
Off screen, Miss Winters lived with an equal gusto, which she captured in her best-selling 1980 autobiography, "Shelley, Also Known as Shirley," and in a second book, in 1989, "Shelley II: In the Middle of My Century."
With a hearty appetite for food and men, she was not hesitant about naming the actors with whom she had shared a bed, including Sean Connery, Marlon Brando, Errol Flynn, Farley Granger, Sterling Hayden, William Holden and Burt Lancaster.
Miss Winters and Holden had a "Same Time, Next Year" relationship, meeting in his Paramount dressing room on Christmas Eve for five years. She wrote that despite their intimacy, they continued to refer to each other as "Mr. Holden" and "Miss Winters," and when they met on the set of the 1981 film "S.O.B.," she said, "Hello, Mr. Holden." He smiled and replied, "Shelley, after your book, I think you should call me Bill."
Her two-year relationship with Lancaster was more serious. She ended the affair when the actor's wife became pregnant with his third child.
Miss Winters said she was a "role model" for Marilyn Monroe. When, as young actresses, they shared a Hollywood apartment, she taught Monroe the sexy, lips-apart look for which Monroe became famous, Miss Winters said.
She was born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis. Although most sources give her birth date as Aug. 18, 1922, she told Variety's Army Archerd in 2004 that she had lied to studio head Harry Cohn when she signed with Columbia Pictures and was born two years earlier.
Her stage name came from the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and from her mother, Rose Winter, an amateur soprano who had once won a Municipal Opera contest in St. Louis.
Her father, like many immigrants in the early 20th century, came to the United States in steerage. Her mother, a first-generation American, was born in St. Louis. The Schrifts soon moved to Brooklyn, where Miss Winters grew up.
When her father went to prison for arson (he was exonerated later), 9-year-old Shirley retreated into a fantasy world that, Miss Winters wrote, "has been a powerful tool in my acting" but "used to play hell with my real life."
As a teenager, wearing high heels borrowed from her older sister, and with six powder puffs stuffed into her bra, she auditioned during a nationwide search for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind."
Taking Cukor's advice
Director George Cukor was kind. Go to acting school, he told her, and become known on the New York stage. She took his advice. Less than a decade later, Cukor cast her as the sexy waitress who serves more than dinner in "A Double Life."
As a Columbia Pictures contract player earning $100 a week, Miss Winters made her 1943 film debut with one line in "What a Woman!" She took acting lessons at the studio, joined the Actor's Lab to study acting at night and eventually became a teacher at the Actors Studio.
During the 1960s, Miss Winters found her métier as a character actress. In addition to her Oscar-winning roles, she played the mother of a murderer in "The Young Savages" (1961); a middle-age woman who throws away a happy marriage for a handsome young man in "The Chapman Report" (1962); and Michael Caine's voracious bedmate in "Alfie" (1966).
Winters' fourth and last Oscar nomination came in 1972, for her supporting role in "The Poseidon Adventure."
She played a former swimming champion who sacrifices her life to help save fellow passengers on a doomed ship. By then, she had put on a good deal of weight, and following a scene in which her character must swim frantically, she charmed audiences with the line: "In the water I'm a very skinny lady."
Acknowledging the film's rich potential for parody, she appeared on "The Flip Wilson Show" in a skit set in a fast-flooding laundromat. She led the cast in a daring escape through a washing-machine hatch.
An early marriage during World War II to Army Air Force Capt. Paul Mayer lasted until the war ended. Miss Winters married Italian actor Vittorio Gassman in 1952. The couple divorced in 1954 after the birth of her daughter and only child, Vittoria Gassman, now a physician in Connecticut. In 1957, Miss Winters married Anthony Franciosa, her co-star on Broadway in "A Hatful of Rain." That marriage ended in 1960.
Miss Winters is survived by her companion of 19 years, Jerry DeFord; her daughter; and two grandchildren.
Well this is me right now. Juggling Reuben, uni, friends, and mum. It is a hard task. Some days I feel like walking away... well no.. actually I feel like running... bolting away!!!!
Prac - I asked if I could do a uni on life cycles for my 3 weeks. They thought it was a great idea. I am working from the module on qsa level 3. One of the teachers (team teachering) took us aside last thursday and spent most of the day with us going thru planning, teaching, ideas etc. It was what we really needed. Before that I was beginning to get worried about it all. I feel alot more on fire now. In weeks 2 and 3 of prac we can choose anything we want for our second lesson. Im thinking of doing a few PE games... some grammar (verbs etc) a coupld of maths using the games we have just made. Oh yeah... I got full marks for my games 20 / 20. Yay!!! God knows how I will go with my maths questions!!! I know my last question was a bit dodgy!!!
I just found this photo in my files... and thought I would share it with you. He is a cutie hey. This wasnt long after we got him from the pound on the gold coast. 
I love the colours in this photo. It is helping stay calm. There is so much to do for uni, for Reuben, for life.
Another fabulous night with friends. Doris, Allison, Gail, Barb and I got together at Gails house for a bbq. I won a chicken in a raffle the week prior. I asked the girls if we could have a bbq at Gails. Gail is caring for the a young girl this weekend so we couldnt have it at Doris's house. Both Doris and Gail have webber bbqs. It was a fabulous dinner mixed with laughter and girl talk about men and their hang ups. We played trivial pursuit. Doris and I won, mostly due to Doris's knowledge!!! However, I did know the answer - Racey: the singing group in the 70s (come on baby lay your love on me). Dont ask me how I remembered that group. Having said that, we both couldnt remember Burt Reynolds name for the question about Smokey and the Bandit. We both could see his face... but memory chips in our brains just weren't working at all.
Flooding for Lismore and surrounding areas! It has rained here for about 3 days. Its not enough to reach our dams here in Brisbane or the Gold Coast but its causing trouble in Northern NSW. Lismore always floods. Im so glad Im not living there or in Grafton either for that matter. I remember it rained for 3 weeks and the back waters of South Grafton reached the top step of the flat I was living in. Krystyl was only 18months. We had to stay in Mum's little bed sitter for a few nights until the water resided. Talk about smell! Once you smell flood water, you never forget it. YUCK!!! 
down and only 12 to go!!! Well the first week of uni is over. Im feeling very good about it too. 2nd year has started with a bang. We have had to make a maths game alread and get into a study reading group and report back to our group. I have had my first week (of 3) of PE. We then go one and have visual arts and then drama (3 weeks each).
Here I am up early at 5am. I should be getting ready for walking but today I start at 8am at uni so have to leave here at 7.30am, drop reuben off at school and go over to the uni. The maths lecture starts at 8am and goes til 10am, then I have a maths tutorial at 12 - 1 pm. At 2.45pm I have to pick Reuben up from school, bring him home, Mum will be here and cook dinner for us. I have to go back to uni for another lecture from 4 - 6pm. Oh joy!!! Tuesdays are my big day!!! Im just glad I dont have something on at 6 - 8 like others have. Yuk!!!
MY 2nd Year of Bachelor of Education at Logan. Wow! I still have to pinch myself some days that I am really doing this.
Hug of Friendship
Today went to these markets near Noosa with Doris and Allison. Wow is all I can say. I saw so many things that I could have bought if I had endless cash!!! Doris twisted my arm to buy a bracelet. Its sterling silver and has a twist in the middle of it. Allison bought her lazy susan for her table too. It is beautiful.
Sadly, I accidently discarded my post about my weight loss. Here I go again...
My son with his rat, Whiskers. Grandma bought it for him for Christmas 2003. He loves his rat. We got Whiskers a friend but Whiskers is still his favourite Rat. Whiskers will stay on his shoulder forever. I had to draw the line when I saw him letting the rat eat out of his mouth!!!!! EWWWW!
I am shocked!!!! Sophie Heathcoate has died. I had no idea that she died. Its so sad. She has left 2 children and husband behind. She was only 33 and had cancer but died of a brain aneurism. 
Frogs are just so peaceful. They are what we humans would take a lesson from. They keep to themselves, they show a warning when they are dangerous. They only eat what they need and they blend into the environment instead of destroying it. Sometimes I wish I could devour the things that annoy me... which makes me wonder if mozzies and flies ever annoy a frog? Do flies (insects) know that frogs are their enemy? Maybe one day we might find out.
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