Shirley Schrift
17 min read
Reading time
3,346
Words
Published
195
Film credits
2
Books
5
Awards
Shelley Winters won two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress, for The Diary of Anne Frank 1959 and A Patch of Blue 1965. She earned a Primetime Emmy Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her film career spanned over 60 years, with notable roles in A Place in the Sun 1951 and The Poseidon Adventure 1972.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Shelley Winters — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Shelley Winters by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Shelley Winters — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
By her teens, Shirley Schrift — later Shelley Winters — had already worked as a Woolworth’s clerk and performed in vaudeville to pay for acting classes. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri on August 18, 1920, the daughter of Jonas Schrift, an Austrian Jewish immigrant who moved the family to Brooklyn for work as a tailor’s cutter. She attended Thomas Jefferson High School in New York City.
Winters broke through in 1947 with the Broadway production of Oklahoma! and the film A Double Life. Her performance in A Place in the Sun 1951 earned her the first of four Academy Award nominations. She won her first Oscar for The Diary of Anne Frank 1959 and her second for A Patch of Blue 1965. She earned another nomination for The Poseidon Adventure 1972 and won a Primetime Emmy Award on television.
Winters married four times: to Capt. Mack Paul Mayer 1942-1948, Vittorio Gassman 1952-1954, with whom she had a daughter, Vittoria, born in 1953, Anthony Franciosa 1957-1960, and Gerry DeFord married on her deathbed in 2006. Her marriage to Franciosa ended after his affair with Lauren Bacall. She had high-profile affairs with stars including Errol Flynn and Marlon Brando.
Winters is one of only two actresses to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress twice, alongside Dianne Wiest. She donated her Oscar for The Diary of Anne Frank to the Anne Frank Museum in 1975. In November 2020, Turner Classic Movies honored her as Star of the Month. Her career of over six decades includes powerful, often tragic roles.
The complete filmography of Shelley Winters — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by Shelley Winters — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
Shelley Winters's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
A wall of memorable lines from Shelley Winters — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
In Hollywood, All the Marriages Are Happy. It’s Trying to Live Together Afterwards That Causes All the Problems.
I Did a Picture in England One Winter and It Was so Cold I Almost Got Married.
The Best Way to Find Out About a Man Is to Have Lunch with His Ex-wife
I Had to Gain 40 Pounds for This Movie.
I Have Bursts of Being a Lady, but It Doesn’t Last Long.
Anna Magnani Could Act Anybody off the Stage or Screen.
My Face Was Always so Made Up, It Looked as Though It Had the Decorators In.
It’s Sad That People Are so Open About Their Sexuality. Sex Is Much More Fun When You Have to Sneak Around and Cover It Up.
I Think On-stage Nudity Is Disgusting, Shameful and Damaging to All Things American. but If I Were 22 with a Great Body, It Would Be Artistic, Tasteful, Patriotic and a Progressive Religious Experience.
After Three Times, I Realize Marriage Is Not for Me. Not for Me. I Love to Get Married, You Know, but I Don’t Like to Be Married. You Go Away on a Honeymoon, You Have a Great Time, You Come Home, They Want to Come in the House!
Every Now and Then, When You’re Onstage, You Hear the Best Sound a Player Can Hear. It’s a Sound You Can’t Get in Movies or in Television. It Is the Sound of a Wonderful, Deep Silence That Means You’ve Hit Them Where They Live.
Little-known facts about Shelley Winters — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
During a September 26, 1975 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Winters grew tired of actor Oliver Reed’s chauvinistic attitude toward women. After a heated conversation, she suddenly left the set. Later, she returned holding a glass and dumped its contents over his head, leaving Carson stunned. The beverage was later claimed to be whiskey.
She donated her Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Diary of Anne Frank to the Anne Frank Museum in 1975.
Was roommates with Marilyn Monroe when they were both starting out in Hollywood. During this time, Winters taught Monroe how to act pretty by tilting her head back and keeping both her eyes lowered and her mouth partly opened.
Her marriage to Anthony Franciosa ended when he had an affair with Lauren Bacall. During their affair, Bacall once called Winters and complained, I’ve been waiting for Tony for an hour. Where the hell is he? Winters said, You’re complaining to me because my husband is late for a date with you? to which Bacall replied, If your husband doesn’t respect your marriage, why should I? Coincidentally, Winters and Franciosa both died in 2005, five days apart from each other, with Winters dying first and Franciosa second.
Winters considered A Place in the Sun to be her best film out of all the films she starred in.
Gave birth to her only child at age 32, a daughter, Vittoria Gassman, on February 14, 1953. The girl’s father was her second husband, Vittorio Gassman.
Godmother of actresses Laura Dern and Sally Kirkland. Kirkland, also an ordained minister, conducted the wedding ceremony between Winters and her fourth husband, Gerry DeFord, 10 hours before Winters’ death on January 14, 2006.
Winters’ early acting training was under actor Charles Laughton’s tutelage.
Showed up drunk on her first day of shooting in The Linguini Incident 1991 and then was fired by its director, Richard Shepard.
Turned down the role of prostitute Alma Burke in From Here to Eternity 1953 as she had just given birth to her daughter. Donna Reed, who would win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance, was cast instead.
For the majority of her life she had only one ovary, having undergone an oophorectomy when she was just 8 years old.
Winters considered Sir Ralph Richardson to be the greatest actor of all time, with Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando both second to him.
In her most important films such as A Place in the Sun 1951, The Night of the Hunter 1955, Lolita 1962, A Double Life 1947, The Diary of Anne Frank 1959 and many others, her character in every one of them either dies, is killed, or is murdered.
Grew up at 90-38 170th Street in Jamaica, Queens, New York.
Made her Broadway debut as Ado Annie in Oklahoma! – five years into its run.
Suffered a non-fatal heart attack on October 14, 2005 and then died three months later to the day on January 14, 2006 of heart failure. Interred at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. She died five days before her third ex-husband, Anthony Franciosa, did.
As of 2023, she is one of 10 actresses to win an Academy Award for portraying a prostitute. The other nine are in chronological order Helen Hayes The Sin of Madelon Claudet, Donna Reed From Here to Eternity, Susan Hayward I Want to Live!, Elizabeth Taylor BUtterfield 8, Shirley Jones Elmer Gantry, Jane Fonda Klute, Mira Sorvino Mighty Aphrodite, Kim Basinger L.A. Confidential and Charlize Theron Monster.
She was a huge fan of the science fiction TV series Babylon 5 1993.
She had a part in Always 1985 and even filmed a few scenes, but at one point she had a temper tantrum and abruptly left the set. Her agent pleaded with her to go back, but she refused. She was replaced and the scenes were re-shot. She does not appear in the finished film.
She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1752 Vine Street in Hollywood, California on February 8, 1960.
As of 2023, she is one of only two actresses along with Dianne Wiest to have won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress twice: Winters won for The Diary of Anne Frank 1959 and A Patch of Blue 1965.
Winters got her first screen test after Columbia Pictures studio boss Harry Cohn saw her on Broadway in Max Reinhardt’s Rosalind in 1942. He met her backstage and asked her to audition the next day during a blizzard. Although she was only 16, she told Cohn she was 21 and he personally directed her test. Cohn then left for Hollywood, and three weeks later she received two free train tickets with an order to report to Columbia for a role in Cover Girl 1944. Unfortunately, she arrived too late.
Her father owned a haberdashery at 171-03 Jamaica Avenue in Jamaica, Queens, New York. One month after the stock market crash of 1929, he took out $10,000 insurance on his business and then burned it down for the insurance money. He was arrested, tried, convicted and sent to prison at Sing Sing in 1931.
Went through with two abortions as a teenager, the first one occurring when she was just 15 years old.
She has appeared in four films selected for the National Film Registry: Red River 1948, Winchester ’73 1950, A Place in the Sun 1951 and The Night of the Hunter 1955.
Has the distinction of being the highest ranked female performer on The Oracle of Bacon’s list of the top 1,000 performers based upon their center of the film universe average number. Winters’ average link number was 2.696842, placing 17th on the list, well above Kevin Bacon himself.
She was a lifelong progressive Democrat who was active in the campaigns of Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. She attended every Democratic National Convention until her death.
Appeared with Telly Savalas in five films: The Young Savages 1961, The Greatest Story Ever Told 1965, Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell 1968, The Scalphunters 1968 and Alice in Wonderland 1985.
Was the 50th actress to win an Academy Award; she won Best Supporting Actress for The Diary of Anne Frank at the 32nd Annual Academy Awards on April 4, 1960.
In November 2020, she was honored as Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month.
Winters played Minnie, the Marx Brothers’ indomitable mother, in the Broadway musical Minnie’s Boys, which ran at the Imperial Theatre from March 26 to May 30, 1970.
Attended and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in New York City.
Was originally considered for the female lead in Forbidden 1953, which went to Joanne Dru instead.
Her father was Jonas Schrift, her mother was Rose Schrift, and her sister was Blanche Schrift.
In The Poseidon Adventure 1972, she plays a former award-winning swimmer, and in A Place in the Sun 1951, she plays someone who cannot swim at all.
One famous anecdote recalls a young casting director who asked her to audition. Feeling it was beneath her, she reached into her bag, picked up her two Academy Awards, showed them to him and said, Some people think I can act, and walked away.
In Italy, most of her films were dubbed by either Lydia Simoneschi, Dhia Cristiani or Rosetta Calavetta.
Born at 12:05 AM CDT.
Despite winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for A Patch of Blue 1965, Winters did not like the part, as she felt uncomfortable playing a racist character. She was a strong supporter of the Civil Rights movement.
She appeared in three films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: A Place in the Sun 1951, The Diary of Anne Frank 1959 and Alfie 1966.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Shelley Winters.
Celebrities similar to Shelley Winters — same craft, ranked by reach.
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