Shelley Winters (born Shirley Schrift; August 18, 1920 – January 14, 2006) was an American film actress known for her wit, shapely figure and “chutzpah. He career spanned seven decades. Winters was born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Rose , a singer with St. Louis Municipal Opera Theatre , and Jonas Schrift, a designer of men’s clothing. Her parents were Jewish.
Winters made her Broadway debut in The Night Before Christmas (1941) which had a short run. She had a small part in Rosalinda, an adaptation of Die Fledermaus (1942–44) which ran for 611 performances. Winters first received acclaim when she joined the cast of Oklahoma! Winters first achieved stardom with her breakout performance as the victim of insane actor Ronald Colman in George Cukor’s A Double Life (1947). George Cukor guided and built her career as an actress. A Place in the Sun, directed by George Stevens is one of her highly acclaimed successful movie. She began as sex bombshell in Hollywood with universal pictures, her performance in A Place in the Sun was a departure from the sexpot image that her studio, Universal Pictures, was grooming her for at the time, brought Winters her first acclaim, earning her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Full bio see at Wiki
She won Academy Awards for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and A Patch of Blue (1965), and received nominations for A Place in the Sun (1951) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972). She also appeared in A Double Life (1947), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Lolita (1962), Alfie (1966), Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), and Pete’s Dragon (1977). In addition to film, Winters appeared in television, including a tenure on the sitcom Roseanne, and wrote three autobiographical books.
Personal life –
Winters was married four times. Her husbands were:
1-Captain Mack Paul Mayer, whom she married on December 29, 1943, in Brooklyn. Winters and Mayer were divorced in October 1948. Mayer was unable to deal with Shelley’s “Hollywood lifestyle” and wanted a “traditional homemaker” for a wife. Winters wore his wedding ring up until her death, and kept their relationship very private.
2-Vittorio Gassman, whom she married on April 28, 1952, in Juárez, Mexico; they divorced on June 2, 1954. They had one child: Vittoria, born February 14, 1953. She was Winters’ only child.
3-Anthony Franciosa, whom she married on May 4, 1957; they divorced on November 18, 1960.
4-Gerry DeFord, whom she married on January 13, 2006.
Hours before her death, Winters married long-time companion Gerry DeFord, with whom she had lived for 19 years.
Death-
Winters died at the age of 85 on January 14, 2006, of heart failure at the Rehabilitation Center of Beverly Hills; she had suffered a heart attack on October 14, 2005.
Birth Chart of Shelley Winters-
