Shelley Winters
By:
August 18, 2011
When Harry Cohn dropped SHELLEY WINTERS (1920-2006) from her first studio contract at Columbia Pictures, he gave her some words of advice: go home. “If you stay out here, you’ll have a few years as a leading character actress, and then you’ll end up on a hill with your Oscars.” She stayed. She taught her roommate Marilyn Monroe how to smile with her lips fetchingly parted, and they followed the same career path for a while: bombshells with comedy chops, students of the Method. But on screen, at least, Winters took her vulnerability to a darker, braver, less attractive place. With her needling voice and overripe gaze, she particularly excelled at rapacious clingers, albatrosses, and bad mothers. A Place in the Sun, Night of the Hunter, A Patch of Blue, Lolita, and above all, the astonishing Bloody Mama were just a few of the highlights. Harry Cohn didn’t see it coming: the golden age of the character actor, an era in which Shelley Winters was a marquee name.
The year is 1997. Celine Dion is queen of the airwaves, and all the world is abuzz about Titanic. A cranky dissenter goes to her neighborhood video store and rents The Poseidon Adventure. To hell with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Back in 1972, they didn’t need faces; they had voices.
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Thanks, Mimi! I love Shelley, otherwise known as Shirley, and have read both volumes of her autobiography.
It’s hard to top her scrunchy-faced despair in Lolita. She should have paid more attention to that chess game she played with Humbert. “Are you trying to take my queen?” “That is my intention, yes.”
I also have much heart for ‘Our Shel’ as we call her in London. Thanks for the great piece. I saw Bloody Mama at the cinema last year , unrestored crackly old 32”. Fab. One thing i also like is that she parodied the role before playing it straight in Batman (TV 1966) as Ma Barker. That’d be a nice double-feature
Nice one Greg — another example of the parody preceding the serious version.
Thanks, guys. It’s great to see how much love Ms. Winters is getting today. Ingrid: I only read vol. 1 of her autobio… so far!
I would appreciate it if you could use the proper collective noun for these peculiar moments of cultural anti-causality, which is ‘Pregravisaturia’, even though I just made that up. But once I push the ‘Submit’ button it will become Real.
Just watched “Winchester ’73” for the first time (or at least for the first time since seeing it on TV as a kid) and Shelley Winters is heartbreakingly cool and pathetic and lovely in that one.