Shelley Winters, an actress with two Oscars, wife of Vitorio Gassman, and character actress on and off the screen, is one of the most spectacular Hollywood blondes from the golden age of American cinema.
Shelly, who was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1920 - and with the name Shirley - was the daughter of Rose Winter, soprano of the St. Louis Municipal Opera Theater, and Jonas Schrift, tailor; both Austrian Jews (as well as cousins.) When Shelly was nine years old they moved to New York and there the young Shirley began her working life as a mannequin (in the 1930s there were no top models and also, although huge on the inside, Shelley measured 1.62 cm.) So big that at the age of 16, he went to live in Los Angeles, although he later returned to New York to study at the New School of Dramatic Art.
At nineteen, Shelley -who was no longer Shirley- made her Broadway debut in the play "The Night Before Christmas"; At twenty-one, she began her film career at Columbia Studios: a small role in the film "What a Woman!" (1943). Then the blonde little lioness from Missouri returned to Los Angeles (where she via her sister Blanche, married George Boroff, director of The Circle Theater in Los Angeles.)
And there she met another blonde who was willing to make her way in the Hollywood movie jungle: Norma Jean, better known as Marilyn Monroe. And they shared an apartment and experiences: it is said that it was Shelley who taught Marilyn to act with her head on one side and her mouth ajar.
Many years later, Mrs. Monroe already disappeared, Shelley told things on television about that time in white, black, and blond. Shelley was, for the press, the bad girl of Hollywood, nicknamed the blonde bombshell; for her roommate, Marilyn, it was her confidante: the frustrating desperation of being typecast as an S- symbol… which for Shelley was never a problem, in fact, she was delighted and is credited with the legend of having slept with all of Hollywood. Today it can be an inconsequential detail; in the 50s it was a shock. And the pink press dedicated to the most yellow gossip had a gold mine in it.
In her Hollywood debut in 1943 - the same year she married Captain Mack Paul Mayer, who wants her to be a traditional housewife, not a Hollywood vamp. Her Hollywood debut is accompanying another Jewish actress, but of Sephardic origin, Rita Hayworth. Later, she will be directed by George Cukor. She shoots Victor Mature, Allan Ladd, or James Stewart, with whom she gets along fatally but with whom she shoots Winchester 73, by Anthony Mann. She is famous, yes, but pigeonholed in the role of a flashy and vulgar working-class girl, destined for a tragic end. But that's why she got the role of Alice Trip in “A Place in the Sun”, with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. She earns him his first Oscar nomination.
The following year, she married Vitorio Gassman - whose mother was Jewish. She will remain married to him for a few years and with whom she will have a daughter. They take a plane to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Gassman divorces his wife Nora, they take another plane to Tijuana and two hours later he marries Shelley. She said many times that he married her to climb in Hollywood, not for love.
By 1955, tracing her career with "A hatful of rain", she meets the actor Anthony Franciosa, who will be, in 1957, her third husband. They divorced in 1960 when Shelley discovered adulterous love affairs with Lauren Bacall…. Lauren called Shelley once Tony was late for an appointment, to complain about her. Shelley told him: are you really calling me to complain because my husband is late for an appointment with you? To which she replied: if your husband doesn't respect your marriage, why would I? When many years later, in 2006, Shelley dies of a heart attack, Franciosa, upon learning about Shelley, suffers the same illness and will die five days later.
In 1955, playing Blanche in "A Streetcar Named Desire", she meets Marlon Brando, one of her numerous antagonists and lovers, including Errol Flynn and Burt Lancaster. However, her success came after her, with "The Diary of Anne Frank", which finally allows her to access the Oscar for best supporting actress. She donated the Oscar to the Anne Frank Foundation. It was the beginning of her long list of roles as a Jewish mother."Alfie" (1966) with Michael Caine, "Harper" with Paul Newman, and the cult film "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972), with which she won her second Oscar. And at the same time, she continues to act on Broadway, where she is very successful as the mother of the Marx brothers in "Minnie's boys" (1970). She also became friends with rock singer Janis Joplin.
Then she began to decline, she only appeared on TV shows because she spontaneously recounted gossip from those times, and cameos in some TV series, until one day she was fired from a set for showing up to work completely drunk.
A few hours before passing away, she married her driver on her deathbed, with whom she had a 19-year relationship, the longest and most stable of her entire busy sentimental life, where in addition to four husbands she has -she tells it in her own autobiography- an endless list of lovers that include politicians like Kennedy (and his father) or Robert Mitchum, William Holden (he only went to bed as a ritual on Christmas night) and a long, etc.
Since 2004 she has been in a wheelchair and in 2006 she suffered a heart attack. She is interred at Culver City's Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in California.
