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Shelley Winters
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Shelley Winters (August 18 1920 – January 14 2006) was a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress. Life and career Winters was born Shirley Schrift in East St. Louis, Illinois, the daughter of Jewish parents - Jonas Schrift and Rose Winter. Her family moved to Brooklyn, New York when she was 3 years old. She studied in the Hollywood Studio Club, sharing the same bedroom with another beginner: Marilyn Monroe. As the New York Times obituary noted, "A major movie presence for more than five decades, Shelley Winters turned herself into a widely respected actress who won two Oscars."
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American actress Shelley Winters was the daughter of a tailor's cutter; her mother was a former opera singer. Winters evinced her mom's influence at age four, when she made an impromptu singing appearance at a St. Louis amateur night. When her father moved to Long Island to be closer to the New York garment district, Winters took acting lessons at the New School for Social Research and the Actors Studio. Short stints as a model and a chorus girl led to her Broadway debut in the S.J. Perelman comedy The Night Before Christmas in 1940. Winters signed a Columbia Pictures contract in 1943, mostly playing bits except when loaned to United Artists for an important role in Knickerbocker Holiday (1944). Realizing she was getting nowhere, she took additional acting instructions and performed in nightclubs.
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Shelley Winters had a long, incredible movie career, won two Supporting Actress Oscars, and enjoyed a tumultuous personal life. Through it all, she had a great sense of humor, and was not beyond self-deprecation when the roles changed, along with some extra pounds, from lithe ingénues to plump matrons. Much to her credit, she actually embraced the unflattering parts. But in the dynamics of Hollywood storytelling, especially in its most glamorous era, Winters’ characters often took on the quality of the sacrificial lamb. And so to BAM’s series:
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Two-time Oscar winner Shelley Winters, who died yesterday at 85, had her first important film role in the 1944 Nelson Eddy musical, “Knickerbocker Holiday”. But the most memorable part of that film, according to Winters, was when superstar Eddy--angry at his former co-star and lover, Jeanette MacDonald, and in a drunken rage--attempted to rape Winters in her dressing room.
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Born Shirley Schrift on August 18, 1920, in East St. Louis, Illinois, glamorous Shelley Winters grew up in New York and worked as a model. After taking acting lessions, she landed a studio contract with Columbia in the early 1940s, but the studio didn't give her the build-up she deserved. After leaving Columbia and continuing to work on her craft, the talented Winters began landing better roles in such films as A Double Life (1947; with Ronald Colman) and The Great Gatsby (1949; with Alan Ladd). In the late 1940s, she signed a long-term contract with Universal-International, where she starred in such westerns as Winchester '73 (1950; with James Stewart) and Frenchie (1951; with Joel McCrea). Her best role during this period came when Universal loaned her out to Paramount for A Place in the Sun (1951; with Montgomery Clift); her performance as Alice Tripp netted her an Oscar nomination for best actress. Winters has won two best supporting Oscars for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and A Patch of Blue (1965); she was ... nominated for best supporting actress for her role in The Poseidon Adventure (1972).
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Oscar-winning actress Shelley Winters died today at the age of 85 of heart failure, after being hospitalized for a heart attack in October. Winters won Oscars in 1959 for The Diary of Anne Frank, and in 1965 for A Patch of Blue, in which she played a mother who tries to end her blind daughter's friendship with a black man, played by Sidney Poitier. During Winters' long career, she evolved from a buxom sexpot to a serious dramatic actress. She was a devotee of The Actors Studio, and constantly challenged herself to find new ways to perform and reinvent herself. She continued working into her 70s, playing Roseanne's grandmother in a recurring role on the television show Roseanne in the 1990s.
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