Shelley Winters

Wasn't she?

I know not the point of your thread, but this appearance on Carson was so funny. The main part of the interview is Annie Potts, but Shelley takes part around 3:45 and it's hilarious.

I’d like to see Streep pull this off.

Hepburn? I don’t think this was in her wheelhouse.

Now Bette Davis I can see here.

Shelley was not a leading lady, OP, you silly goose.

She was a character actress who grabbed a few lead roles early but as the Winters' persona came forward she was left with the many successes and even more enjoyable flops from about 1958 on.

You don't have to do it for her.

One of the reasons she didn't worry about getting fat in the 60s and 70s was that it helped her with getting character actress parts.

You should have smelled how lovely she smelled when it got hot.

She was a blowsy, whiney nag, a liar and fantasist who insisted she was the best, hardest working actor around as well as the hottest fuck.

She was a tiresome, indefatigable self-promoter. And both her memoirs are full of self-aggrandizing lies. If sue was your mother-in-law you would have wanted to kill her. With a strong director she could be good, with a weak one she was an irritating ham. There’s a reason her reputation hasn’t survived her death. She was the only one promoting her greatness.

It seems that she never turned down a role. She has a long list of credits. The Poseidon Adventure, Next Stop Greenwich Village, Alfie, Lolita, The Diary of Anne Frank and A Place in the Sun are probably her best films. She was a character actress not a leading lady. Three of her four Oscar nominations were for supporting roles and though she was nominated for Best Actress in A Place in the Sun her role feels like a supporting role. As I recall she drowns about halfway through the film.

I’m STILL mad she lost her Poseidon Oscar. She’s absolute perfection.

My friend told me that when he was a kid he cried when she drowned on the Poseidon Adventure.

She was never what you might call "subtle" or "nuanced." But she was a good old broad, as they used to be called.

Her most unlikely romantic partner (on and, supposedly, off screen) was Farley Granger.

[quote]My friend told me that when he was a kid he cried when she drowned on the Poseidon Adventure.

She didn't drown, r13.

Didn't realize she had TWO Oscars.

There was always something so hammy about her - on and off stage. She talked about her being a blonde bombshell - and yes there are pics of her blonde, but bombshell never quite fit. She was attractive when she was young, but she really wasn't beautiful.

Felt like she needed all attention on her at all times - just my impression.

She is sensational in The Diary of Anne Frank , an utterly nuanced (and heart-breaking) performance like no other.

Receiving her Oscar for A Patch of Blue

She’s annoying and always plays the same character with the whiny voice.

Shelley's 4th and last Oscar nomination was for The Poseidon Adventure. Robert Duvall Inexplicably starts laughing when he reads Shelley's name

I could see her playing Elizabeth Taylor's part in WAOVW.

She gave some great performances but she seemed like a pain in the ass.

She did it in Cincinnati, r21.

What would I do without DL? Great minds think alike!

Thanks, R23.

She was my best friend and mentor. I owe it all to her.

Because she was a white trash hog.

[quote]My friend told me that when he was a kid he cried when she drowned on the Poseidon Adventure.

Like any red blooded heterosexual.

Here she is being told to shut the fuck up on Carson.

R22 Yes, she was! So many of her costars have commented about the trouble she could be. She must have been a nightmare on 'The Poseidon Adventure' because some of them had not so nice things to say about her. Granted, working conditions were miserable for cast and crew on that film because they were wet and dirty for most of it, and for a woman of girth, it must have exacerbated the discomfort and difficulties. Did you know she put 35 pounds specifically for TPA? She said she never managed to lose that weight. I think Belle Rosen was one of her finest performances.

Her costar Jack Albertson, who played her husband Manny Rosen on TPA, was referring to her when he said, "The happiest moment making the movie for me was when she died." Yet, they managed to portray with sincerity a loving, devoted couple onscreen.

R13 Belle Rosen died of a heart attack after rescuing a drowning Reverend Scott (Gene Hackman). See video clip below.

R20 Robert Duvall made an ass of himself and ruined an important moment for Shelley, even if she wasn't the one to get the Oscar.

Stella Stevens didn't have any trouble working with Shelley on 'The Poseidon Adventure' because she made sure she wouldn't have any scenes working directly with her, one on one, before she signed on. Stella had a bad experience working with Shelley on a previous film, 'The Mad Room' .

From an online film forum:

[Quote] Stella Stevens said in a 1994 interview that she hated working with Shelley Winters in the 1969 film THE MAD ROOM so much, she swore she'd never work with her again. Winters had been under a lot of stress because Robert Kennedy was assassinated during the filming of it and she had a very bad reaction to it. She began soothing her nerves with white wine and was drunk most the time. A year later Stevens was cast in this role and soon found out Winters had been cast too. She told the producers she wasn't going to do the film. They told her she wouldn't have to be in any scenes with Winters one-on-one, so she agreed to do it and was glad she did. Winters wasn't drinking anymore, and they got along fine.

[Quote] Stevens said in a 2006 interview that when she first read the script, she could tell by the writing that whichever actress played the "fat lady" (“Belle”) in the movie would end up getting an Oscar nomination. And she was right. The role went to Shelley Winters, and she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Photo below is from the1969 camp thriller 'The Mad Room'

I saw her in Gamma Rays. A fine but unsurprising performance.

The Mad Room is one fucked up movie. I loved it. And it looks like Lauri LIESEL Peters played Honey opposite Shirl in WAOVW.

Didn't she dump a drink on Oliver Reed? I can't remember if he had it coming or not.

R11 It has to be at least 2/3 of the way through.

R33 You decide.

As if ANYBODY even remembers Stella Stevens was in The Poseidon Adventure.

r36 - No, you aren't.

She couldn’t hold a candle

Winters made some real drek during the 70s and many people like me remember her for playing hagsploitation roles, Roger Corman films, etc. She eventually did a good job on Roseanne, but it was apparent that a little Shelly went a long way.

r33 He certainly did.

I know this has been posted before, but I find it interesting. This guy that we've discussed - Larry Randolph - recounting his work with Shelley. He was NOT a fan.

She was a fattie.

Swim, Shelley, Swim!

R41 Jesus. He is both long winded and scattered.

Shelley did some okay stuff in the 70s. Poseidon (Oscar nom), Blume in Love, and Next Stop Greenwich Village (both directed by Paul Mazursky)...she was brilliant in the latter. A Roman Polanski movie, The Tenant. King of the Gypsies.

Too fat

What is the context for that guy's story about Shelley? Did he work on a TV series with her? And what was his job? I listened to about 8 minutes and then gave up.

I suspect Larry Randolph's issues with Shelley are a textbook case of "you spot it, you got it." She was in at least three films where her character was murdered by the good looking male lead: A Place in the Sun, The Night of the Hunter, and Lolita. Loved her as Nana Mary on Roseanne. I'm sure she was a piece of work in real life, but I didn't know her so don't care. She was a very gifted actress.

I do remember her telling Johnny Carson a story about her attending a reunion at the Actors Studio. She returned knowing that she would be one of the big success stories of the graduates and was looking forward to being there. When she arrived, she went to the check-in desk and spoke to one of the volunteers, a bald-headed older man.

"Hi, I'm Shelley Winters!"

"Shelley, darling, so nice to see you! I'm glad you could make it."

"Thank you. Do I need to wear that name tag? What do I do now?"

"Shelley, don't you recognize me? It's Tony,"

"Ah, err, why yes, Tony?, Ah, yes, TONY. Nice to see you again, ah, Tony. When did we last talk?"

"Shelley, dear Shelley. Look. It's me. Me. Tony. Anthony. Anthony Franciosa. Anthony Franciosa, YOUR SECOND HUSBAND!!!"

The Carson audience laughed for about a minute, with Shelley protesting, "He wasn't bald when I was married to him!"

I liked her book! I figured it was embellished but it was fun.

Back in the day when David Letterman's show had their top 10 lists, one of the lists was, "Top 10 Least Popular Shows Playing on Broadway at the moment." One of them listed was: Shelley Winters wordlessly consumes and entire roast to the to strains of Cole Porter."

R2, brilliant

It was the first thing I though of when I saw this thread

Gary Coleman, Ricky Schroeder, and Rin Tin Tin

Three people Shelley Winters hasn't slept with

R49 That's a funny story, but Tony Franciosa never became bald.

I thought it happened in the Green Room at the Tonight Show. Don't remember the bald part either.

I thought it was Vittorio.

Ever see this gem? "Revenge!" One of those ABC TV Movie of the Week jobs, which would then be rerun on the afternoon movies forever! This was a family fave, watching Shelley go wild as a deranged woman who has Bradford Dillman locked in her San Fran mansion basement. And Stuart Whitman is a psychic who's trying to find him. Very watchable and Shelley works up a head of steam, whining, shrieking, and generally carrying on, as she matches wits with her two adversaries. It's on YouTube and here's my look at Shelley:

Shelley is, of course, included...

Shelley did bridge old and new Hollywood in her own way as OP notes. A lot of her later career though consisted of grindhouse and exploitation films which may have cheapened her "brand", so to speak. She was a terribly eccentric woman. I enjoy a lot of her crime/horror flicks she did later on ("Who Ever Slew Auntie Roo?" and "Bloody Mama" are great), but she also is a bonafide legend in my eyes for "The Night of the Hunter" and "A Place in the Sun", both of which I regard among the best films ever made—and she was great in them.

R54, maybe not bald but his hair was definitely receding.

Has anyone mentioned that movie she did where she was an addict and James Darrin played her son? Burl Ives and Ella Fitzgerald (also playing an addict) were in it, as well as Jean Seberg and Ricardo Montalban.

Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960)

Just looked it up.

R60 Receding? Maybe a little. But far from bald. He had more hair than most actors his age.

Sure, but Shelley being Shelley, she probably fudged the facts a bit for a good story.

Yeah but it wasn't like Tony was a complete unknown and she could make up something like that and no one would know.

Another story: when she was on Tonight, with Carson, and Paul Newman, Carson asked if they had ever made a movie together, and she said no. Newman had to remind her they had made a movie together--Harper (1966).

She could be a dingbat.

From Blume in Love—“I hope the plane crashes.” One line, hilarious and pathetic, showed what Shelley Winters at her best could do. Credit to Paul Mazursky, too, for the line and, possibly, picking the perfect take.

One fact I can never forget is that Shelley's parents were third cousins. I know in some cultures this is not uncommon, but it's truly one step away from inbreeding.

Mr. and Mrs. Franciosa on What's My Line @14:35

R23 Wow, “Formost Kosher Smoked Meats. Beef—All Beef!” got billing over Shirley, err Shelley and in much bigger and bolder font when she appeared in Cincinnati in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” I hope they at least had a deli platter ready for her in her dressing room after each show!

She was wonderful in A Patch Of Blue.

r62 Maybe that was a good toupée?

She basically WAS Nana Mary.

Once upon a time, Shelley was making the rounds on the talkshow circuit telling all that she was Oscar nominated for "A Double Life" (1947), forcing Robert Osborne to confront her on "Dinah!", and tell her she was wrong. I don't think Shelley was too concerned with facts.

[quote]One fact I can never forget is that Shelley's parents were third cousins. I know in some cultures this is not uncommon, but it's truly one step away from inbreeding.

What a fucking idiot. It's a long way from inbreeding. Two of sixteen forbears were married to each other. Her parents shared one set great-great grandparents. Do any of you even know any of your third cousins?

R28, I remember watching Carson as a kid and rarely did a previous guest interrupt the next guest that it come out the camera stayed on the new guest and Johnny after may be a wide shot when they came on, but this guy I don't even know who he is he had had enough of Shelly I think when Joanne guest hosted there was more interaction. This show is less rigid.

Oliver Reed is the guest. A sexy British actor back in the 70s.

R72 No, she was not nominated, but she easily could have been. She stands out in the kind of role she specialized in—but without the whine that crept in as soon as “A Place in the Sun.” Shelley Winters for “A Double Life,” Elizabeth Taylor for “A Place in the Sun” (and “Giant” too).

Talented but also a lot to deal with. And, like many actors, she started coasting as she got older.

I remember one time on the Tonight Show when she was hounding Johnny to produce a movie version of The Gingerbread Lady for her to star in...she wouldn't shut up about it.

Johnny loved having her on but you could tell he was getting annoyed with her.

She was trash!

[quote]r77 = she was hounding Johnny to produce a movie version of The Gingerbread Lady for her to star in

Marry the playwright, bitch.

Wasn't she a holy terror on the set of "The Love Boat"? They flew her somewhere on a 747 but she didn't like her seat so she sat on the floor bitching about it.

R80, Bernie Kopell talks about her on the Gilbert Gottfried podcast. She was a fucking nightmare! The stories are hilarious, though.

I think she was on one of those 2-hour episodes where they actually went on a cruise ship on location, IIRC. There was little escape.

I read one of her books and she claimed to have fucked Brando.

Bobby had her on speed-dial, consulting with her before every role.

She is VERY whiny in A Place in the Sun and Pauline Kael was right when she says killing her character was like euthanasia. She was better in Lolita. She's one of the very few women who gave a good performance in a Kubrick movie which is certainly a testament to her character since he obviously hated women.

Shit. One set of my great grandparents were first cousins. The fucking Irish ones.

My parents ARE first cousins. Irish, of course.

You don't really get into trouble with inbreeding unless you KEEP doing it. First cousins fucking isn't going to produce monster babies right off the bat.

Exactly, R87, I'm fine, just a little gay.

R80, it was the 2-part Italian Cruise episode, and Shelley bitched about everything, the script, the wardrobe, her hair & makeup, etc. Her co-star Ernest Borgnine had had enough and ripped into her. She finally behaved after that. Sometimes these spoiled Hollywood divas need a good dressing down to remind them they ain't doing Chekhov.

There's no biological reason for third cousins not to marry and have kids.

By the way, whoever posted that her character (Charlotte Haze) was murdered in the movie of Lolita--she wasn't.

Now Ernie and Shelley as George and Martha, in Virginia Woolf, that would have been somethin'! The Love Boat Dinner Theater!

I remember a sketch when she was a guest on the ABC comedy show from LA (and SNL ripoff), Fridays, where she played the agent to the impressionists. I just remember the fancy costumes, and that it wasn't funny.

Ernie Borgnine described shooting The Poseidon Adventure as "a wonderful time"; however... "Shelley Winters was a pain in the ass, but that was Shelley Winters."

Her final years were sad and lonely.

She never seems to have been a pain in the ass to Jordan.

It's sad how she told him that he didn't need to come visit her anymore, and then she died shortly thereafter. She knew her time was up.

Shelley being introduced on Fridays in a bit about Reagan’s impending inauguration. What a time capsule!

[Quote] By the way, whoever posted that her character (Charlotte Haze) was murdered in the movie of Lolita--she wasn't.

Nor was she murdered in a Place in the Sun

R91 and R99 - I guess people are confusing thus performances with the one she gave in The Night of the Hunter, in which her character was murdered and drowned.

Oliver Reed was one of the English Actors who stripped naked and wrestled in "Women in Love" in 1969. It was very homoerotic. The movie was an English period piece.

Doesn't Monty push her over the side of the rowboat? And refuse to save her? If that's not murder, I don't know what is.

No R102 she fell and she was no Mrs. Rosen

The conclusion of the film in which the hero and presumably the audience is supposed to be convinced that a man should pay with his life for a murder he didn't commit- but wanted to commit- is bizarre-Pauline Kael

Shelley's fine whine in the row boat...

[quote]Wasn't she a holy terror on the set of "The Love Boat"? They flew her somewhere on a 747 but she didn't like her seat so she sat on the floor bitching about it.

[quote]Bernie Kopell talks about her on the Gilbert Gottfried podcast. She was a fucking nightmare!

R80 & R81, I found a Kopell’s Television Academy interview where he talks about this. This is from the YouTube transcript:

[quote]We had Academy Award winners like you wouldn't believe we had Ernie Borgnine, “Marty,” we had Eva Marie Saint, “On the Waterfront,” we had Shirley Jones, “Elmer Gantry,” we had Ray Milland, “Lost Weekend”, and we had Shelly Winters. Shelly Winters.

[quote]We're going to the Mediterranean, and Eva Marie Saint and Shirley Jones are sitting in First Class. 747. Giggling like school girls. Oh we're going to have a great adventure in the Mediterranean, this is going to be great.

[quote]So, I was upstairs, they used to have this lounge upstairs, very opulent, and I hear some kind of a fuss down below. What is it? I come down the stairs. Shelly Winters is sitting in first class on the floor. What's what's the problem? She's unhappy with her seat in first class. It went on this way. Disruptive. Look at me, look at me, but very counterproductive.

[quote]So one day we're on the island of Capri. We have to come in, it gets to be very difficult for the crew and the cast to do something that's on on a location because at Capri, the dock was not large enough to accommodate our big ship.

[quote]So, we had to take all of our equipment and all of all of the actors and all the all the crew on tenders, these little little ships, little boats, and take all the all of the equipment, take it to the to the island and unload it, put it on trucks, and take it to the location, very difficult. So, Shelley Winters, she gets… and we have to be back on the ship at 4:00, and there are paying passengers, the ship has got to go.

[quote]And Shelly Winters doesn't like the way her hair is, and she doesn't like the lines, and she wants to change things.

[quote]Ernie Borgnine, who had experience with her on Poseidon, ripped into her with every Italian curse that no one in the world had ever heard of, and I think that's what she was aiming for. But that was the one fly in the ointment that we had, but Eva Marie Saint was a dream throughout the whole thing.

Then he goes on, talking about Eva Marie Saint.

What's the Matter With Helen? is my guilty pleasure

She did a HERE'S LUCY playing herself, kind of, as a character named Shelley Summers, an actress with a weight problem and Lucy is assigned to help her stick to her diet. That's about all I remember.

In the water she's a very skinny lady.

R105, Shelley and Ernie were in the Italian Cruise episodes, Season 6, Eps 1 & 2, while Shirley and Eva were in the Greek Cruise episodes, Season 6, Eps 18 & 19. Is Bernie misremembering or were these episodes shot back to back? If they were all flown in together and were allowed to stick around the Mediterranean for the duration of the long shoot, I would not be complaining.

The Here’s Lucy episode is fucking amazing.

Lucy has to babysit Shelley and make her stick to a diet. During an astonishingly long sequence, Lucy discovers that Shelley has hidden food all over the house - all set to this bizarre Theremin creepy music.

I LOVE this episode.

The thing is Shelley wasn't even that heavy, especially compared to today's standards. And yet she was treated horribly.

People thought that Duvall was making fun of Shelley Winters, Fat City was read before her name was. But Robert Duvall insisted that wasn't the case and publicly apologized.

Didn't Duvall blame it on James Caan making funny faces in the audience?

I never believed it. It never affected his career.

[quote]Is Bernie misremembering or were these episodes shot back to back? If they were all flown in together and were allowed to stick around the Mediterranean for the duration of the long shoot, I would not be complaining.

R109, based on what he said about having difficulty with the size of the ship, I’m guessing they were filmed back-to-back, and the casts traveled together.

Why didn’t Shelley Winters reprise her role from the Broadway production of Hatful of Rain when it was made into a movie?

Shelley was zaftig for years before "officially" porking up for Poseidon.

She used it as her excuse.

R114, and why wasn't Ben Gazzara cast? It was yet another role he originated on Broadway that he lost to someone else.

Especially odd that Gazzara was replaced by the not-so-Italian Don Murray as Tony Franciosa's brother.

Nothing against Murray who I happen to love.

Franciosa died five days after his ex-wife Shelley.

She wasn't a scene stealer. In 'Night and the Hunter,' she was perfectly cast and played her part well. However, Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish, an unlikely pairing in the 50s, stole the show.

Gish wrote of shooting "The Night of the Hunter":

[quote]I have to go back as far as D. W. Griffith to find a set so infused with purpose and harmony . . . there was not ever a moment’s doubt as to what we were doing or how we were doing it. To please Charles Laughton was our aim. We believed in and respected him. Totally.

Apparently, Mitchum initially wasn't happy about Winters being cast opposite him, but they were both on their best behavior and gave great performances.

I just always found her to be a predictable actor and a bit trashy to boot.

Wasn't Gazarra often denied roles for being too short?

I always thought Ben Gazzara was hot. I wondered why he wasn't bigger

R122, Ben Gazzara and Paul Newman were the same height.

[r-10] But Shelly got to screw Anthony Franciosa and in my young elementary school mind, he made me feel like a woman. and I dreamyt of screwing him for many years.

Anyone other Tony Franciosa fans? Or anti -fans?

To answer OP’s question, SW ‘s career quickly devolved in the overweight, blowsy, supposedly humorous tactless, overbearing & always unattractive embarrassing chick, serving as a cringey, awful stereotype for young Jewish women for decades after her arrival on film.

I hated that bitch. She really did a nasty number on the self - image of young Jewish girls. Book idea! “ From Shelly Winters to Natalie Portman : ( insert clever subtitle).

Shelley makes her entrance

“Little Darlene has boobies!”

Shelley as Polly Adler in A House is Not a Home. The title song became a standard.

Another Tony Franciosa fan here, all the way back to my young teen years where I discovered him in TV showings of The Long Hot Summer and then in a TV sitcom called Valentine's Day (must have been mid-1960s). He was so hot and somehow gave off pansexual vibes like he's happily do it with just about anyone.

I think Ben Gazzara's problem may have been that he came off as too ethnic for 1950s film audiences and Hollywood, at least as a leading man. He might have had a much bigger film career had he been young in the late 1960s. But he was always a consistently working and well-respected actor.

R99 Correct.

In this short clip from "Harper," Robert Wagner gives the reason why one-time starlet played by Shelley never made it. From 1966, FYI.

Choosing not to attempt to save someone when they're drowning is murder to most people.

She stunk up a pig costume in the original Broadway production of "Minnie's Boys."

R132 It doesn't matter what most people think; it's not murder. It was an accidental drowning.

R134, yes it does matter what people think and not assisting someone when they are about to drown is murder.

R135 Maybe you think you saw something you didn't see. Both of them fall out of the boat accidentally. There's a long shot of the boat capsized in the lake. Then there's a shot of a dead tree, that dissolves into a shot of Clift coming out of the water onto the shore. We don't see him choosing not to attempt to save her.

How is it described in the book?

She was amazing. A goodess with real talent. And she was best friends with the ultimate kook and windbag Sally Kirkland!

What Dreiser intended to portray in the book and what Stevens intended to portray in the movie weren't the same thing.

They both fall into the water in the same place so Clift clearly made the decision not to save her. It's not like they were caught in a roaring tidal wave in the ocean. They were immersed in a calm lstill lake.

R140 How is that proof of anything? I don't get it. You can't tell if he tried to save her, didn't try to save her, tried and failed, or what. It's left ambiguous.

[Quote] yes, it does matter what people think and not assisting someone when they are about to drown is murder.

no it isn't

[quote]What Dreiser intended to portray in the book and what Stevens intended to portray in the movie weren't the same thing.

That wasn't the question, r139.

R143 Why don't you look it up? People aren't here to be your personal library staff.

What r144 said

She was not a fan of auditions.

I thought it was Jo Van Fleet who her carried her Oscar around for identification.

...........

I never can figure out Debbie Reynolds. Who was she, really? Always "on". Did we ever have a thread about this koo koo chick?