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According to the calendar, this coming Sunday is the first day of Winter. So let’s get in the mood by talking about about memorable winters: two-time Academy Award-winning actress Shelley Winters, to be precise. Born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1905, she grew up in New York City and studied acting at The New School. Shelley made her Broadway debut in The Night Before Christmas in 1941. Two years later she gained attention when she took over the role of Ado Annie in the original production of Oklahoma!
Moving to Hollywood and receiving a contract with Columbia, Winters’ screen bow came with an uncredited bit part in 1943’s There’s Something About a Soldier. Over the next decade she would play a variety of (often doomed) “blonde bombshell” roles in such films as A Double Life, The Great Gatsby, A Place in the Sun, The Big Knife, and The Night of the Hunter.
After a four-year Hollywood hiatus for Broadway work and study at the Actors Studio, Shelley returned to the movies and won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award as Mrs. Van Daan in 1959’s The Diary of Anne Frank. The victory launched the ’60s “character actress” phase of her career, with roles in The Young Savages, Lolita, A Patch of Blue (which earned Winters a second Supporting Actress Oscar), Harper, and Alfie. Like many leading ladies of the era, she tried her hand at horror (What’s the Matter with Helen? and Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?). She played the villainous “Ma” Parker on TV’s Batman, and even showed off her underwater prowess in the 1972 disaster hit The Poseidon Adventure.
Winters’ movies in the ’70s and ’80s would range from prestige projects (Next Stop, Greenwich Village and S.O.B.) to drive-in fare (Cleopatra Jones and The Delta Force). There were also turns in made-for-TV films (The Devil’s Daughter, The Initiation of Sarah) and a recurring role in Roseanne as the title character’s grandmother. Winters passed away at age 85 in 2006.
Now it’s your turn to let us know which of Shelley’s big-screen roles is your favorite. Vote in the poll below, and tell us in the comments if your choice isn’t there.