Winters went to these ‘extremes’ because she’s smart enough to know she can not be a blonde bombshell. She sits there for an hour because he doesn’t recognize her. She’s flattened her chest, got a dowdy coat. “When George Stevens made an appointment to meet her at the Hollywood Athletic Club, she made her hair brown. Oscar-nominated Sally Kirkland, who knew and worked with Winters from 1962-2006, recalled the lengths she went to convince director George Stevens that she was more than a sex symbol in order to play the dowdy pregnant Alice Tripp, who is murdered by her boyfriend (Montgomery Clift) in A PLACE IN THE SUN (’51). Winters initially had to work hard to convince Hollywood she was a serious actress. “I believe Shelley exemplified what it was to be a Method actress,” Baker added. And it was her role as the zaftig middle-age Van Daan that was her watershed film – the movie in which she segued from glam roles and moved into the forefront of the character actresses. “She was a serious actress,” said Diane Baker, who made her film debut opposite Winters in George Stevens’ acclaimed THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (’59) for which Winters received her first supporting actress Oscar as Mrs. And speaking of A DOUBLE LIFE, Winters brought a depth to the character that other ingenues of the era wouldn’t have had the ability to play. In fact, she once noted she often played the “the bad blonde bimbo usually going up against the sweet brunette.” In fact, before she got her big movie break as a tart waitress who is murdered by Ronald Colman in A DOUBLE LIFE (’47), she was playing the comedic character part of Ado Annie on Broadway in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!. However, when she began in the acting in Hollywood in the 1940s, the studio system typecast actresses and actors on appearance. In fact, the Los Angeles Times obit stated she was a “blond bombshell of the 1940s who evolved into a character actress best remembered for her roles as victims, shrew and matrons.”īut truth be told, Winters was always a character actress. When Shelley Winters died at 85 in 2006, much was made of the fact that the two-time Oscar-winner went from a va-va-va voom sex symbol to a matronly character actress.
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