Yesterday would have been the
90th birthday of the wonderful Shelley Winters.
Although we will forever have an image embedded in our hearts of the larger lady actress (and chat show guest), and her iconic role as the brave former swimmer who dies rescuing people in
The Poseidon Adventure, Miss Winters was much much more than that. Her long movie career began in the 1940s, when she was mainly cast as the moll or the victim admittedly, but her acting talents shone through and she received her first Oscar nomination for
A Place in the Sun in 1951.
Miss Winters secured many notable lead roles in her fifty-year career alongside such luminaries as James Stewart, Robert Mitchum, Michael Caine, James Mason and Ronald Coleman, had affairs with William Holden, Sean Connery, Burt Lancaster and Marlon Brando, and won Oscars for her performance in
The Diary of Anne Frank and
A Patch Of Blue. Never afraid of self-mockery, she also did her fair share of daft B-movie parts, and in later life she tap-danced in
Stepping Out and even appeared as Roseanne's grandmother!
And here's a rare thing - she sang, too!
Shelley Winters on IBDB
