Oscar winner Shelley Winters dies at 85
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-15 09:21

Winters received her final Oscar nomination, for 1972's "The Poseidon Adventure," in which she was one of a handful of passengers scrambling desperately to survive aboard an ocean liner turned upside down by a tidal wave. By then she had put on a good deal of weight, and following a scene in which her character must swim frantically she charmed audiences with the line: "In the water I'm a very skinny lady."

Although she was in demand as a character actress, Winters continued to study her craft. She attended Charles Laughton's Shakespeare classes and worked at the Actors Studio, both as student and teacher. She appeared on Broadway as the distraught wife of a drug addict in "A Hatful of Rain" and as the Marx Brothers' mother in "Minnie's Boys."

Among her other notable films: "Night of the Hunter," "Executive Suite," "I Am a Camera," "The Big Knife," "Odds Against Tomorrow," "The Young Savages," "Lolita," "The Chapman Report," "The Greatest Story Ever Told," "A House Is Not a Home," "Alfie," "Harper," "Pete's Dragon," "Stepping Out" and "Over the Brooklyn Bridge."

During her 50 years as a widely known personality, Winters was rarely out of the news. Her stormy marriages, her romances with famous stars, her forays into politics and feminist causes kept her name before the public. She delighted in giving provocative interviews and seemed to have an opinion on everything.

Robert Mitchum once told her: "Shelley, arguing with you is like trying to hold a conversation with a swarm of bumblebees."

The revelations in her autobiographies provided endless material for interviewers and gossip writers. She wrote of an enchanted evening when she and Burt Lancaster attended "South Pacific" in New York, dined elegantly, then retired to his hotel room.

"This chance meeting proved to be the beginning of a long but painful romance," she wrote. "Despite the immediate and powerful chemistry between us, the love and the friendship, some wise part of me knew that he would never abandon his children while they were young and needed him."

She also told of a dalliance with William Holden after a studio Christmas party. In a glamorous, real-life version of the play "Same Time, Next Year," they continued their annual Yuletide rendezvous for seven years.

She wrote that despite their intimacy, they continued to refer to each other as "Mr. Holden" and "Miss Winters," and when they met on the set of the 1981 film "S.O.B." she said, "Hello, Mr. Holden." He smiled and replied, "Shelley, after your book, I think you should call me Bill."

Shirley Schrift was born on Aug. 18, 1920, and grew up New York, where she appeared in high school plays.

"My childhood is a blur of memories," she wrote in the first of her autobiographies. "Money was so scarce in my family that at the age of 9 I was selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door.

"It was during this stage of my life that I developed a whole fantasy world; reality was too unbearable. Every chance I got, I was at the movies. I adored them."

Working as a chorus girl and garment district model helped finance her drama studies. She gained practical training by appearing in plays and musicals on the summer Borscht Circuit in the Catskill mountains.

During the Detroit run of a musical revue, she married businessman Paul "Mack" Mayer on Jan. 1, 1942. He entered the Army Air Corps, and after the war, the pair found they had little in common. They divorced in 1948.

Winters' second and third marriages were brief and tempestuous: to Vittorio Gassman (1952-1954) and Anthony Franciosa (1957-1960). The combination of a Jewish Brooklynite and Italian actors seemed destined to produce fireworks, and both unions resulted in headlines.

A daughter, Vittoria, resulted from the marriage to Gassman. She became a successful physician.