Shelley Winters Dies at 85

Two-time Academy Award winning actress Shelley Winters died on January 14 in Beverly Hills, California due to heart failure. She was 85 years old and had been in failing health for many months.

Born Shirley Schrift in East St. Louis, Illinois, she began her career as a chorus girl but later studied under Lee Strasberg at the legendary Actors Studio in New York. Winters appeared in nine Broadway shows, beginning with 1941’s The Night Before Christmas. Her most famous roles were the Marx Brothers’ matriarch in the 1970 musical Minnie’s Boys and Celia Pope in 1955’s A Hatful of Rain, in which she co-starred with Anthony Franciosa, who became her third husband.

Winters was one of many actresses to play Ado Annie in the original Broadway production of Oklahoma!, and she succeeded Bette Davis as Maxine in Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana. Her last Broadway role was that of Beatrice in a short-lived 1978 production of Paul Zindel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.

During her career, Winters appeared in more than 100 films, earning Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress for her performances as Mrs. Van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank and as the mother of a blind woman in A Patch of Blue. Her other credits include A Place in the Sun, Lolita, Alfie, and The Poseidon Adventure. She also had a recurring role on the TV series Roseanne.

In addition to Franciosa, Winters was married to businessman Paul Mayer and actor Vittorio Gassman, with whom she had a daughter, Vittoria.