Shelley Winters @ 100: A Double Life (1947)
Friday, August 14, 2020 at 4:00PM We're celebrating the career of Shelley Winters for her Centennial. Here's Nathaniel R...
Shirley Schrift had been kicking around showbiz for eight years before the needle moved. At just 19 years of age, before she had any real professional credits, she auditioned for Scarlett O'Hara (like virtually every aspiring actress of the time) during the famed nationwide search. Director George Cukor himself (the initial director of Gone With the Wind) advised her to get acting lessons. She did and her work ethic and ambition paid off. Broadway roles followed and Hollywood soon after. The first years of her movie career were mostly filled with uncredited bits in Columbia and MGM pictures. With studio jobs came the usual tinkering with persona starting with a stage name. Shirley became Shelley and the Schrift became Winter and then Winters. Though some screen icons were given the instant star treatment, Winters career was closer to the norm of working actors in studio-era Hollywood. You were just one of thousands of faces but if you were lucky, charismatic, talented, or if executives took an interest (all four was naturally ideal), they'd work carefully on your image and groom you for larger roles.
At twenty-six the actress's luck changed suddenly -- as it does if it changes at all -- with two roles that launched her to stardom...
on the set of A Double Life from left to right: Cukor, Colman, and young Shelley
First came a well received comic turn in a hit Broadway show ("Ado Annie" in Oklahoma!) immediately followed by her fourth credited film role in A Double Life. The prestigious but purple drama was directed by George Cukor, who'd given her that crucial heeded piece of advice when she was just a teenager. Her role is small -- just three scenes -- but the kind of showcase part hungry rising actors dream of but need to be amply prepared for. If you can hold the camera and seize the audience's imagination from the ensemble of a noteworthy project the future might well be yours.
This 1947 film details the rapidly unravelling psyche of an acclaimed actor (Ronald Colman in his Oscar winning role) starring in a production of Othello, against the limp protestations of his ex-wife and frequent co-star Brita (Swedish actress Signe Hasso). Brita knows how he gets when he acts in heavy dramas... heavy! On the angst-ridden night when he decides to take the doomed role the actor goes home with a lonely but very forward waitress played by Shelley Winters. Three hundred or so Broadway performances later, he reemerges at her door.
[SPOILER ALERT] She think it's a booty call and immediately lets him, offering lip service to being put out by his year-long ghosting. Winters clues you in that she's happy about this in a practical 'when you have an itch...' kind of way even if it's hardly romance. Unfortunately it isn't sex the crazed actor has on his mind; in fact, he's out of his mind altogether and still inside the headspace of that jealous violent Moor. RIP promiscuous waitress, but hello rising star.
In retrospect it's funny to think that Hollywood had been grooming a glamorous sexpot image for her when the future star was so obviously destined for grittier portraits of working class women. Even her name in A Double Life "Pat Kroll" lacks dreamy class, sounding instead like two blunt objects cohabitating. Not that the sexpot idea was unthinkable. Though pop culture memories of Winters are largely locked into her later gallery of blowsy, loud, stubborn, large older women, that relatably low carnality was always there. The two crucial roles from her early career both trade on just this; in A Double Life and A Place in the Sun (four years later, cementing her stardom for good) she is immediately bedded by the leading man who then cruelly ignores her for a long stretch of time before killing her. [/SPOILER]
In her introductory scene, Pat Kroll is just a curt bored waitress, but Winters direct playing ups the ante. Her demeanor changes immediately when she realizes she has a VIP customer. The change isn't drastic -- she's still kind of a rude server -- but she leans in a little closer, invading his personal space and dropping an open invitation to, essentially, come up and see her some time. It's as frank as Mae West without the style. In lesser hands the role of Pat Kroll might have been particularly flat, a semi-anonymous doomed floozy, but it's Winters honest no frills work that really sells it. If she weren't so memorable in her first two scenes as she serves and then seduces the famous actor, her fate wouldn't land as hard as it does.
After she's left the picture, you realize how important the success of her brief performance was to the narrative. Late in the picture people are interviewed about her and an attempt is made to recreate her look (long story). Without quite realizing it, you know that it's absolutely plausible that people would remember her and make this connection. Cukor throws in an imagined insert shot of Winters to really sell the point. You don't just forget this woman.
the final shot of Winters in "A Double Life"
(And by extension, this actress)
The success of her performance in A Double Life reaped long-term rewards, even if this particular star journey was always bumpy. Universal signed her to a long term contract and Shelley Winters was on her way to a storied career that would result in a hundred more films and two Oscar wins, forty-plus TV roles and an Emmy, and two juicy tell-all autobiographies. (More tomorrow when we'll jump ahead to mid-career Shelley.)
A Double Life is available on YouTube
Thank you for attending TFE's Shelley Winters Centennial!
Nathaniel on The Starlet in A Double Life (1947)
Eric on The Pro in Lolita (1962)
Nathaniel on The Champ in A Patch of Blue (1965)
Claudio on The Actor's Actor Bloody Mama (1970)
Baby Clyde on The Old Crone Pete's Dragon (1977)
Glenn Dunks on The Memoirist "Shelley II" (1989)
Reader Comments (15)
I can never think about Shelley without thinking about that horrendous Robert Duvall moment at the '72 Oscars when he laughed whilst reading her name.
One of the great talk show moments of all time was Robert Osborne on "Dinah!" informing Shelley that, no, she wasn't nominated for an Oscar for "A Double Life."
Rachel Syme wrote a great article in the April 2019 issue of The New Yorker, “Watching Shelley Winters Go Rogue In Debbie Reynolds’ Exercise Video: Do It Debbie’s Way”.
Shelley and Debbie were long time friends and Debbie let Shelley do what she wanted during the taping of the video. (Including asking for a show of hands of whoever had slept with Howard Hughes?).
I love the anecdote about her walking into an audition, placing both of her Oscars on the table, and quipping “Some folks say I can act.”
YES!!! I've been talking about this for decades but can't find any proof of it at all. Was beginning to think I'd made it up.
Story I read sometime in the 90's was that Robert De Niro wanted her to play his mother in a film but the producers insisted she audition having been in the business for knocking 50 years she was rightfully put out by this so when she went o the audition, after some pleasantries when asked to do a reading she reached in her bag for the script. Pretending she couldn't find it she pulled out one Oscar and placed it on the desk. Rummaging around some more she pulled out her 2nd Oscar and placed that on the desk. She then declared that she couldn't find the script picked up her Oscars and walked out.
No idea where I heard it or how much I may have embellished/forgotten over the years but so glad I'm not alone. What the story you heard and where does it come from???
She is very memorable in a small but spotlight role.
Early Shelley is an intriguing period when you delve into it.
At first I had only seen A Double Life, A Place in the Sun and Night of the Hunter of her pre-Anne Frank work where she was more or less the victim and while she was very good in that role it seemed she was limited to that in her early years.
But as I started working through more of her late 40's/early 50's work I discovered that while she played her share of molls and dependent women she had a nice spiky underpinning to her playing, was quite adroit at comedy and frequently displayed a great subtlety that was often absent from her work post mid-60's.
She also was quite the knockout which if you're only familiar with her later work can come as something of a surprise.
A couple of days ago I watched Wichester '73 and she was quite sexy
Baby Clyde — omg, That version is even better! I wish I could remember where I initially heard it, but I think it was either Blank Check w/ Griffin & David or Little Gold Men (two excellent podcasts for Oscar obsessives like us). Also, I did find an article written by Sheila O’Malley of The Sheila Variations that mentions it in similar detail (“R.I.P, Shelley Winters”). Winters was truly one for the ages.
Baby Clyde - WOW THE NERVE. I wish more stars used their Oscar wins like that. One of the only highlights of Feud: Bette vs Joan was when Joan Crawford sat hers on an executive's desk and went "I am an Oscar winner. I want better roles so that I can get another!"
I enjoy Winters in this film but I sort've enjoy her in everything. I wouldn't say she's ever been my favourite as I just have a slight disconnect with her work and I don't know how to explain why. She's a wonderful hollywood star certainly and has been killer in many things but one of the greatest I wouldn't say so.
I'm glad I've seen ADL because I never will have to again. I'm excited what other Winters projects are discussed as I'd love to see someone tackle Alfie which while a dreadfully dated film, I find her stunning in and if any woman from that film was to be nominated it should've been her.
I also look forward to the 65 smackdown in a few months because A Patch of Blue is an interesting case as it seems like a pretty mixed performance in terms of reception as I've seen so many praise and pan her oscar winning role.
MJ - Yes, that Sheila O'Malley story is the same one so their must be some kind of proper source for it. I remember first hearing it and trying to look up what film it must have been and assuming it never happened. But of course the Robert De Niro of it all could have been embellished. I so hope it's true.
Is the movie “Bloody Mama” directed by Roger Corman, where Shelley Winters plays Ma Barker and Robert De Niro plays her son?
No. She chose him to be in that film. This was much later on. Late 80's early 90's I think.
Winters was very sexy when she was young
I fell in love with Shelly Winters in the Poseidon Adventure I was nine years old. Her character had a beautiful spirit and I'm sure she didn't have to act to play the part.