Death Puts Out Another Star: Shelley Winters Died This Saturday

Actress Shelley Winters, the two-time Oscar winner whose roles ranged from glamour girls to tramps, died at the age of 85 at a Southern California nursing home early on Saturday.

Winters died at the Rehabilitation Center of Beverly Hills at about 6:15 a.m., a spokeswoman there told Reuters, but she declined to disclose the cause of death. The actress was hospitalized in October after suffering a heart attack.

A blond bombshell who was tough, street-wise and outspoken, the Brooklyn, New York-raised Winters specialized in unsympathetic, abrasive mother roles that won her two Academy Awards for best supporting actress.
In 1959, she won an Oscar for her portrayal of the slobbish Mrs. Van Daan hiding with others from the Nazis in "The Diary of Anne Frank." After a variety of other movies, she won again, playing the violent mother of a blind girl in "A Patch of Blue" (1965).

She was also nominated for Oscars for "A Place in the Sun" (1951) and "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972), in which she played a heroine and insisted on doing her own stunt work.

Born Shirley Shrift on August 18, 1920, in East St. Louis, Illinois, Winters moved as a child with her family to Brooklyn, where her father worked as a tailor's helper. Money was so scarce she was out on the street selling magazines at age 9. She later worked as a Manhattan garment district model and salesgirl before first fulfilling her acting dream in an amateur revue.

Small professional parts on Broadway followed. Spotted by Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn, she spent five years playing small, sexy roles in such films as "What a Woman!" (1943), and "Tonight and Every Night" (1945).
She insistently lobbied director George Cukor for the role of Ronald Colman's mistress in the hit "A Double Life" (1948), which made Hollywood take note of her considerable talent.
Today she's no longer among us, but her memory will remain forever in our hearts, as stars like her are not born every day...