Shelley Winters To Be Featured In Oscars "In Memoriam" Segment
A moment's silence, please, for the passing yesterday of Shelley Winters, an actress who quickly and cannily found her niche in the Hollywood casting pecking order (dumpy, loud, shrewish broads) and rode it to a five-decade career and two Oscars. But while most obituaries remind us merely of her many unforgettable screen performances in classics like A Place in the Sun, Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, and The Poseidon Adventure, it's the NY Times that highlights the other role for which she will long be remembered: Insatiable, bed-hopping man eater!
With a hearty appetite for food and men, she was not hesitant about naming the actors with whom she had shared a bed, including Sean Connery, Errol Flynn, Farley Granger, Sterling Hayden, William Holden and Burt Lancaster. Ms. Winters and Mr. Holden had a "Same Time, Next Year" relationship, meeting in his Paramount dressing room on Christmas Eve for five years. Her two-year relationship with Mr. Lancaster was more serious. She ended the affair when the actor's wife became pregnant with his third child.
Thanks to the NY Times for livening up the usually dreary format of the obit with the festive, seasonal image of William Holden insisting Winters keep the Santa suit and beard on well past the initial, lap-mounted "naughty or nice?" foreplay portion of their Yuletide dressing room lovemaking sessions.