Jan 15, 2006

Shelley winters, R.I.P.

Fantastic obit of Winters, who died yesterday at age 85.
In her later years, Ms. Winters appeared on talk-show programs to detail her indulgences with the leading men of Hollywood's golden age.

She also wrote two kiss-and-tell memoirs, in which she counted among her amorous conquests Errol Flynn, William Holden (they had an annual Christmas Eve rendezvous), Sean Connery, Burt Lancaster and Marlon Brando.

She said Brando invited her to the set of "A Streetcar Named Desire," locked her in his trailer and began to simulate violent lovemaking by shaking the room, pounding the walls and screaming with delight.

Ms. Winters wrote that she found this silly, adding: "When I refused to yell loud enough for him, he whispered, 'You're not helping my image enough. For God's sake, you studied voice projection. Use it!' "

Winters obviously enjoyed life. And she lived it to its fullest.
If, during her last years, Ms. Winters fit more comfortably into a muumuu than a sheath, she never lost her sense of laughing delight in what the world had given a poor girl from Brooklyn. In 1996 she defined herself to an interviewer as "a senior-citizen sex bomb." She added: "I get 1,000 letters a month. I send people a postcard of myself in short hair and a checkered blouse that was taken 50 years ago."

No comments: