I just saw this movie and it's the first I've ever heard of Winters being referred to as a bombshell. That was the reason George Stevens gave for not wanting her initially for Alice. I've never seen a Shelley Winters movie where she's the bombshell. Can anyone recommend something she was in that reflect that?
shareWatch "Winchester '73" with Jimmy Stewart. Winters is a dance hall girl and the love interest. She looks great and has an excellent scene where she tells off Dan Duryea.
shareThanks for the suggestion. I've always thought of Winters as more of a character actress. Guess I'm more used to her later films.
sharehttp://www.imdb.com/gallery/mptv/1070/0065_0050.jpg?path=pgallery&path_key=Winters,%20Shelley&seq=8
I think they groomed her to be in bombshell parts in the forties, but she gradually went on to less glamorous and more interesting parts. She's obviously not an unattractive girl in A Place in the Sun, but she downplays her looks by acting whiney and looking sour. Well played (also, just about any girl would look plain next to Taylor). It must be understandable why George pursues her in the beginning, and it must also be obvious why he becomes obsessed with the rich girl. Perfect casting.
Winters was born in 1920 or 1922. When she made PITS, she would have been around 30. But when she was younger she was a local beauty queen. IIRC, Miss Rochelle Park (NJ). Take a look at the photos of a younger Winters at http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Boulevard/8521/. She was every bit the bombshell then.
shareOh? I have seen ET in downplayed parts and she was plain too, when she wanted to be.
shareI've seen movies where Shelley Winters was vavavoom! Check out her IMDb listing to get some ideas of her earlier movies.
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
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My parents saw Shelley Winters in Manhattan in 1959 while walking on the street behind her and her manager after they had seen her on a live Jack Paar Show. They described her as breathtakingly beautiful, with a complexion like peaches and cream. She wore stiletto heals and she had a trim figure. Both my mother and my father swore that the camera did not do justice to her beauty.
share'Peaches and cream'? Really?
Very few Jewish women have that peaches and cream complexion, not even Scarlett Johansson. It's one of those features the Nazis used to distinguish between the 'perfect Aryan' and others.
she regretted taking this role as she looked so frumpy compared to Taylor.
shareShe was supposed to look frumpy.
I always saw Shelley Winters as someone who was strangely sexy despite her screen persona and physical appearance rather than because of it.
Shelley disagreed with you.
shareAbout what?
If Shelley was supposed to be such a bombshell why was she typecast so early in her career as tawdry, browbeaten, overly-possessive women in films like this, A Double Life, Lolita and Alfie?
She was only 31. The movie made her seem much older and it limited her future roles. Read her book.
shareActually she seemed younger than 31 in this film. But she was still playing a plainer young woman in this. If she'd been a stunner it wouldn't have made sense that George wanted to leave her.
shareTOTAL bombshell in "The Poseidon Adventure!!!" See it TODAY!!!!
shareUm not that funny. No.
When she was young? She was beautiful. She even taught Marilyn Monroe how to "act" pretty. See her trivia if you are interested.
A place in the sun was 21 years before Poseiden Adventure so of course she didn't look as good.
It's not like 50 was the new 30 back then like it is now.
Here is a nice hotty pic:
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm280284160/nm0001859?ref_=nmmd_md_nxt
I only came on here because my boss is her cousin. So it's not like I am a huge Shelly fan.
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She was always a bombshell. :)
shareWinters seems like the type of woman who would look great through "beer goggles." Plenty of meat on her bones, nice white skin, smells great, cool to hang with, and then you wake up in the morning and see her in bed, and are like WTF? Don't get me wrong, she is an attractive woman in her own right, in her early years. I am thinking more "mid-career" here.
shareYes she was much older than ET in the movie (in real life). She deliberately altered her looks as well. No. People's dates don't usually look good the next day. I am sure your dates have thought that of you too. LOL
shareShe was a poor man´s Marilyn: a bombshell of B- movies. Hey, she even used to be a mistress of Burt Lancaster and Marlon Brando!
shareShe wasn't a bombshell in this film.
She was the plain ordinary woman who the protagonist couldn't wait to get away from so he could start a life with Elizabeth Taylor's upper-class beauty.
I read that in the imdb trivia as well and was surprised, she looked too big, stocky, and plain to me to be a bombshell.
shareWhoever wrote that trivia was wrong.
There's nothing wrong with 'big' or even 'stocky', but plain certainly counts against being credibly labelled a 'bombshell'.
Admittedly, she had the blonde hair going for her (although I suspect it wasn't natural), but in all other respects, she wasn't going to come anywhere near close to Elizabeth Taylor in the beauty stakes.
When she was young, she was blonde, had big blue eyes, had a face that could be described as "pretty", and had the sort of short curvy figure that was in fashion... but more importantly, she liked men. She was interested in men, she liked their company, she liked sex, she was fun and had a sense of humor, so yeah. In real life, she was the girl who "went through a field of cock in her day", even though she wasn't a great beauty, because when it comes to enjoying life with someone, looks dont matter all that much.
But she really was miscast in the pretty-girl roles she played when she was young, but she was a good actress and her looks were passable by the standards of the time. But the fact is she hit her stride in character roles when she was quite young, and that's why she had the long career. Her attempt at being a "bombshell" was just a phase, same as Bette Davis.