BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Shelley Winters, the forceful, outspoken star who graduated from blond-bombshell parts to dramas, winning Academy Awards as supporting actress in "The Diary of Anne Frank" and "A Patch of Blue," died early Saturday. She was 85.
Winters died of heart failure at The Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly Hills, her publicist, Dale Olson, said. She had been hospitalized in October after a heart attack.
The actress sustained her long career by repeatedly reinventing herself. Starting as a nightclub chorus girl, she advanced to supporting roles in New York plays, then became famous as a Hollywood sex symbol.
A devotee of the Actors Studio, she switched to serious roles as she matured. Her Oscars were for her portrayal of mothers. Still working well into her 70s, she had a recurring role as Roseanne's grandmother on the 1990s TV show "Roseanne."
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Longtime friend and actress Connie Stevens called Winters "an idol of mine — and many."
In 1959's "The Diary of Anne Frank," she was Petronella van Daan, mother of Peter van Daan and one of eight real-life Jewish refugees in the Netherlands during World War II who hid for more than a year in cramped quarters until they were betrayed and sent to Nazi death camps. The socially conscious Winters donated her Oscar statuette to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
In 1965's "A Patch of Blue," she portrayed a hateful, foul-mouthed mother who tries to keep her blind daughter, who is white, apart from the kind black man who has befriended her.
Ever vocal on social and political matters, Winters demonstrated her frankness in two autobiographies: "Shelley, Also Known as Shirley" (1980) and "Shelley II: The Middle of My Century" (1989).
Winters wrote openly in them of her romances with Burt Lancaster, William Holden, Marlon Brando, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable and other leading men. She said that after she came to Hollywood in the mid-1940s she was roommates with another rising starlet: Marilyn Monroe.
Winters, whose given name was Shirley Schrift, was appearing in the Broadway hit "Rosalinda" when Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn offered her a screen test. A Columbia contact and her new name followed, but all the good roles at the studio were going to Jean Arthur in those days.
Winters' early films included such light fare as "Knickerbocker Holiday," "Sailor's Holiday," "Cover Girl," "Tonight and Every Night" and "Red River."
Winters received her final Oscar nomination, for 1972's "The Poseidon Adventure," in which she was one of a handful of passengers scrambling desperately to survive aboard an ocean liner turned upside down. By then she had put on a good deal of weight, and following a scene in which her character must swim frantically she charmed audiences with the line: "In the water I'm a very skinny lady."
During her 50 years as a widely known personality, Winters was rarely out of the news. Her stormy marriages, her romances with famous stars and her forays into politics and feminist causes kept her name before the public. She delighted in giving provocative interviews and seemed to have an opinion on everything.
Robert Mitchum once told her, "Shelley, arguing with you is like trying to hold a conversation with a swarm of bumblebees."
