. . . But When She’s Bad . . . Shelley Winters

Shelley Winters isn’t too much like the girl in the nursery rhyme. When that little miss was horrid, her mother probably threatened to scalp her. And if she had ever gone to Hollywood to mingle with some real artists in temperament she would probably have seemed like a rose in a valley of cactus.

No one lays a hand on Shelley Winters. When she acts up people run for cover, or stand behind a fence and make faces, or get a big hate on her that expresses itself in unpleasant language. Her enemies like to discuss her fighting ability and they’ve concluded that when Shelley winds up to pitch a mood she deserves some sort of citation for the sheer sweeping grandeur of it.

Not too long ago, a story circulated about her that shocked even Hollywood, and went like this: Shelley Winters cast a disgusted eye on one of the Frenchie sets and announced flatly, “It stinks.”

Director Louis King patiently explained that the doorway through which she was to walk was part of a permanent set and could not be torn down or rebuilt, even to agree to the taste of the biggest moneymaking star on the lot.

Shelley was said to remark that King would be well-advised to rearrange the set-up so that her “good side” could be recorded. Otherwise she might lose her patience and tear the whole set down personally, flat by flat.

As the discussion continued in this light vein, producer Michael Kraike arrived on the scene intent on pacifying his star.

“This is a lousy picture,” Shelley is quoted as saying to him. “It is also a lousy script, and the least you can do is to make me look good.”

Before Kraike’s placating eyes, Shelley is said to have flounced off the set, leaped into her car and headed for the front office of Universal-International obviously intent on pressing her point.

Kraike is said to have reached for a phone, contacted the studio nurse and ordered her to meet Shelley with a sedative.

There are those who claim to be witnesses to the next scene wherein Shelley denounced all sedatives, and hysterically threatened to harm the woman in white!

Even by Hollywood standards, this was a temperamental wing-ding for the books! The story grew with the telling, until Shelley Winters sounded more like Dracula’s daughter than the straightforward person she is.

The whole story, of course, never reached the right people. If it had, it’s doubtful that the truth would have changed the opinions which had already been formed. But it must be stated here that not only did Shelley offer a plausible explanation of the episode, but her producer and her co-star rushed to her rescue.

Shelley herself did not haul out the whitewash—that isn’t her way. She simply stated the facts. “So I had a fight with my director,” she said with characteristic bluntness. “Let’s put it this way. Someone tried to figure out how they could get the picture on the front page; so they took a little incident and blew it up to such proportions that it did hit the front page. The picture is in color, and I wanted to look my best, so we had an argument. I was only absent from the set a half hour!”

Michael Kraike was direct. “Shelley is okay with me,” he said, “and I think it is a shame that every little thing she does is magnified.”

Her co-star, Joel McCrea, who was not involved, felt impelled to hone the rough corners from the story. His explanation was objective and sound. “Shelley’s been fighting the wrong way for the right things,” he stated. “Actually, she is the most unusual character I’ve seen. She really works hard. I like her. The trouble with Shelley is that she has an inarticulate approach. She smells a mouse and knows something is wrong. She just can’t put her finger on it. But she’s not temperamental!

It has been said that the merest mention of her name in Hollywood is enough to bring forth loud vocal discord, equally divided between cat calls and wolf whistles. Shelley just naturally affects people that way: hot or cold.

While her detractors are quick to circulate stories at her expense, they are not so eager to pass along Shelley’s version of these blown-up incidents.

It began as far back as A Double Life, when almost from the first, her critics said, Shelley began changing the dialogue to suit her moods. Shortly after the first “re-written” rushes were shown, Shelley received a note from A Double Life’s scrivener, Garson Kanin. “Shelley, dear,” it went, “I know you’ve written many distinguished plays. But do you mind reading my lines as I wrote them for this one?”

“That cured me,” was Shelley’s unpublicized comment. “Since then, I’ve never tried to improve my lines!”

Shelley’s critics had a field day during production of South Sea Sinner. On this little epic they charged their “favorite” actress with (a) having had a small boy removed from the set because he unnerved her, (b) refusing to emote in front of actress Helena Carter, for temperamental reasons and, (c) provoking violent arguments with director Bruce “Lucky” Humberstone, who balked at her suggestions.

At this point it became apparent that Shelley’s patience was wearing a bit thin. Her self-defense of the triple-barrelled charge was almost laboriously detailed. “I’d made three pictures in five months,” she stated. “I was nervous and tired. On the first day of the picture my father had a serious operation and I was worried about him. My acting is mostly spontaneous, and I was not used to Bruce Humberstone’s close direction in song and dance numbers. I felt the naturalness was going out of my scenes, and told him so. But we came to a complete understanding on that score. On the second day of work I spotted a small bey standing on the set snapping pictures of me while I went through my dance gyrations. I felt self-conscious in front of a kid, and asked the assistant director to move him to a spot where I couldn’t see him. Helena Carter and I have never had the slightest difference. But somebody told her to step behind a backdrop while I did a number, lest her presence make me nervous. Maybe it was just a gag, but I had nothing to do with it. I’m anxious not to give the impression of being a trouble-maker. I’m only concerned with doing the best job I can.”

Not long, after this savory morsel had been digested (in most cases without benefit of the above qualifications), the newspapers began hinting of trouble or the set of He Ran All The Way, the John Garfield starrer for which Shelley had been borrowed from her home lot. It was only a matter of a few days before the columnists lifted the soft pedal on the stories and began talking openly about the “Garfield-Winters feud.” “Shelley Winters has done it again,” was the tenor of these tales “Winters’ temperament throws monkey wrench into Garfield production,” was the secondary theme.

Garfield himself sloughed off the “to-do” with, “All the troubles are ironed out. We finally convinced Shelley that she couldn’t produce this picture, like she tries to do at Universal-International.”

But injustice had been done—again Everyone assumed that Shelley had been completely at fault. Nobody took the trouble to check her side of the story which, incidentally, was a completely different version from the one which had been common gossip for so many weeks.

Shelley admits she’d been eager to do He Ran All The Way from the moment she’d first read the script. “It was a very good script,” a close friend of hers said recently, “with a warm, sympathetic role in it for Shelley. The ending offered her the biggest, guttiest scene she’d ever had.

Shelley threw herself into the struggle to lose weight for the part. She had daily workouts at a Beverly Hills gym, and stuck doggedly to a rigid diet in order to pare of the unwanted poundage. The girl who reported to work was a new person; enthusiastic, full of admiration and friendliness for cast and crew. As production go under way, everyone connected with the picture was outspoken in praise of her.

Then, shortly before shooting was scheduled for her “big scene,” Shelley was told that the end of the script had been rewritten. She was naturally upset, understandably angry, until one of the executive took time to explain, “We suddenly realized that we had to strengthen the story so we re-wrote it overnight!”

Shelley thought this over. Then, being a very direct person, she made tracks for the sound stage which housed the set for the last scene. She stopped cold when she saw the staircase. It had not been a part of the set as described in the original script. She tested the steps a few times, then shook the guide rail.

“Who are they trying to kid?” she said. That stairway wasn’t put up at the last minute, its much too sturdy for that! Those so-and-so’s never intended me to have that big scene!”

There are those who wonder if Shelley was referring to the trouble on He Ran All The Way, when she made this statement: “You know, it’s a funny thing about Hollywood—if you raise the roof and holler like crazy and you are wrong, then everybody tolerates you. They pat you on the head and thank you for your suggestions about how to play a role. But if you scream about something and you are right—brother, that’s death!”

Well, that was about the last of the wild whispers about the Winters temperament. But Shelley’s critics haven’t been idle. They’ve rooted up something else to poke fun at—her alleged decision to chuck sex and become a great dramatic actress.

Shelley is too canny a business woman to drop the sex attraction entirely. Her pictures have made lots of money. If she wants to combine drama and sex in her career, she won’t be the first actress in Hollywood to have tried. And she has an incentive in the frank opinion of Charles Laughton, in whose Shakespeare Group she has been a very active participant. Laughton said of her, “Shelley could become one of the finest Shakespearian actresses in pictures.”

Shelley puts her aspirations this way: “I’m at sixes and sevens trying to figure out whether I want to be an actress or a great success. Is it possible for a girl to be Betty Grable in one ieee and Sarah Bernhardt in another?”

Even if Shelley were triplets, she couldn’t possibly live up to the fiendish reputation her critics have fashioned for her. Any failings she may have, according to those who know her best—the friends who understand her—are directly traceable to her great emotional insecurity.

It began back on Broadway when she needed what any aspiring young actress needs: encouragement, approval, a pat on the back. All Shelley ever received was criticism. She was openly referred to as, “that aggressive little blonde without talent.”

Hollywood continued the negative approach. Columbia Studios gave her a transient feeling of confidence by letting her high-kick in the chorus of a few musicals. Then they turned right around and slapped her down again with an off-hand comment: “You should have your teeth braced, your nose bobbed, and your hairline raised.”

Twentieth Century-Fox brushed off a test she made for them with, “You’re hopeless. Your voice is all wrong and you have three left feet.”

At MGM they made her up to look like Lucille Ball and gasped, over her protests, “Well, you don’t want to look like you, do you?”

Some say Shelley’s lost her perspective, but this couldn’t possibly happen to a girl who takes time out to kid herself publicly. A few months back the Hollywood Press Photographers held their annual shindig, to which guests were asked to come dressed as their suppressed desires. The girl who is supposed to be “temperamental,” “difficult,” “arty,” and “self-engrossed,” walked in wearing the wings and halo of the angel she’d like to be.

Even her critics had to smile and say, “You can’t kill a girl for trying!”

THE END

—BY MICKELL NOVAK

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE MAY 1951