Shelley winters biography book

Shelley Winters was an American film actress whose career spanned seven decades.

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“When I come to a fork in the road, I try to take both,” the irrepressible Shelley Winters writes in her bestselling memoir, Shelley: Also Known as Shirley.

She wasn’t joking. That book and its follow-up, ’s Shelley II: The Middle of My Century, combined are a jaw dropping + pages. But every page feels well-earned, jam-packed with love affairs, feuds, friendships, and more than one nervous breakdown. Famous for her roles as “victims, shrews and matrons” in classic films like A Place in the Sun, Night of the Hunter, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Poseidon Adventure, and Lolita, Winters proves she made the most of every second of her eighty-five years.

“Shelley was a mass of contradictions as only a Method actress can be, the writer Kevin Thomas recalled. “Nobody could be more down to earth but quicker to fall back on a star’s perquisites. She was mercurial, adorable, infuriating, loyal, brave.”

Passionate, gutsy and fiercely intelligent, Winters chronicles her tumultuous l

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Shelley: Also known as Shirley

December 23,

I first read Shelley: Also Known as Shirley, the autobiography of actress Shelley Winters, when it was originally released in I remembered enjoying it immensely, so I decided it was time to recapture some of that enjoyment by re-reading the book. I’m older now and have more knowledge of the world and, especially, Hollywood. Because of that, I liked many of her anecdotes even more, for I knew more of the people she was talking about. The book is wonderfully fresh and fun and funny when it tells of her early years. She started in show business at age sixteen, and in fact, was signed to her first film contract before she was eighteen. She was a brash and modig and persuasive young woman, doing things that other older people would never think of doing. Her dealings with the notorious curmudgeon Roy Cohn of Columbia Pictures are priceless—full of wit and spunk. As her career develops and she loses that wide-eyed “Shirley,” the book fryst vatten still enj

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Shelley Winters&#; autobiography Shelley: Also Known As Shirley will always have a special place in my heart because it was my gateway drug, so to speak, into the wonderful world of old Hollywood biographies.

I have always been in awe of my parents&#; library. Both of them were/are avid readers with a wide range of interests. In their basement, about half of the walls are lined with Ikea&#;s white Billy bookshelves (about 4 for my mom, 5 for my dad), each completely filled with books. At night, I would sneak down and pick a book I found interesting. From my dad&#;s collection I discovered Raymond Chandler, Wilkie Collins, Daniel Keyes, J.R.R Tolkien, Lord Byron, and biographies of Marilyn Monroe, and the Sex Pistols. From my mom, the Brontes, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen. I can&#;t remember from whose collection I borrowed Nabokov&#;s Lolita, but it made my mind explode into a thousand pieces within the first few pages. It was from my mom&#;s collection that I first discovere