A Note of Praise for Shelly Winters

Young Shelly

In response to my Mascot of the Month of Montgomery Clift, a friend wrote the following...
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I wanted to shout out on Monty Clift as the Mascot of the Month. A Place in the Sun always disturbed me because of poor Shelley Winters getting drowned (I don't think got the credit she deserved in the film because while she was pretty she was no where near Clift/Taylor gorgeous).

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I have to agree, and here I say that A Place In The Sun probably damaged poor Shelly Winters career, at least as a glamorous lady.  Today, no one thinks of Shelly as a bombshell, but she was once, as these pictures show.

Young Shelly in color.

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But then, in A Place In The Sun...
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Liz, Montgomery and Shelly at Lake Tahoe in a break in filming

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In A Place In The Sun she took the dumpy role - in order to stretch her acting chops and to break out of the hot floozy typecasting.  It worked too well.
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"Maaaanny!"

Instead of the ingénue  she started to get cast as the slightly frumpy, pathetic loser.  And now, we all think of her from The Poseidon Adventure.
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Telling Brodick Crawford to shove it.

If you ever want to see her in a different light, take a look at Executive Suite.  She plays a secretary, having an affair with her married boss.  She ultimately calls it off, because she is better than that.  It's a small role (all the roles in Executive Suite are small but cast with major actors - bar William Holden), but juicy.