Modern Screen (Jan-Nov 1952)

didn't think it was such a good idea. Now that I'm home he telephones me and I get three or four letters a week." I remarked they must be pretty hot love letters but Shelley said, "No, we talk about acting and art. We have the big things in our lives in common." If present plans work out Shelley tells me that Vittorio will come to Hollywood to spend Christmas and New Year's with her. He is working on a picture also and everything depends on its finish date. If he cannot make the trip here, Shelley says she will try to go back to Italy after she has made Untamed. At the time of this discussion Shelley had not yet told Farley all the details of her big romance. "But I think he's got an idea about it," she said. "He asked me what kept me in Rome so long and I explained that the dresses I'd ordered weren't ready." "You'll have to face this sooner or later," I told her. "Do you think Farley will be angry?" Shelley reflected a moment and finally said, "No. I feel that he will be happy if he thinks I am. He thinks I ought to take it easy. He thinks I ought to get to know this fellow better." Then I put it to her straight, "You really feel you'd like to have a foreigner running your life?" I asked. "Yes," she said, "I really think I would and I certainly hope he does." This is, in a way, the culmination of a six weeks holiday trip which was planned by Shelley and Farley in the days when Farl was head man in her life. Shelley had never been to Europe and Farley had. "He was in love with Paris the way a guy is in love with a girl," Shelley said. But she had a picture to make — Phone Call From a Stranger — and she fussed and fumed over it because she was afraid shooting would not be finished in time for her to catch the plane. Shelley is dynamite when an idea hits her, and this was an obsession. Right then her big idea was to get the part finished on the dot. Jean Negulesco, who was directing her, intimated that sometimes haste makes waste and when his warning rolled off Shelley's back like water off a duck, the climate on the set became uncomfortable. Negulesco, a Rumanian, has a touch of temperament to match the Viennese, Polish and Russian blend that boils in the girl who was born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis, Missouri. There were times when the director intimated that if he never saw her again it would be too soon. But people get over their tantrums with Shelley, especially when they want her to play one of those inimitable tramps. Shelley can play a floozy like nobody else. She has a theory about that: "Never forget that & floozy in love isn't just a floozy — she's something else again. It takes more than a cheap showy dress, a feather boa and the wrong kind of shoes to play a tarty part. It has to 'be in the heart ... in the mind . . . love and sorrow can hit the roundheel hard, they're the ^elemental things, the rest is just the shell." By the time Shelley hit Paris she'd forgotten the rough moments on the sound stage. Paris was a ball. She and Farley went to the night clubs every evening and daytimes she'd see the sights and buy clothes. They had a little Hillman-Minx and they'd drive down the boulevards top speed with much horn tooting. And after the night club sessions Farley would pile all the six-foot tall chorus girls from the Lido into his little car and he and Shelley would take off for Les Holies for onion soup and champagne. "I told Farl his idea of the Marshall Plan was feeding chorus 94 beauts at dawn," Shelley said. "I had a miserable cold most of the time." she added, "but you can't crawl off to bed the first timeyou hit Paris, so I carried on. They have regular little revues in the night clubs and their approach to entertainment is very fresh and diverting. At St. Germain de Pres they had Tommy Dorsey and his band and we put on a big party one night. First thing I knew I was singing 'A Good Man is Hard to Find'— it was that kind of a time." Shelley, who got to the top in pictures the hard way and knows the value of a dollar, rebelled at some of the Paris prices: "When Dior asked me $1,400 ; for an evening gown I said it just wasn't worth it and walked out. We work hard for our money over here and you think twice before you spend that much on a single dress. But at Jacques Heim I found some lovely things for a whole lot less." In London Farley and Shelley were welcomed with open arms. All the young players in the theater and screen world entertained them. Shelley loved the British way — "they go to work at noon, they dine at eight or nine or even later — they love to give parties and there is plenty of time to dress. I've never seen such parties as the English can give. They turn on the lights and make the fountains play for you. We had wonderful times. The night of the Ivor Novello memorial was the top — the most wonderful thing I've ever seen. "That night I wore my most beautiful dress — green satin veiled in black lace. I spent a lot of time on myself because I knew all the beauties in London would be there so I wanted to look my best. Farley couldn't believe his eyes when he Elizabeth Taylor was coming out of the studio when she was accosted by a very tiny fan who asked for her autograph and added: "Do you mind printing your name? I can't read writing yet." Irving Hoffman in The Hollywood Reporter saw me. I really looked pretty good — you'd hardly recognize me. I told Farl that I never had time in Hollywood to go into this dressing thing in such a big way. We're always in such a hurry. You work until six and jump into a tub and then into your gown. It takes time for a real production. I wish we could slow our tempo a little . . . leisure is very satisfying." Shelley has something more valuable than mere beauty but her early experiences in Hollywood gave her a fixation on the subject. She couldn't get a job anywhere. Casting directors would say, "But you're not good-looking enough for the part." Or producers would tell her, "You're not pretty enough for leads and you're too good looking for character roles." So she fell between two types. At Metro they made her up to look like Lucille Ball and when she objected they said, "Well, you don't want to look like yourself, do you?" At Columbia they tried to make her look like Rita Hayworth. At 20th, Betty Grable was the model. Then they gave her up and told her she just couldn't make the grade. She went back to New York in disgust and got a job playing the role of Ado Annie in Oklahoma, which Celeste Holm had been doing. She stopped trying to look and act like other people and played straight Shelley Winters. Suddenly everyone discovered she had talent. She went after the job of the waitress in the Colman film herself and failed on the first test. George Cukor got to thinking it over and gave her a second test. When they tried to find her she was playing a walk-on at Metro for $100 to earn enough money to get back to New York. She knows now that she's got what it takes, but she still worries about not being a conventional beauty. Then the girl who had her first Hollywood apartment upholstered in a leopard skin pattern, who bought the wrong hats and who ironically described herself as "Shelley Winters of stage, screen, radio and Schwab's Drug Store," landed in Rome, Italy, on a moonlit night. She'll never be the same again. "Paris was wonderful and London was out of this world, but Italy was heaven!" I she says. "I was a big wheel in Rome. The people in the streets called out 'bella, bella, blonde' when I went by. And how those Italian men treat women! I'll never wonder about Ingrid Bergman any more. American men flatter you and you're pleased. But these men do something for you — they build you up in your own estimation. They called me feminine. Imagine, me — why in Hollywood everyone thinks I am an ablebodied girl who can shift for herself. They're all that way — the whole Italian nation. Right off Vittorio da Sicca said he had a film for me and we arranged for him to send the script to Greg Bautzer, my attorney, for approval. That's why I may go right back there." I said, "Of course Vittorio Gassmann would have nothing to do with it." Shelley has a flood of superlatives when she talks about her latest acquisition whom I you may have seen in Bitter Rice. She says, "He's the handsomest and the most aristocratic man I've ever known. The most brilliant actor. And he has more charm than anyone else in the world. He has a fine mind and a marvelous sense of humor. We clicked from the very first moment. And the way he puts things! I was really feeling low when we parted at the plane — I didn't want to leave any more than he wanted me to. But I tried to smile bravely as I waved good bye to show that I was a good sport — chin up — and all that sort of thing. So my first cable Vittorio sent me on arrival read, 'I found your last sad smile very encouraging.' Now what American man would word it like that, I ask you. "When he'd come to take me driving the back of the car would be full of yellow roses. He had this gorgeous brand-new Daimler and one day we drove out into the country. Something went wrong suddenly— the thing simply would not budge. But he didn't show the slightest annoyance or irritability. He fussed with it a little, then lifted his eyebrows, smiled and said, 'You know, Italians aren't a bit mechanically minded, I think we'd better find someone to drive us back to the city." When she talks about her Vittorio, Shelley is a different girl. You'd never think she was the forceful actress who tried to direct Behave Yourself and was in the dog-house with everyone concerned because of it. Or the dogged character who crossed a continent to ask for a part she knew she could do superbly. She's not the tom-boy who loves to tell about the seven hours it took her and Farley to drive from Stratford-on-Avon to London because they kept getting lost and when they'd ask directions from the natives couldn't understand a word anyone was saying. Or the back seat driver to whom Farley would turn over the wheel when he couldn't stand her continuous advice. This is quite another girl— this girl who fell in love in Italy on a moonlit night. She's meek and adoring and if her romance survives the acid test of time and distance, she may suffer a complete transformation in character and temperament. So far, being in love has not cut down the speed ] of her appetite for life and people. But from where I sit, this looks like love. The End