I haven’t done one of these posts in a while, but found a few spiffy photos of actress Shelley Winters and her then-fiancée, Italian actor and heartthrob Vittorio Gassman.  Shelley and Vittorio made an attractive couple, and in addition to a successful love life, Winters was also experiencing a terrific career moment.  She had been nominated as Best Actress for her role as the hapless Alice Tripp in 1951’s A Place in the Sun, directed by George Stevens, after a previously busy but undistinguished career path with appearances, both credited and (mostly) uncredited in over thirty films since her screen debut in 1943.

Many of us remember Shelley in her later years, as a larger-than-life character actress who would tackle anything with bravado and good humor.  From the TV series Batman to Bloody Mama, from Alfie to television’s Roseanne, Shelley seemed to have grit and gusto as she racked up appearance after appearance and penned two best-selling autobiographies along the way.  The two-time Oscar winner (for The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue) and nominee (A Place in the Sun and The Poseidon Adventure) was a serious actress blessed (or cursed) with a curvaceous frame which kept getting in the way of her being taken completely seriously by Hollywood.  In a career filled with many ups and downs, Shelley nevertheless was never less than vibrant and also a dedicated playgirl of a sort, racking up countless romantic encounters with some of Hollywood’s best known leading men — Brando, Holden, Flynn, Gable — as well four marriages, including two to actors (Gassman and Anthony Franciosa).

Gassman was an Italian movie idol, a gorgeous hunk of man who was also a serious actor, with a successful stage career as well as a long list of movie credits in prominent Italian productions.  Combining brains as well as brawn, Gassman was irresistible, a Continental charmer who joined Shelley in Hollywood, made a few movies — 1953’s Sombrero (as a Mexican), The Glass Wall (as a WW II refugee), swamp drama Cry of the Hunted, Rhapsody (opposite Elizabeth Taylor) and Mambo (opposite Miss Winters) — then returned to Europe to resume his career. 

Shelley and Vittorio were married for two years, and they had a daughter Vittoria together, Shelley’s only child.  The passionate union of these two talented performers wasn’t fated to last, however; their divorce was official on June 2, 1954, after only a little more than two years of marriage.  Obviously the 1950s-era paparazzi loved catching Winters and Gassman together on the town, her blonde locks and solid American good looks contrasting nicely with his dark-haired European masculinity. 

That’s the way it was, fifty-six years ago; Shelley Winters died in 2006, Gassman passed away in 2000.