The other day, I posted an anecdote about Shelley Winters going in to see a youthful casting director, being asked what she'd done and hauling out her two Oscars in response. I warned that it might not be true and we still don't know if it is or it isn't. We'll never know…but I did receive a couple of interesting messages about it. This first one is from Tom Collins…
Regarding your story about Shelley Winters and the casting director, I recall hearing a slightly different version of the story (maybe you have, too). Same basic set-up as the version you printed. Winters is called in to a casting director's office to audition, which she felt was beneath her. So she comes in, sits down, but doesn't say a word. She reaches into her handbag, pulls out an Oscar, thunks it down on his desk — still wordlessly. She waits a beat, then reaches back into her bag, pulls out the second Oscar, plunks it down on his desk. She lets it sink in for a moment. Finally, she says, "Some people think I can act."
What a bold, brassy broad in the best sense. Aren't many like her left in Hollywood, more's the pity. I'm just amazed one of those Oscars wasn't for Night of the Hunter.
She didn't even get nominated for Night of the Hunter, which probably amazes everyone who's seen it. But you know what's wrong with this story? It may well have happened that way but what's wrong with it is that most auditions are not about whether someone can act. They're about whether the person is right for a particular part, and you could be the best actor in the world and still be wrong for a given role. Leaving aside all question of whether it actually occurred, the version I told is just a better story. A casting director who calls in Shelley Winters and is so ignorant of film history that he has to ask her what she's done deserves to have those Oscars rubbed in his face. That's also the case with this version of the tale sent to me by Jack Lechner…
It's possible that something like this happened with two different people — or that it never happened in either case — but I heard a version of this story about Fred Zinnemann. As in the Winters story, 70-ish Zinnemann sits down with a young executive. The exec says to Zinnemann, "So tell me about yourself." Zinnemann responds, "You first."
And I heard of that exchange, only it wasn't Fred Zinneman. It was Billy Wilder. Meanwhile, here's a note from George Haberberger…
Regarding your story about Shelley Winters pulling out her Academy Awards during auditions: I read in an obit this weekend that she donated the one she got for The Diary of Anne Frank to the Anne Frank Museum. Maybe your story happened before she donated it but that's what I read.
According to this page at the site of the Anne Frank Museum, Winters did indeed donate that Oscar to their exhibit in 1975. I get the sense that the anecdote in question, if it happened, happened later than that. Shelley was still getting starring roles in notable movies in '75. One possible explanation is that I believe the Academy has occasionally allowed people who've lost their Oscars to purchase replacements and perhaps someone bent the rules to allow Shelley Winters to have her Oscar and give it too. Anyway, here's a message from Neil Polowin…
Not sure whether you've seen it, but the Shelley Winters story about her pulling her two Oscars out of her bag has been immortalized in film, in the opening scene of 1994's Swimming With Sharks. Frank Whaley's character (assistant to studio exec Buddy Ackerman, played by Kevin Spacey) tells the story to a few other junior executive wanna-bes.
I never saw Swimming With Sharks but that's interesting to know. The great thing about most show biz stories, of course, is that it almost doesn't matter if they're true if they're useful. A number of times, I've asked people who were involved in famous anecdotes to tell me what really happened and the response is, "Wish I knew…I've heard and told so many different versions, I've lost track." Or they've told tales I was present to witness and told versions that did not match what I saw at the time. Stories get fabricated or exaggerated because they're more useful in that form. If the tale of Shelley and the Casting Director helped make a good scene in that movie, that doesn't make it true…but it makes it true enough for show business.