I'm watching the Shelley Winters episode of Here's Lucy

It is a non stop fat joke and she doesn't look all that fat. Why would she agree to appear in this?

• Poor Shelly

• Has anyone read Shelly's book, "Shirley, also known as Shelly"? I always used to see it at used bookstores and wondered what it was like.

• Lucy hated Shelley because Winters had two Oscars, the respect of everyone even though she was a hot mess, and didn't care what anyone thought of her. Lucy hated any female she couldn't control. The original hen-cock. And shut up about how "Desi made her that way, poor Lucy." Desi didn't make her that way by keeping away from her. He kept away from her because she WAS that way. (And, of course, he followed where his dick pointed.)

• What's funny is that Shelley Winters would look like any other woman you see today. Women that fat are not at all uncommon anymore, but in those days Shelley's weight was unusual.

• What??? Heavy women (and men) were very common in the 50s and 60s.

• Shelley was a sex symbol blonde cast in minor roles when she first appeared in the mid40s, but she wanted to be cast in more serious parts that would display her skills as an actress. (She succeeded starting with NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and A PLACE IN THE SUN.) She started taking more matronly roles earlier than people thought necessary, much like Angela Lansbury did: but unlike Lansbury who stayed sexy, Winters grew heavier and heavier. r4 is full of shit, though: attractive heavier women were common before the mid60s when the Twiggy/Jean Shrimpton model began to emphasize thinness above all else.

• 1973 Academy Awards, best supporting actress .... ...Susan Tyrell, FAT CITY; Shelley Winters... HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

  James%20Caan

• "It is a non stop fat joke and she doesn't look all that fat. Why would she agree to appear in this?" I was used to always being in Lucy's shadow because she chewed up every scene. In that episode I was also in Shelley Winters' shadow, because I'm guessing she chewed up everything.

  Vivian%20%22Ethel%20Mertz%22%20Vance

• "but unlike Lansbury who stayed sexy" WTF? Angela Lansbury was never sexy -- thin or fat.

• How in the hell would you know that Ball hated Winters. You're talking out of your ass . . . unless you're Desi Jr. or Lucie.

• R9, you are really wrong. She is very sexy as the slutty maid in Gaslight. She is also sexy and very believable as a madame in Harvey Girls.

• I don't know if I'd call Lansbury sexy, but maybe provocative or alluring. There is that one episode of MURDER SHE WROTE where she tried to act sexy in a bar. It was very strange.

• When she got fat, Shelley Winters vigorously re-invented herself as a character actress. I am sure she had no problem with the fat jokes so long as her name and image remained ingrained in the public conscious.

• "WTF? Angela Lansbury was never sexy -- thin or fat. Careful R9. Lansbury probably has at least one last 'Murder She Wrote' episode left in her.

• Here's the clip I was talking about. Of course, someone put different music on it. Have a gander. You might think she's sexy, R11.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dssp1_yQf250

  R12

• r2, she wrote two books about her life. I have "Shelley II The Middle of My Century" and I really enjoyed it. She writes like I remember her talking to Carson on the Tonight show. Lots of dish and gossip and stories about her many, many ongoing affairs with some of the hottest male stars like Sean Connery and Albert Finney and Sterling Hayden, not to mention her marriages to Vittorio Gassman and Anthony Franciosa. She led quite a life.

• She was even fun at the end of her career as Nana on "Roseanne." Justifying the great gifts she was giving to her other grandchildren because she wanted to live with them and "they have a pool."

• Gassman....LOL

  Beavis

• Another uncomfortable relic of TV's golden age was Carol Burnett's treatment of Mama Cass Elliot on her variety show. Every skit was custom made to degrade Elliot because of her weight.

• How the HELL do you have sex with Shelley Winters? Roll her in flour and look for the wet spot!

  Charles%20Pierce%20as%20Bette%20Davis

• R10, what are you? The Tropicana House Detective? Winters said as much, although she was too much of a mensch to say "hate." I'm not. I hate your kind.

• That episode was weird because they kept referring to Lucy as young and svelte. Yeah. She was svelte. Phillip Morris will help you keep your figure, but young was a stretch. And Desi jr, was delectable.

• Ok, I just watched this episode of Here's Lucy on Hulu (in order to comment.) Shelly was a cow. Lucy looked good. It's funny to laugh at fat people.

  Viv%20

• [quote Heavy women (and men) were very common in the 50s and 60s. They actually were not. And when they - much less weighty than their modern counterparts - were seen on television their weight was regularly noted with comments such as 's/he appears to have a good appetite.'

• You're very judgmental OP to impose modern standards to criticize someone's behavior from another era.

• Shelley was fat in that episode. Sorry but she was. No excuse to be fat. None. Plus, Lucy was not jealous of Shelly Winters R3. You are way off base on that one.

• Angela Lansbury has a demented fan who is always taking over the Lucy threads to bash Lucy. All because she did the movie version of MAME while Angela was off in Ireland eating potatoes and breaking wind. At least Lucy never had anyone banned from doing her TV shows! Talk about petty and vindictive!

  Oscar winner Patty Duke

• R3 fantasizes about licking William Windom's taint.

• Yes, there is definitely a nutcase on this thread.

• Patty Duke should have played Shelley's part and then gone on to star in MAME. Why do you people refuse to acknowledge the TRUTH?

• r30 I have to say I love Patty Duke in anything and think that she should have done more and will do more but she was too young to play those roles and yes I know u were joking LOL... and r27 funny!!!!

• I should ask this question in it's on thread, but I'll ask anyway. Do you think (Auntie)Mame should be remade? And if you vote yes, who should play her and Vera?

• .

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D0InzTDgI674

• Lansbury beat up Judy Garland so no one liked her. And as for Shelly Winters, well she shouldn't have mouthed off like that.

• Read Farley Granger's book for dish on Shelly. She was a piece of work. Didn't know she was married to Vittorio Gassman - the last actor to work with Sharon Tate.

• Many of Angela's Lansbury's early roles typecast her as young sluts: The Harvey Girls, Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Grey being the 3 most well known. And she was still considered a very sexually predatory type when she made The Manchurian Candidate and her Broadway debut in Sondheim's Anyone Can Whistle. It wasn't until Murder She Wrote that she reinvented herself as a virgin all over again. And while there were plenty of fatties around in the 1950s, they were almost never big movie and TV stars. That's why so much was made over Jackie Gleason and his girth. But there weren't ANY fat American women stars back then.

• Well, except for grotesque character types like Marie Dressler and Sophie Tucker.

  r36

• Cause women are trained to endure abuse about their physical appearance from a very early age on.

• I'm using a traffic cone to fuck myself while watching Lucy Calls The President!

  R27/28

• Very good in Mazursky's "Next Stop Greenwich Village" and she hated Tony Curtis. "What are you doing doodling on a notepad? Study your lines!!"

• I'm watching the episode with Cesar Romero now. Lucy says she's in her 40s. In real life I think she was closing in on 60, but she looks very good. Her skin looks tight and clear for someone who was a human chimney.

• Lucy was often referred to as "young lady" on Here's Lucy, when she was old enough to be a grandmother.

• So I guess Shelley first gained weight to play Mrs. Van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and then never lost it? I don't think she was particularly overweight before that but it's interesting how her career didn't really take off until the weight gain. I guess she was never really leading lady material but a true character actress and the extra lbs gave her a real persona. She was hefty in Lolita, Alfie and A Patch of Blue though she wasn't really what I'd call fat until THe Poseidon Adventure.

• Except r42 in the 1960s before Women's Lib women were still positively referred to as girls.

  The Ghost of Helen Gurley Brown

• They still call women "girls" on HSN.

  Adrienne Arpel, trying hard to make a human expression

• Does anyone remember her dishing on Charlton Heston on The Tonight Show (with Johnny Carson)? IIRC she told about how she entered his dressing room too quickly after knocking and caught him in the act of stuffing his tights for an improved lower profile.

• [quote]in the 1960s before Women's Lib women were still positively referred to as girls. Ethel) But the ad says girls. Are we "girls' Lucy) Well if you divide everyone into boys and girls then we certainly are girls.

• [quote]So I guess Shelley first gained weight to play Mrs. Van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and then never lost it? I don't think she was particularly overweight before that but it's interesting how her career didn't really take off until the weight gain. She certainly wasn't fat in it but I think she first put on weight for "A Place in the Sun".

• Shelley was fat in the conrext of her era. Nowadays, she'd be considered normal weight.

• That's true about Lansbury R36. She was a real sexpot in "Bedknobs and Broomsticks".

  Nephew%20Grady

• Lansbury's career has had 5 distinct phases: 1. 1940s teenage slut (often cockney) of MGM (Gaslight, Dorian Grey, The Harvey Girls) 2. 1950s brittle bitchy mothers and mistresses to actors to whom she was in reality far too young (The Long Hot Summer, The Reluctant Debutante, The Manchurian Candidate) 3. 1960s Broadway star of hits and many more flops (Anyone Can Whistle, Mame, Dear World, Prettybelle) Bedknobs and Broomsticks fits tidily into this decade as it was Disney's attempt to duplicate Broadway star Julie Andrews' film stardom in Mary Poppins. 4. 1970s Ireland - The Lost Decade 5. 1980s Beloved Virginal Emmyless TV star of Murder, She Wrote

  I've forgotten how Lansbury wound up in this thread

• In his book, dearly departed Ernie Borgnine,never a slim Jim himself, has nice things to say about just about everyone, except for a select few, including Shelley. (They did Poseidon Adventure together, and yes, Shelley was at her largest.) He would only say she was "the damnedest woman I ever met."

• Shelley was a chubette when she made Night of the Hunter in 1955.

• I have Shelley Winters 2 book and it is sign by her. I went to the book store and wait for 1 hour ,but it was worth it. Very nice lady and funny, But I need a lot of money. So if anyone went to buy it let me now on this web sight Ed Scaramell

  Ed Scaramell

• The Totie Fields episode also had non-stop fat jokes but since it was Fields bread and butter, so to speak, it wasn't bad. One of her retorts to Lucy's jibes "You skinny broads are all jealous."