When Shelley Winters took on small roles because they were great parts, she had herself billed as Miss Shelley Winters, like Miss Ruth Chatterton or all the other stars of yesteryear with pretensions to being great artists. The appellation never felt pretentious on her, partly because she was a great artist, partly because she was the kind of gal who told her audience about her annual trysts with Burt Lancaster.

In the great scene below Miss Shelley Winters as ‘Dixie Evans’ reveals how the studios in the classic era exploited bit players like her, women who were already damaged in some way, hired them for their figures, kept them hanging around with bit roles, exchanged sexual favours for the expectation of larger roles that never came, and used them to entertain visiting dignitaries. Cheaper than hiring hookers. Odets knew how to write, albeit a bit floridly, and he was part of that world and knew what he was talking about. And Shelley had been one of those girls for a long time before her eventual success, and had roomed with Marilyn Monroe: she also knew and she could certainly act it out and communicate it.

José Arroyo