A Winters tale

"Ugghhh ... I'm lonesome!" Charlotte Humbert whines in 1962's Lolita. She expels the words with such an intense, pathetic nakedness, it's as if all the air in her ample lungs is ejected in the one long-winded exhalation — even this woman's breath is trying to get away from her. Still, it's hard not to feel just a little sorry for her.

It's the kind of role Shelley Winters, who died Jan. 14 of heart failure at the age of 85, virtually patented: the lonely target of abuse, the obstacle to happiness, the spoiler of the pleasant dreams of men. Maybe it's ironic that she taught Marilyn Monroe how to be "pretty" when they were fresh-faced roommates — unlike Monroe, Winters never worked that little-girl-lost routine. But like her friend, Winters always radiated a profound aloneness, a resolute sense of only being able to rely on herself. Inevitably, she was a solitary figure, even when she was falling in love.

And that was treacherous territory. Her murder has been plotted by desperate lovers and devious husbands in so many of her films; in both A Place in the Sun and Night of the Hunter, she ended up at the bottom of a lake bed. There's almost a sense of relief in watching Winters inhabit a role without a real love interest (a madam in The Balcony, a man-eater in Alfie). I, at least, tended to worry about the kind of element she attracted. Her real-life love relationships were no less rocky: She was married four times and had tumultuous affairs with everyone from Brando to Gable.

In the '70s, Winters freed herself entirely from leading men, playing off-kilter, oft-psycho women of a certain age: Ma Barker in Bloody Mama, a former swimming champ in The Poseidon Adventure (flexing those famous lungs), a bible-thumping bunny killer in What's the Matter with Helen?, and (a personal favorite) a dowager kidnapper who sings lullabies to the mummified corpse of her daughter in Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?

Winters managed to squeeze in one last wedding — to longtime beau Gerry DeFord — just hours before her death. Whether she's alone now is uncertain, but there's something comforting in knowing there's enough of her left behind to keep us all from feeling a little less so. (Michelle Devereaux)