Estelle Winwood

Estelle Winwood

Even in her nineties, British actress Estelle Winwood retained the wide-eyed naïveté of her ingénue days. An actress from the age of five, Winwood was trained at the Liverpool Repertory company. As an adult, she specialized in the plays of such leading theatrical lights of the early 20th century as Shaw and Galworthy. In 1918, she starred in Broadway's very first Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Why Marry?, and a few years later scored a personal triumph in The Circle. In films from 1933, Winwood was often cast as eccentric, birdlike old ladies, some few of which were capable of homicide. She is fondly remembered for such characterizations as Leslie Caron's fairy godmother in The Glass Slipper (1953) and the pass-the-hat lady in The Misfits (1961). Closing out her film career with the 1976 detective spoof Murder By Death, Estelle Winwood continued appearing on television until she passed the century mark; she died in her sleep at the age of 101. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide