Did you know:
It was predicted that the English actress, Estelle Winwood, who scandalised New York in 1919 by wearing lipstick off stage as well as on, would come to a “decadent, no-good, early end”. Yet, this flamboyant often outrageous woman lived to be a 101.
Despite smoking 60 cigarettes a day all her life, dining out most nights, drinking sherry and playing bridge three times a week, she had an extraordinary film and television career with credits longer than an arm.
Her final film appearance, at age 92, was in Murder by Death 1976), playing an ancient nursemaid to Jessica Marbles (a spoof of Agatha Christie’s, Miss Marple). But that wasn’t the end of her acting career. When, at 96 years old, she took on her final major television role in a 1979 episode of Quincy, she officially became the oldest actor working in the U.S., narrowly beating fellow British actress, Ethel Griffies.
Although married several times, including to a man many years her junior and also, reputedly to a New Zealand farmer and marine solicitor, she said at 100, “I’m still waiting for something wonderful to happen!” Then, on her 100th birthday when asked how it felt to have lived so long; she replied, “How rude of you to remind me!”
Certainly, a woman whose long life and audacious public appearances left lasting memories.
