Shelley Winters The Diary of Anne Frank 1960

It’s fitting that Simone Signoret and Shelley collectively won their first Academy Award in the same year. They are among the female Oscar winners who have played the most prostitutes. Sophia Loren has played the most hooker roles, with seven. Simone Signoret is in second place with six. Shelley is tied with Anne Baxter for third place.. Both of those ladies have played a prostitute five times.

In the first two roles, Shelley plays a madam of a brothel. Madams are usually older women who have aged out of prostitution and are now using their experience to employ prostitutes to work for them.

In “The Balcony,” Shelley plays Madame Irma. Her character runs a bordello that allows men to act out their S&M fantasies.

The following year Shelley played yet another brothel madam. “In House Is Not A Home,” Shelley plays the real-life Polly Adler, who ran the most successful brothel in the history of New York City.

For the part of the prostitute in the play “Cages,” Shelley played this part not once but twice. With over 20 years in between! She first played the role off-Broadway in 1963. Twenty-two years later, she reprised the character on the Chicago stage in 1985. In the “Snow Angels” segment, John hires a hooker, not for sex, but to play a role. He wants the hooker to dress up and act like a girl he once met in a museum. Then act out certain scenes that only exist in his mind.

Shelley Winters and Jack Warden in Cages 1963.

Shelley Winters also won a second Oscar for playing a hooker in the film “A Patch of Blue.”

Go to Shelley Winters A Patch of Blue 1966 to read about her Oscar winning prostitute role.

To read more about other Oscar-winning actresses playing characters working in the sex trade industry, please continue perusing Oscar Hookers