WWW- posted on Fox News: We interrupt this program to tell you that five hours before her death last week, Academy Award-winning actress Shelley Winters wed her longtime boyfriend Gerry DeFord. The service was performed by Oscar nominee Sally Kirkland, who is ordained as a minister and was Winters' protégé and friend.
I believe you will read this in the National Enquirer and other places, but since Kirkland and I shared a flight out of the Twilight Zone on Southwest Airlines a few days ago, I know the full story.
Sally told me that Winters' daughter, Dr. Vittoria Gassman, whose father was the great Italian actor Vittorio Gassman , was not present at the wedding. That's because the doctor is an Orthodox Jew and could not travel over that weekend. She had also opposed Winters' idea of marrying DeFord earlier, having taken control of her mother's estate.
(If you were wondering: Gassman senior was Catholic. Shelley was Jewish by birth, but certainly not Orthodox.)
This would make DeFord Winters' fourth husband. In an eerie coincidence, Winters' third husband, actor Tony Franciosa , had a stroke and died just a few days after the actress' death. The couple had a contentious tabloid headline-filled marriage in the mid 1950s. Franciosa had several children including two who were under 35 from his last marriage. Kirkland told me she was praying for them all.
