(1883-1984)
Born in Lee, England, Estelle Winwood began an acting career there in 1898 before emigrating to the United States in 1916, scoring her first notable success in Jesse Lynch Williams's Pulitzer PRizE-winning Why Marry? (1917). Winwood's beauty was frequently remarked upon. She performed in W. Somerset Maugham's Too Many Husbands (1919) and The Circle (1921), as well as new American and European dramas, including Molière (1919), Anything Might Happen (1923), The Buccaneer (1925), The Chief Thing (1926), Trelawny of the "Wells" (1927), Fallen Angels (1927), The Furies (1928), and The Admirable Crichton (1931). As she aged, Winwood made an easy transition into increasingly eccentric character roles on stage and screen, including Broadway roles in The Distaff Side (1934), When We Are Married (1939), The Pirate* (1942), Ten Little Indians (1944), Lady Windermere's Fan (1946), and The Madwoman of Chaillot (1948). Her remarkably long career continued on stage until 1966, when she appeared in the short-lived Nathan Weinstein, Mystic, Connecticut. She continued to work in television* and motion pictures until 1976.
The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater. James Fisher.