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Dana Wynter 1931 - 2011

Dana Wynter of West Hills, Los Angeles County, CA was born on June 8, 1931 in Berlin, Berlin Germany, and died at age 79 years old on May 5, 2011 in Ojai, Ventura County, California United States.

Dana Wynter

Dagmar Winter

West Hills, Los Angeles County, CA 91307

June 8, 1931

Berlin, Berlin, Germany

May 5, 2011

Ojai, Ventura County, California, 93023, United States

Female

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Dana Wynter Dana Wynter (1931 - 2011)

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Dana Wynter's History: 1931 - 2011

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Introduction

Dana Wynter Born June 8, 1931 in Berlin, Germany Died May 5, 2011 in Ojai, California, USA (congestive heart failure) Birth Name Dagmar Winter Height 5' 6½" (1.69 m) The daughter of a noted surgeon, Dana Wynter was born Dagmar Winter in Berlin, Germany, and CWynter later enrolled as a pre-med student at Rhodes University (the only girl in a class of 150 boys) and also dabbled in theatrics, playing the blind girl in a school production of "Through a Glass Darkly", in which she says she was "terrible." After a year-plus of studies, she returned to England and shifted gears, dropping her medical studies and turning to an acting career. She was appearing in a play in Hammersmith when an American agent told her he wanted to represent her. She left for New York on November 5, 1953, "Guy Fawkes Day," a holiday commemorating a 1605 attempt to blow up the Parliament building. "There were all sorts of fireworks going off," she later told an interviewer, "and I couldn't help thinking it was a fitting send-off for my departure to the New World." Wynter had more success in New York than in London, acting on TV (Robert Montgomery Presents (1950), Suspense (1949), Studio One in Hollywood (1948), among others) and the stage before "going Hollywood" a short time later. The willowy, dark-eyed actress appeared in over a dozen films, worked in "Golden Age" television (such as Playhouse 90 (1956)) and even co-starred in her own short-lived TV series, the globe-trotting The Man Who Never Was (1966). Married and divorced from well-known Hollywood lawyer Greg Bautzer, Wynter, once called Hollywood's "oasis of elegance," divided her time between homes in California and County Wicklow, Ireland until her death. Spouse (1) Gregson Edward Bautzer (10 June 1956 - 28 January 1981) ( divorced) ( 1 child) Trivia (11) Her son Mark Ragan Bautzer was born on January 29, 1960. Ex-husband Greg Bautzer (1911-1987) (ne Gregson Edward Bautzer) was a hot-shot entertainment divorce lawyer for such stars as Lana Turner and Ingrid Bergman. Prior to his marriage to Dana in 1956, he dated many Hollywood screen stars, including Joan Crawford. Her husband (called "Uncle Greg" in the movie) is actually represented in the cult film Mommie Dearest (1981). Interviewed in Tom Weaver's book, "I Was a Monster Movie Maker", (McFarland & Co., 2001). Lived in Southern Rhodesia in the post WWII era and attended Rhodes University in South Africa where she studied medicine. Was offered contracts by three Hollywood studios and chose a seven-year-deal with 20th Century Fox in 1955. Started her career working in the English theater. She was discovered there by an American agent who brought her back to the States to work. In the mid-1980s, she took up journalism and earned her own byline in "The Guardian", an English newspaper. She has since written articles for National Review, Country Living, Image, The Irish Times and other publications. She pronounced her first name, "Dana", the same as the more familiar name "Donna". Joe Schenk served as best man at her wedding. The marriage was held at the Church of the Wayfarer in Carmel, California. Was a lifetime member of the National Union of Journalists in England and the Foreign Press Association. Appeared in one film nominated for Best Picture Academy Award: Airport (1970). Personal Quotes (3) In my opinion, there aren't as many originals today. Everyone looks the same to me. Where are the Katharine Hepburns, Spencer Tracys, Clark Gables and Bette Davises of today? Those actors were instantly recognizable. Nowadays I have trouble separating one actor from another. There seems to be a wide-spread concern among women that they dare not have a line or crease in their face. If they do, they run to the plastic surgeon and their faces wind up looking like dinner plates...Life is an adventure, and time brings change. But women are terrified of aging for some reason. Everyone clings to blonde hair and white teeth. I think that undermines womanhood. A lot of actors tend to be careless with women, they treat them just like another Joe. But Chad [Everett] is always very courteous and civilized.
06/8

1931

Birthday

June 8, 1931

Birthdate

Berlin, Berlin Germany

Birthplace

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Early Life & Education

The daughter of a noted surgeon, Dana Wynter grew up in England. When she was 16 her father went to Morocco, and he visited friends in Southern Rhodesia, fell in love with it and brought his daughter and her stepmother to live with him there. Wynter later enrolled as a pre-med student at Rhodes University (the only girl in a class of 150 boys) and also dabbled in theatrics. After a year-plus of studies, she returned to England and dropped her medical studies and turned to an acting career. Lived in Southern Rhodesia in the post WWII era and attended Rhodes University in South Africa where she studied medicine.
05/5

2011

Death

May 5, 2011

Death date

Heart Failure

Cause of death

Ojai, Ventura County, California 93023, United States
Death location

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Obituary

Dana Wynter obituary Tue 10 May 5, 2011 13.52 EDT It could be argued that the strikingly beautiful, dark-haired Dana Wynter, who has died aged 79, did not have the film career she deserved. One of the reasons may have been that she was under a seven-year contract to 20th Century Fox, a studio that gave her few chances to display her histrionic talents. As proof, Wynter's best film, Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), was produced by Allied Artists, one of the "Poverty Row" studios. Nevertheless, it was Fox that made the demure Wynter into a star, featuring her in five rather hollow, self-important CinemaScope pictures. Some of her own frustration with her image is implied in D-Day: The Sixth of June (1956) when, as a British Red Cross worker, she tells a married American army captain with whom she is romantically involved: "You think I'm pure and angel-like because I'm English, my voice is crisp and my father's a brigadier. But I'm not pure and angel-like." Unfortunately, Wynter rarely had an opportunity to prove it. Perhaps that is what makes the ending of Invasion of the Body Snatchers so chilling – as the doctor (Kevin McCarthy) suddenly realises that Wynter, as the woman he loves, has turned into an inhuman pod person. Wynter, the epitome of the "English rose", was born Dagmar Winter, in Berlin, where her father, a celebrated surgeon, and her Hungarian mother were living at the time. She went to school in England and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and studied medicine at Rhodes University in South Africa. But after a year, she dropped her medical studies and returned to England, determined to take up acting. Credited as Dagmar Wynter, she appeared in bit parts in British films, and in two European-made Hollywood productions: The Crimson Pirate (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1953). In 1953, aged 22, having gained an American agent, Wynter arrived in New York, where she immediately got work on television, prior to taking up her Fox contract in Hollywood. The studio first cast the unknown as a southern belle in The View from Pompey's Head (aka Secret Interlude, 1955), in which her beauty, rather than her acting, attracted notice. Playing an adulterous woman, Wynter found it hard to live up to the publicity: "Not since Scarlett and Jezebel has the south produced such a woman!" With a slight German accent and her hair lightened, Wynter was quite touching as a displaced woman in postwar Berlin who falls in love with an American army officer (Mel Ferrer) in Fräulein (1958). She gave a glimpse of what she was emotionally capable of in the same year's In Love and War, as a self-styled "rich tramp" who drinks and attempts suicide when abandoned by her soldier fiance (Bradford Dillman). Wynter's Fox contract ended with the British-made Sink the Bismarck! (1960), in which she played a briskly efficient Wren who helps to slightly loosen Kenneth More's stiff upper lip, by lending him a sympathetic ear. She was little more than decorative as Rock Hudson's white settler fiancee in MGM's Mau-Mau drama Something of Value (1957); as a daughter of a politician kidnapped by the IRA in Shake Hands With the Devil (1959); and as Lady Jocelyn Bruttenholm in John Huston's gimmicky whodunnit The List of Adrian Messenger (1963). The latter two films were shot in Ireland, where Wynter and her husband, Greg Bautzer, a divorce lawyer to many a Hollywood star, made their second home. They later divorced. Wynter played another aristocrat, this time opposite Danny Kaye, in On the Double (1961); she was bounty hunter Glenn Ford's wife in Santee (1973), her only western; and airport manager Burt Lancaster's neglected wife in Airport (1970), the film that initiated a cycle of disaster movies. After a relatively small role as Yves Montand's rich American wife in Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Le Sauvage (Call Me Savage, 1975), Wynter concentrated her energies on television, a medium in which she felt more comfortable and where expectations were lower. She had already made an impact as the wife of a double agent in 18 episodes of the series The Man Who Never Was (1966-67) and as a guest star in other shows. It was perhaps inevitable, given her list of upper-crust roles, that Wynter should portray Queen Elizabeth in the indigestible made-for-TV movie, The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana (1982). In the mid-1980s, she took up journalism and wrote the column Grassroots, about life in California and County Wicklow, for the Guardian. She is survived by her son, Mark.

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Dana Wynter lived 9 years longer than the average family member when died at the age of 79.

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10 Memories, Stories & Photos about Dana

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.7k+ favorites

01/04/2021

Dana Wynter

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

Comments

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.7k+ favorites

01/04/2021

Dana Wynter

I met Dana Wynter in front of the Plaza Hotel in 1959. She was gracious and warm and sweet to me and gorgeous. One of the ten most beautiful women I have ever met. I asked for another autograph for my Japanese pen pal Osamu Kajita who lived in Nagoya. She asked me to say something in Japanese and I said the Japanese word for "fountain pen" (mannen-hitsu). She liked that.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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