ESTELLE WINWOOD (nee Estelle Ruth Goodwin) was an English actress born on this date (d: 1984) who moved to the United States in mid-career and became celebrated for her wit and longevity.

Winwood decided at the age of five that she wanted to be an actress. With her mother’s support, but her father’s disapproval, she trained with the Lyric Stage Academy in London, before making her professional debut in Johannesburg at the age of 20. During the First World War, she joined the Liverpool Repertory Company before moving on to a career in London’s West England.

Like many stage actors of her era, Winwood expressed a distaste for films and resisted the offers she received during the 1920s. Finally, she relented and made her film début in Night Angel (1931), but her scenes were cut before the film’s release. Her official film début came in The House of Trent, and Quality Street was her first role of note. She made no cinematic films during the 1940s, but expressed a willingness to participate in the new medium of television, starring in a television production of Blithe Spirit in 1946. During the 1950s, she appeared more frequently in television than she did in film in such series as Robert Montgomery Presents, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Donna Reed Show. She played the character Hortense in the episode “Where’s There’s a Will” (August 1960) on the ABC sitcom The Real McCoys starring Walter Brennan. Her few films from that period include The Glass Slipper, The Swan, and 23 Paces to Baker Street.

Her other film credits include Darby O’Gill and the Little People, The Misfits, The Magic Sword, The Notorious Landlady, Dead Ringer, Camelot and The Producers. She later denigrated the last film, saying she could not imagine why she had done it except for the money.

Her other work for television included guest roles in Dennis the Menace, The Twilight Zone as the elderly wife of the seemingly ageless title character in “Long Live WalterJameson” Season 1 Episode 24 which aired on 3/17/1960, Thriller, Dr. Kildare, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Name of the Game, Bewitched, Batman, Love, American Style, Cannon, Police Story, The F.B.I., and the last episode of Perry Mason, titled “The Case of the Final Fade-Out”, in which she plays an aging actress who ends up as a second defendant. Winwood also appeared in the Barnaby Jones episode “Murder in the Doll’s House” (03/25/1973).

Winwood’s final film appearance, at age 92 in Murder by Death (1976), was as an ancient nursemaid to Jessica Marbles (a spoof of Miss Marple, played by Elsa Lanchester). In this film, she joined other veteran actors spoofing some of the most popular detective characters in murder mysteries on film and television (including Nick and Nora Charles and Hercule Poirot).

Bankhead, actresses Eva Le Gallienne and Blyth Daly, and Winwood were dubbed “The Four Riders of the Algonquin” in the early silent film days, because of their appearances together at the Algonquin Round Table. Winwood appeared as a character in Answered Prayers, Truman Capote’s final, unfinished, thinly veiled roman à clef. In the novel, which uses her real name, she attends a drunken dinner party with Bankhead, Dorothy Parker, Montgomery Clift, and the novel’s narrator, P.B. Jones.

Tallulah Bankhead was her lover for three decades. Winwood, a dainty, demure woman, was two decades older than Bankhead, but she outlived her famous girlfriend by sixteen years. She married gay chorus boy Robert Henderson in 1944. He was 21 years younger, and they lived apart and had no children.

Winwood died in her sleep in Woodland Hills, California, in 1984 at age 101. She was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.