Shirley Stoler

Her harsh, hard-edged, pudding face was Laughtonesque in style, incapable of warmth much less a smile. It was held up by an immense frame that was both intimidating and foreboding at the same time. In return, these characteristics allowed character actress Shirley Stoler to play a couple of the most loathsome and terrifying women ever presented on the screen. It was her monstrous tendencies on film for which she is best remembered. Born the eldest of four children to Polish-Jewish immigrants on March 30, 1929, Brooklyn's Shirley made her stage debut in 1955 and gained experience as a member of New York's experimental La Mama, Caffe Cino and Living Theatre companies. She had become a key underground player with such stage productions as "Balls" and "Sunset" by the time she entered films and attained minor film infamy in 1970 at age 41 Her very first portrayal on film was as real-life homicidal maniac Martha Beck in the stark, chilling, shoestring-budgeted flick The Honeymoon Killers (1970). Paired up with Tony Lo Bianco's slick, handsome Raymond Fernandez, the two created a brazen pair of "Lonelyhearts" serial killers that are still talked about in cult circles today. Shirley would find Martha Beck a hard act to follow. For the next few years, all she could find in the aftermath was a minor, unappetizing role in the Academy Award-winning film suspenser Klute (1971) and a bit part on the "Kojak" TV series And then as if nothing could out-creep her above-mentioned debut, Shirley was chosen to play, with utmost horror, the repulsive, whip-carrying, cigar-chomping concentration camp commandant in Lina Wertmüller's WWII masterpiece Seven Beauties (1975). Stoler's terrorizing, seductive byplay with Giancarlo Giannini's terrified inmate, whose measly life is left in her hands, remains one of the most gripping, harrowing and fascinating scenes ever filmed. For the duration of her career, Shirley was obliquely cast as either Eastern European housewives or hardcore urban types (prostitutes, bartenders, bordello madams, prison matrons). Too often featured in low budgets unworthy of her talents, her minor gallery of grotesques included the prison guard in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Spike the Bartender in Frankenhooker (1990), and the pawnshop store owner in Miami Blues (1990) in which she chops con man Alec Baldwin's fingers off with a machete. Her more humane parts include a grief-stricken Vietnam-war mom in the high quality Oscar winner The Deer Hunter (1978). Shirley's legit theatre résumé would include an early 1980's national tour of "The Music Man." Her only Broadway role, at age 52, was as Charlotte in the short-lived 1981 production of "Lolita" starring Donald Sutherland as Humbert Humbert and Blanche Baker as the nymphet. It closed after nine days. On TV, Shirley made occasional recurring appearances and in the 1980's was a short-lived regular on both daytime (as "Frankie" during 1980 on The Edge of Night (1956), "Mrs. Steve" during 1986 in Pee-wee's Playhouse (1986), and a character called "Tiny" on the 1986-1987 season of One Life to Live (1968), and nighttime drama (as Dottie Jessup in Skag (1980)). Following lesser film roles in Malcolm X (1992), Grumpier Old Men (1995) and her last, the comedy The Deli (1997), Shirley left the screen having to battle ill health. The never-married character actress died in Manhattan, New York of heart failure at age 69 on February 17, 1999. She was survived by two brothers, Ira and David, and a sister, Miriam.