Winona Winter

Biography

Huntsville, Alabama, coughed up a winter wind in 1889 that carried the first cry of Winona Gordon Winter. Her cradle rocked in the wings: father William Banks Winter—actor, tunesmith, the man who gave the world the swooning “White Wings”—tucked the toddler under his coat and marched her onstage before she could spell her own name. At six she commandeered Detroit’s The Little Tycoon, a moppet with a grown-up voice and a dummy tucked under one arm. Vaudeville circuits soon whispered about the blonde sylph who could make a wooden boy talk back and still hit a high C; audiences christened her “The Cheer Up Girl” the way you christen a comet—something bright you can’t catch. Broadway finally opened its brass doors in 1906: The Little Cherub perched her on the Great White Way, followed by The Fascinating Widow and He Came From Milwaukee. One flicker only ever tempted her toward celluloid—1914’s The Man From Mexico, where she traded a quip or two with John Barrymore, then retreated east again where the footlights felt warmer. Love arrived wearing a realtor’s smile. On Armistice Day 1915 she married Lloyd Simpson; their son, Lloyd Jr., landed the following year. The universe clawed back the gift in January 1922, when the five-year-old slipped away. By winter the marriage had cracked; she filed for divorce on grounds of abandonment, only to stitch it together again—until a ten-day whirl with press-agent Norman Sper spun into a second wedding in 1925. Their son Norman Jr. arrived soon after, and Winona cobbled a new act, “Broadway O’Grams,” a scrapbook of her biggest whistles and wisecracks that toured until her body hissed its protests: rheumatic heart, peptic ulcers, lungs that couldn’t keep pace with her punchlines. The stage finally dimmed. On April 27, 1940, her heart—overworked from curtain calls and heartbreaks—quieted at fifty. Hollywood Forever claimed her stoneside plot, but the ripple kept rolling: Norman Jr. tightened his tuck and sliced into water so cleanly the world crowned him diving royalty.