Dana Wynter

Wynter was born in Berlin, Germany,{{cite book|author=Weaver, Tom|title=I Was a Monster Movie Maker|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Hx1gobckUGEC&pg=PA294|publisher=McFarland|year=2001|page=294|isbn=978-0-7864-1000-2}} the daughter of Dr. Peter Winter, a British surgeon of German descent, and his wife Jutta Oarda, a native of Hungary.

She grew up in Britain. When she was 16, her father visited friends in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe today), fell in love with the country, and brought his daughter and her stepmother to live with him there.

Dana Wynter (as she called herself and pronounced Dar-nuh){{citation needed|date=May 2020}} later enrolled at South Africa's Rhodes University in 1949. She studied medicine while also pursuing theatre, playing the blind girl in a school production of Through a Glass Darkly, a role in which she said she had been "terrible". After a year of studies, she returned to Britain and turned to acting.

Wynter began her cinema career at age 20 in 1951, playing small roles, often uncredited, in British films. One such was Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951) in which other future leading ladies, Kay Kendall, Diana Dors, and Joan Collins, played similarly small roles. She was appearing in the play Hammersmith when an American agent told her he wanted to represent her. She was again uncredited when she played Morgan Le Fay's servant in the MGM film Knights of the Round Table (1953).

Wynter left for New York on 5 November 1953, Guy Fawkes Day (which commemorates a failed attempt in 1605 to blow up the English Parliament). "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. She appeared on the stage and on TV, where she had leading roles in Robert Montgomery Presents (1953), Suspense (1954), Studio One (1955), a 1963 episode of The Virginian ("If You Have Tears"), and a 1965 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour ("An Unlocked Window"), which won an Edgar Award.{{Citation needed |date=July 2020}}

She moved to Hollywood, where in 1955 she was placed under contract by 20th Century Fox. In that same year, she won the Golden Globe award for Most Promising Newcomer, a title she shared with Anita Ekberg and Victoria Shaw. She graduated to playing major roles in major films. She co-starred with Kevin McCarthy, Larry Gates, and Carolyn Jones, playing Becky Driscoll in the original film version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).{{cite news|title=Dana Wynter|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/8503334/Dana-Wynter.html|work=The Telegraph|access-date=August 8, 2011|location=London|date=9 May 2011}}

She starred opposite Robert Taylor in D-Day the Sixth of June (1956), alongside Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier in Something of Value (1957), Mel Ferrer in Fräulein (1958), Robert Wagner in In Love and War (1958), James Cagney and Don Murray in Shake Hands with the Devil (1959), and the last of her 20th Century Fox contract roles opposite Kenneth More in Sink the Bismarck! (1960).

She then starred opposite Danny Kaye in On the Double (1961), and George C. Scott in The List of Adrian Messenger (1963).

In shooting two films in Ireland, she made a second home there with her husband, Hollywood divorce lawyer Greg Bautzer. Over the following two decades, she guest-starred in dozens of television series, including the title character in several Wagon Train episodes, such as "The Barbara Lindquist Story", and in occasional roles in films such as Airport (1970). She appeared as various British women in the ABC television series Twelve O'Clock High (1964–66).

In 1966–67, she co-starred with Robert Lansing (who had been the original star of Twelve O'Clock High) on The Man Who Never Was, but the series lasted only one season. She guest-starred in 1968 in The Invaders in the episode "The Captive", and in 1969, on the second version of The Donald O'Connor Show. On Get Smart, The Rockford Files, and Hart to Hart, she played beautiful, upper-class schemers and villains. She also was on an episode of The Love Boat, "Sounds of Silence".

She appeared in the Irish soap opera, Bracken (1978–80). In 1993, she returned to television to play Raymond Burr's wife in The Return of Ironside.

File:Dana Wynter and Greg Bautzer, 1957.jpg (1957)]]

File:Dana Wynter (1963).jpg

In 1956, Wynter married celebrity divorce lawyer Greg Bautzer; they divorced in 1981. Bautzer and she had one child: Mark Ragan Bautzer, born on 29 January 1960. Wynter, once referred to as Hollywood's "oasis of elegance", divided her time between her homes in California and Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland. She also had an apartment in Royal Hibernian Way in Dublin. An anti-apartheid advocate, she refused to open a performance center in South Africa because she discovered that black and white children would have to attend on alternate days.Sydney Morning Herald, 9 June 1971

In the late 1980s, Wynter authored the column "Grassroots" for The Guardian newspaper in London.Dana Wynter, "Grassroots: The pheasant who came to dinner,",The Guardian (London), 25 January 1986 Writing in both Ireland and California, her works concentrated mainly on life in both locations leading her to use the titles Irish Eyes and California Eyes for a number of her publications."Poor little shepherd who's lost his way ... baa baa baa" The Guardian (London), 14 November 1987."Going west/Dana Wynter who has lived in California for 25 years, finds the place a nightmare", The Guardian (London), 12 January 1989.

In July 2008, Wynter was involved in a legal dispute over the proceeds of the sale of a €125,000 Paul Henry painting, Evening on Achill Sound. The painting, which hung in the family home in County Wicklow, was said to have been bought for her in 1996 by her son as a gift."Former Hollywood star takes case in dispute over painting", The Irish Times (Dublin), 10 July 2008 The dispute was resolved in the High Court in 2009."Dispute between Killybegs businessman and Hollywood actress settled", Donegal Democrat, 16 July 2009.

Wynter died on 5 May 2011 from congestive heart failure at the Ojai Valley Community Hospital's Continuing Care Center; she was 79 years old. She had suffered from heart disease in her later years, and was transferred from the hospital's intensive care unit earlier in the day. Her son Mark said she was not expected to survive, and "she stepped off the bus very peacefully."{{cite web |url=http://ovnblog.com/?p=4343 |title=Actress Dana Wynter Dies in Ojai at Ojai Valley News Blog |access-date=2011-05-09 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110509032727/http://ovnblog.com/?p=4343 |archive-date=2011-05-09 }}, Ojai Valley News Blog

{{reflist|2}}

• Dana Wynter, Other People Other Places: Memories of Four Continents, Caladrius Press Dublin, 2005, ISBN 978-1-599-75242-6

{{Commons}}

• {{IMDb name|944073}}
• {{IBDB name}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20110509032727/http://ovnblog.com/?p=4343 "Actress Dana Wynter dies in Ojai"], Ojai Valley News

{{Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year Actress}}

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Category:1931 births

Category:2011 deaths

Category:20th-century British actresses

Category:20th Century Studios contract players

Category:Actresses from Berlin

Category:British expatriates in Ireland

Category:British expatriate actresses in the United States

Category:British film actresses

Category:British people of German descent

Category:British people of Hungarian descent

Category:British television actresses

Category:Rhodes University alumni

Category:New Star of the Year (Actress) Golden Globe winners

Category:20th-century British businesspeople