Jane Winton (October 10, 1905 – September 22, 1959) was an American film actress, dancer, opera soprano, writer, and painter.[1]
Early years
Winton was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,[2] in 1905.[1] The deaths of her father when she was four years old and her mother when she was six led to Winton's being "swapped back and forth among relatives, none of whom had proper funds to support her and therefore offered her more resentment than affection."[2] Eventually, an elderly doctor who was a family friend adopted her and raised her in a strict environment. After she graduated from a finishing school in Connecticut, she ran away rather than enter Bryn Mawr College and become a doctor, which was her guardian's desire for her. She went to stay with a friend in New York City and was discovered there by producers Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky.[2]
Winton played Donna Isobel in Don Juan (1926).[1] The film starred John Barrymore and Mary Astor. The movie was billed as the first film made in Vitaphone, an invention that synchronized sound with motion pictures. Modern sound pictures began with the Vitaphone.
Opera and radio
After leaving Hollywood, Winton performed various operatic roles both in the United States and abroad. Her operatic debut came in 1933 when she performed as Nedda in the Brooklyn Academy of Music's production of Pagliacci.[3][2] In 1933, she was with the National Grand Opera Company for its production of I Pagliacci. She sang Nedda. She starred in the operetta Caviar. In England, she became noted for her singing and for working in radio.
Novelist
In 1951 Winton's novel Park Avenue Doctor was published. Passion Is the Gale was her second novel.[1]
Marriage
Winton married three times. In 1927, she wed Hollywood screenwriter Charles Kenyon.[citation needed] On July 17, 1930, she married broker Horace Gumble in Jersey City, New Jersey.[4] Her last husband was Michael T. Gottlieb, a stockbroker, tournament contract bridge player, and Arizona property owner. They wed in 1935.[citation needed]
Death
Winton died in 1959 at the Pierre Hotel in New York City from undisclosed causes. Her body was cremated, and her ashes were interred in the Riesner-Gottlieb Mausoleum in Temple Israel Cemetery, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.[1]
