George "Foghorn" Winslow - H 2015
Courtesy of Everett CollectionGeorge “Foghorn” Winslow, the child actor with the unusual deep, raspy voice who couldn’t resist Marilyn Monroe’s “animal magnetism” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, has died. He was 69.
Winslow, who made his big-screen debut opposite Cary Grant in Room for One More (1952), died June 13 of a heart attack at his home in Camp Meeker, Calif., The Press Democrat reported.
He shared his home with about 25 cats, his friend told the newspaper.
Before he retired from show business at the ripe old age of 12, the scene-stealing Winslow also played the title character opposite Richard Widmark in My Pal Gus (1952) and starred with Clifton Webb and Edmund Gwenn in Mister Scoutmaster (1953) — the first film in which he was billed as “Foghorn.”
In the Howard Hawks musical comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), which starred Monroe as gold-digging bombshell Lorelei Lee, Winslow (as admirer Henry Spofford III) assists Monroe after she gets wedged in a porthole.
He helps her for a couple of reasons: “The first reason is I’m too young to be sent to jail,” he says in the movie. “The second reason is you got a lot of animal magnetism.”
Winslow later is called “Marilyn Monroe’s Favorite Boy Friend” in the trailer for the comedy The Rocket Man (1954), in which he starred as a space-happy boy whose toy ray gun wields great power. (Lenny Bruce served as one of that film’s writers.)
A native of Los Angeles, Winslow (then known by his birth name, George Wentzlaff) appeared several times on the Art Linkletter radio program People Are Funny. Grant supposedly heard the show and introduced the 6-year-old boy to director Norman Taurog, who cast Winslow as Teenie, one of the foster children, in Room for One More.
Winslow also worked with Monroe, Grant and Hawks in Monkey Business (1952) and appeared in the Dean Martin–Jerry Lewis musical comedy Artists and Models (1955). He played the same character in the rock ’n’ roll-themed Rock, Pretty Baby (1956) and its sequel, Summer Love (1958).
On television, Winslow was seen on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Blondie.
He served in the Navy during the Vietnam War and retired from the U.S. Postal Service a few years ago, the Press Democrat reported.
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