By
Ed Garea
His
star burned bright for only about a decade until it was put out by
alcohol, but while it was aflame, none burned any brighter.
Born William
Franklin Beedle Jr. on April 17, 1918, in O’Fallon, Illinois, he
was the oldest son of William Franklin Beedle, an industrial chemist,
and his wife Mary Blanche Ball, a schoolteacher. The family moved to
Pasadena when he was three. An alumni of South Pasadena High School,
he attended Pasadena Junior College, studying chemistry. While there
he became involved in local radio plays, which led to a talent scout
from Paramount signing him to a contract.
It was decided a
change of name was necessary. One version of how he obtained the
stage name "Holden" is that an assistant director and scout
named Harold Winston gave him that name in honor of his ex-wife,
actress Gloria Holden. However, a more conventional explanation was
that he was given the name of silent and early sound character actor
William Holden, who died in 1932.
Holden's first
starring role was in Golden Boy (1939), co-starring
Barbara Stanwyck, where he played violinist-turned-boxer. Stanwyck
liked the young tyro and went out of her way to help him succeed,
using her personal time to coach and encourage him. This sparked a
lifelong friendship. At the 1982 Oscars ceremony Stanwyck was
presented with an honorary Oscar for a lifetime of work in pictures.
Holden had died only a few months before, and at the end of her
acceptance speech she paid him a personal tribute: "I loved him
very much, and I miss him. He always wished that I would get an
Oscar. And so tonight, my golden boy, you got your wish.”
He worked with
George Raft and Humphrey Bogart in Invisible Stripes (WB,
1939), following it with a turn as George Gibbs in the film
adaptation of Our Town (UA, 1940). After Columbia
picked up half of his contract, he alternated between starring in
several minor pictures for Paramount and Columbia before serving as a
second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II.
There he acted in training films for the First Motion Picture
Unit. It wasn’t until 1950 that he became a star when he
replaced Montgomery Clift as the co-lead with Gloria Swanson in Billy
Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (Paramount, 1950). His
role as down-at-the-heels screenwriter Joe Gillis, taken in by faded
silent-screen star Norma Desmond (Swanson) won Holden his first Best
Actor Oscar nomination. Up next he starred with Judy Holliday in the
classic Born Yesterday (Columbia, 1950).
Following the
success of Sunset Boulevard, his career took off as he
played a series of roles deftly combining his matinee idol looks with
a philosophy of cynical detachment. This paid off with the Best Actor
Oscar for his turn as a prisoner-of-war entrepreneur in Stalag
17 (Paramount, 1953). He played a pressured young
engineer/family man in Executive Suite (MGM, 1954), a playboy who becomes interested in the daughter of his family's
chauffeur (Audrey Hepburn) in Sabrina (Paramount,
1954), a conflicted jet pilot in the Korean War film The
Bridges at Toko-Ri (Paramount,1954), an acerbic stage director
in The Country Girl (Paramount, 1954), a
handsome drifter in Picnic (Columbia, 1955), and a
dashing war correspondent in Love is a Many-Splendored
Thing (20th Century Fox, 1955). His last blockbuster and his
most widely recognized role was as an ill-fated prisoner in The
Bridge on the River Kwai (Columbia, 1957) with Alec
Guinness.
His later career was
marked by a series of mediocre movies, but in 1969, Holden made a
comeback, starring in director Sam Peckinpah’s graphically violent
Western The Wild Bunch (WB, 1969). In 1974 Holden won a
Primetime Emmy Award for his portrayal of cynical, tough veteran LAPD
street cop Bumper Morgan in the made-for-television film The
Blue Knight. He also starred in The Towering
Inferno (Fox/WB, 1974) with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen.
In 1976 he won acclaim for his role as television executive Max
Schumacher in Network (MGM). His last role was as
Tim Culley in Blake Edwards’ S.O.B. (Paramount,
1981).
On the personal
side, Holden was married to actress Brenda Marshall (Ardis Ankerson)
from 1941 until their divorce 30 years later, in 1971. The marriage
produced sons Peter Westfield "West" Holden and Scott
Porter Holden. He also adopted Marshall’s daughter, Virginia, from
her first marriage with actor Richard Gaines.
While
on the set of Sabrina he
had a brief romance with Hepburn. Although they discussed marriage,
the relationship fizzled due to two factors: (1) his dependence on
alcohol, and (2) the fact he had a vasectomy. Hepburn wanted
children. After meeting French actress Capucine on the set of The
Lion (Fox,
1962), the two began a two-year affair that ended because of Holden’s
drinking, though they remained friends until his death in 1981. While
in Italy in 1966, Holden killed another driver in a drunk-driving
incident for which he received an eight-month suspended sentence for
vehicular manslaughter.
Holden was best man
at the wedding of his friend Ronald Reagan to Nancy Davis in 1952,
but never became interested in politics. Instead, his passion was
animal conservation. On a trip to Africa, he fell in love with the
wildlife and became increasingly concerned with the animal species
that were beginning to decrease in population. and he spent much of
his time working for wildlife conservation as a managing partner in
an animal preserve in Africa. With the help of his partners, he
created the Mount Kenya Game Ranch in 1959, dedicated to
assisting Kenya with the wildlife education of its youth.
Within the compound,
which soon became a go-to place for the international jet set, is the
Mount Kenya Conservancy, which runs an animal orphanage, providing
shelter and care for orphaned, injured and neglected animals found in
the wild, with the aim of releasing these animals back into the wild
whenever possible, as well as the Bongo Rehabilitation Program in
collaboration with the Kenya Wildlife Service.
In 1972, Holden
began a nine-year relationship with actress Stefanie Powers, which
sparked her interest in animal welfare. After his death, Powers set
up the William Holden Wildlife Foundation at Holden's Mount Kenya
Game Ranch.
On November 12,
1981, while in his apartment in Santa Monica, California, Holden
slipped on a rug and severely lacerated his forehead on a teak
bedside table, bleeding to death. His body was found four days later,
with the cause of death listed as "exsanguination" and
"blunt laceration of scalp.” His will specified that he be
cremated, with his ashes spread in the Pacific Ocean. In accordance
with his wishes, no funeral or memorial service was held.
Films
Of his early films,
we recommend his memorable debut, Golden Boy (April
2, 8 pm), Invisible Stripes (April 3, 6:45
am), The slice-of-life Our Town (April
2, Midnight), the underrated Apartment For Peggy (April
16, 2:15 am), and the hilarious Born Yesterday (April
30, 8 pm).
From his star period
we recommend, of course, Sunset Boulevard (April
9, 8 pm), Billy Wilder’s cynical and wonderful Stalag
17 (April 9, 10 pm), the high-gloss soap opera Executive
Suite (April 2, 10 pm), David Lean’s epic The
Bridge on the River Kwai (April 9, 12:15 am), a war
correspondent in love with Eurasian doctor Jennifer Jones in Love
is a Many-Splendored Thing (20th Century Fox, 1955), and
the absorbing Picnic (April 30, 10 pm).
Those
in his late period we recommend are the ultra-violent The
Wild Bunch (April 23, 12:30 am), the
satire-with-a-sledgehammer Network* (April
30, Midnight), and the comedy S.O.B. (April
30, 2:15 am). (* - not really, but David likes it)
Of
his other, unheralded films, we recommend the offbeat comedy Boots
Malone, with Stanley Clements, who replaced Leo Gorcey with
The Bowery Boys (April 10, 7 am), Otto Preminger’s misfire, The
Moon is Blue, with David Niven (April 16, 8 pm), John
Ford’s The Horse Soldiers, with John Wayne
(April 23, 8 pm), and the Western Escape From Fort Bravo,
a rare chance to see Howard McNear – Floyd the Barber on the Andy
Griffith Show – on film (April 24, 7:15 am).
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