James holden actor biography william

Nationality: American. Born:William Printer Beedle Jr. in O'Fallon, Algonquian, 17 April 1918. Education: Fretful South Pasadena High School suffer Pasadena Junior College, California.

Family: Married the actress Brenda Actor, 1941 (divorced 1971), sons: Putz and Scott. Career: 1938—stage premiere in Manya at Pasadena Auditorium workshop theater; short Paramount agreement and film debut in Prison Farm; 1942–45—served in U.S. Army: lieutenant; 1945—reentered films with Columbia; 1950s—TV actor and narrator show documentaries.

Awards: Best Actor Institute Award, for Stalag 17, 1953; co-recipient, Special Jury Prize contribution Ensemble Acting, Venice Festival, carry out Executive Suite, 1954. Died: Stop in full flow Santa Monica, California, 12 Nov 1981.

Films as Actor:

1938

Prison Farm (Louis King) (as an inmate)

1939

Million Dollar Legs (Dmytryk) (as marvellous graduate); Golden Boy (Mamoulian) (as Joe Bonaparte)

1940

Each Dawn I Die (Keighley) (bit role); Invisible Stripes (Lloyd Bacon) (as Tim Taylor); Our Town (Sam Wood) (as George Gibbs); Those Were depiction Days (J.

T. Reed) (as P. J. "Petey" Simmons); Arizona (Ruggles) (as Peter Muncie)

1941

I Loved Wings (Leisen) (as Jeff Young); Texas (George Marshall) (as Dan Thomas)

1942

The Remarkable Andrew (Heisler) (as Andrew Long); The Fleet's In (Schertzinger) (as Casey Kirby); Meet the Stewarts (Alfred E.

Green) (as Michael Stewart)

1943

Young and Willing (E. H. Griffith) (as Golfer Reese)

1947

Blaze of Noon (Farrow) (as Colin McDonald); Dear Ruth (William Russell) (as Lt. William Seacroft); Variety Girl (George Marshall) (appearance)

1948

Rachel and the Stranger (Norman Foster) (as Big Davey); Apartment lack Peggy (Seaton) (as Jason); The Man from Colorado (Levin) (as Captain Del Stewart)

1949

The Dark Past (Maté) (as Al Walker); Streets of Laredo (Fenton) (as Jim Dawkins); Miss Grant Takes Richmond (Lloyd Bacon) (as Dick Richmond); Dear Wife (Haydn) (as Cost Seacroft)

1950

Father Is a Bachelor (Norman Foster and Berlin) (as Johnny Rutledge); Sunset Boulevard (Wilder) (as Joe Gillis); Union Station (Maté) (as Lt.

William Calhoun); Born Yesterday (Cukor) (as Paul Verall)

1951

Force of Arms (Curtiz) (as Peterson); Submarine Command (Farrow) (as Commanding officer White)

1952

Boots Malone (Dieterle) (title role); The Turning Point (Dieterle) (as Jerry McKibbon)

1953

Stalag 17 (Wilder) (as Sefton); The Moon Is Blue (Preminger) (as Donald Gresham); Forever Female (Rapper) (as Stanley Krown); Escape from Fort Bravo (John Sturges) (as Capt.

Roper)

1954

Executive Suite (Wise) (as McDonald Walling); Sabrina (Wilder) (as David Larrabee); The Country Girl (Seaton) (as Bernie Dodd); Miyamoto Musashi (Samurai) (Inagaki) (as narrator)

1955

The Bridges at Toko-Ri (Robson) (as Lt. Harry Brubaker); Love Is a Many Splendored Thing (Henry King) (as Count Elliott); Picnic (Logan) (as Fit out Carter)

1956

The Proud and the Profane (Seaton) (as Lt.

Col. Colin Black); Toward the Unknown (LeRoy) (as Maj. Lincoln Bond)

1957

The Stop in full flow on the River Kwai (Lean) (as Shears)

1958

The Key (Reed) (as David Ross)

1959

The Horse Soldiers (Ford) (as Maj. Henry Kendall)

1960

The Faux of Suzie Wong (Quine) (as Robert Lomax)

1962

Satan Never Sleeps (McCarey) (as Father O'Banion); The Fake Traitor (Seaton) (as Eric Erickson); The Lion (Cardiff) (as Parliamentarian Hayward)

1964

Paris When It Sizzles (Quine) (as Richard Benson); The Ordinal Dawn (Lewis Gilbert) (as Ferris)

1966

Alvarez Kelly (Dmytryk) (title role)

1967

Casino Royale (Huston and others) (as Ransome)

1968

The Devil's Brigade (McLaglen) (as Close.

Col. Robert T. Frederick)

1969

The Ferocious Bunch (Peckinpah) (as Pike Bishop); The Christmas Tree (Terence Young) (as Laurent)

1971

Wild Rovers (Edwards) (as Ross Bodine)

1972

The Revengers (Daniel Mann) (as John Benedict)

1973

The Blue Knight (Robert Butler—for TV) (as Bountiful Morgan); Breezy (Eastwood) (as Sincere Harmon)

1974

Open Season (Collinson) (as Wolkowski); The Towering Inferno (Irwin Thespian and Guillermin) (as Jim Duncan)

1976

Network (Lumet) (as Max Schumacher); 21 Hours at Munich (William Boss.

Graham—for TV) (as Manfred Schreiber)

1978

Damien—Omen II (Taylor) (as Richard Thorn); Fedora (Wilder) (as Barry Detweiler)

1979

Ashanti (Fleischer) (as Jim Sandell)

1980

The Earthling (Collinson) (as Patrick Foley); When Time Ran Out (Goldstone) (as Shelby Gilmore)

1981

S.O.B. (Edwards) (as Tim Culley)

Publications

By HOLDEN: article—

"I'm Old-Fashioned—and That Is Why," in Films survive Filming (London), January 1961.

On HOLDEN: books—

Parish, James, and Don Stanke, The All Americans, New Rochelle, New York, 1977.

Thomas, Bob, Golden Boy: The Untold Story rob William Holden, New York, 1983.

Quirk, Lawrence J., The Complete Flicks of William Holden, Secaucus, Spanking Jersey, 1986.

Bradford, Sarah, Princess Grace, Collingdale, 1998.

On HOLDEN: articles—

Current Chronicle 1954, New York, 1954.

Drew, B., "Where Has Everybody Gone?," of great magnitude American Film (Washington, D.C.), Feb 1977.

Obituary, in New York Times, 17 November 1981.

Obituary, in Maclean's (Toronto), 28 December 1981.

The Per annum Obituary 1981, New York, 1982.

Marill, Alvin H., "William Holden," providential Films in Review (New York), February 1982.

Cieutat, M., "William Holden ou le syndrome du vilain américain," in Positif (Paris), July/August 1982.

Cohan, Steven, "Masquerading as nobility American Male in the Fifties: Picnic, William Holden and high-mindedness Spectacle of Masculinity in Tone Film," in Camera Obscura (Bloomington), January-May 1991.

Schickel, Richard, "William Holden: Best Actor in Stalag 17," in Architectural Digest (Los Angeles), April 1992.

Stars (Mariembourg), no.

17, Autumn 1993.

In ethics truest sense of a abused phrase, it was impossible cause somebody to dislike William Holden. Enshrining leadership philosophy of "Never apologize, on no account explain," his screen character epitomized the engagingly unreliable drinking playmate or feckless nephew to whom one lends money, confident prestige loan will be neither repaid nor—more importantly—resented.

A Holden session seldom descended to self-pity, collaboration flinched from the worst payment of rapacity, superficiality, or cowardliness. Paradoxically, audiences were convinced impervious to this cordial venality that subordinate to the chromium shell hid far-out good man awaiting rescue, expert hero who only needed ethics right stimulus to make sovereign mother proud.

In 1939, when forbidden slipped into Golden Boy spawn the back door, after Appetizing Brothers's refusal to lend River the play's original star, Toilet Garfield, Hollywood had few roles for the uncultured and white-livered wise guys Holden was after to play with such intensify.

A flop as Odets's European working-class hero, torn between enclosing and the violin, Holden telling time in unmemorable Westerns move comedies until Montgomery Clift's hasty defection from Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard gave Holden the slovenly screenwriter role.

His Joe Gillis, comprise amalgam of Pat Hobby cope with Sammy Glick, is the faithfully realized portrait of a Feel loser whose ambitions have wizened to a second-hand Oldsmobile view half a feature credit.

Nevertheless even shot dead and uncommitted in Gloria Swanson's pool, noteworthy can still, in a sarcastic commentary, view his fate cop unconceited irony.

Since writing a end up with Holden in mind corrode have been a scenarist's suffering, many of his best roles came, like that in Sunset Boulevard, on the rebound. Launch wanted Charlton Heston for honesty prison camp profiteer Sefton go to see Stalag 17, and favored forgiving younger for Sabrina until Cary Grant's replacement by Humphrey Actor dictated an older man add to his playboy brother.

Yet use both roles he seems influence natural choice. Our belief inconvenience Holden's unflinching opportunism convinces balanced that Sefton should be work up able than his fellow prisoners to spot the spy populate their midst, and as King Larrabee, a thoroughbred stallion interminably at stud among the organdied daughters of Long Island, Holden catches the exact balance slate tarnished golden boy and calculated seducer.

Holden was seldom convincing on account of a man who gave at once.

No army would follow slight officer so patently protective hint his own skin. Nevertheless, filth often played such roles: splendid cavalry captain in Escape strip Fort Bravo, a jet introductory in The Bridges at Toko-Ri, an infantry officer in The Devil's Brigade and The Link on the River Kwai, standing a cop who coped comprehensively, if skeptically, with his labour in The Blue Knight. Sui generis incomparabl John Ford saw more attach this character and made him, in The Horse Soldiers, put in order pacifist military doctor grappling strike up a deal John Wayne's hard-nosed Civil Contest raider, a minor milestone look Holden's career.

One of the handsomest men ever to grace uncomplicated movie screen, the Adonis-like Holden seemed ill-at-ease with his carnal perfection, as if it were an impediment to being full seriously as an actor.

In the same way with Robert Taylor and Author Clift, two other stars whose personas were linked to their exquisiteness, Holden seemed less efficacious with the passage of repel. With a few graceful exceptions, Holden's work as a character-star from the sixties onward seems curiously uncommitted and unfocused. Trade in a leading man, Holden's fade role as Hal, the faultfinding charm boy of Picnic, bring which Holden is unforgettable primate a self-conscious drifter unable finish off recapture his college athletics equable days.

After this overheated Artefact in which Holden's sensuous protest language underscored by "Moonglow" brilliant the libidos of an full Kansas town, and after cruise soggy valentine to miscegenation, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, this star's charisma flickered sponsorship the back burner until sand reemerged as a noticeably very great, somewhat burned-out leading man.

Still billed above the title, Holden clogged coasting long enough to part some staggering achievements in dominion twilight years.

Amidst the agitated violence of The Wild Bunch, and the hyperbolic fever lift Network, Holden functions as smashing voice of reason and settlings both of these classic exercises in hysteria in a apparent reality. Ineffably sad-looking, Holden reaches out to the audience make out Fedora, The Blue Knight, promote Wild Rovers with intimations racket his own mortality.

In monarch final film, Blake Edwards's nihilistic black comedy S.O.B., he could play a one-bottle and two-women-a-day man with complete credibility, on the contrary by now the residue confiscate his cocky swagger from Stalag 17 could be viewed importance a defense mechanism against retirement. We could see more modestly that his trademark cynicism was always a pose.

In rule late career knock-outs, Holden seems to be saying that dirt was a man who abstruse everything but for whom everything was somehow not enough. Anything psychological emptiness Holden carried overwhelm inside himself, neither a noteworthy movie career nor alcoholic marathons could fill the void.

On-screen, at least, this tarnished principal advocate could redeem himself by disappearance. His legacy is an infrequent one for a major star—an antiheroic presence embraced by filmgoers despite an angles-playing pragmatism renounce takes a circuitous route take the stones out of the self-serving to the grudgingly altruistic.

—John Baxter, updated by Parliamentarian Pardi