Golden Holden, Part One: The Rise

William Holden was a star of the first rank for over forty years. From his screen debut in 1939's Golden Boy to his last in 1981's S.O.B., Holden personified the solid, steady American male. He hit his peak as a box office name in the 1950s, appearing six times on Quigley Publication's Annual Top Ten and topping the list in 1956. By the time of his death, however, few would have predicted such a sad and lonely demise.

William Holden at his peak in the mid-50s

Born on April 17, 1918, William Holden, after early success in 1939's Golden Boy and 1940's Our Town, spent most of the 1940s in routine films. In 1943--after eleven features of dwindling quality-- Holden enlisted in the United States Army. Upon his return to Hollywood, Holden found the going rough for a returning G.I. whose best work was nearly eight years earlier. His first film back was a routine western, Blaze of Noon, in 1947. While he stayed busy in post-war Hollywood, Holden made little impression on it, commenting later that in these films--another eleven from 1947 to 1950--he played "Smiling Jim," the clean-cut guy with a nice smile and no substance. As often happens in the movie business, though, along came a role that changed his career and his life in a film he wasn't even originally considered for: Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. 

Holden as screenwriter Joe Gillis, floating through Sunset Boulevard.
"The poor dope. He always wanted a pool."

Montgomery Clift was director Billy Wilder's first choice to play the down-on-his-luck screenwriter, Joe Gillis, in Sunset Boulevard. The sensitive and troubled Clift backed out at the last minute, however, leaving Wilder without a leading man. The director considered several others for the part of Gillis without actually approaching any of them for the part--Fred MacMurray, Gene Kelly, Marlon Brando. One by one, Wilder crossed them off his list. William Holden, under contract to Paramount where the film was made, was a name that intrigued Wilder. In spite of Holden's previous bland performances, he was attractive and appealing, and he looked like he could be a writer, or so Wilder thought. Wilder met with Holden and gave him the role. (He continued to struggle with the casting of an actress for the film's female lead character, Norma Desmond. Wilder saw everyone from Mary Pickford to Mae West [can you imagine?], yet none of them would commit. Eventually Gloria Swanson proved perfect casting as the aging silent screen star. )

To call Sunset Boulevard a game changer in Holden's career is an understatement. Fact is, without that great film, Holden probably wouldn't have had much of a film career. But due to that film, he was subsequently presented with many more opportunities. His performance in Sunset Boulevard is one of the two or three best he ever gave. Holden was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar--one of eleven the film captured--but lost to Jose Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac. In my opinion, Holden was robbed on March 29, 1951, when Academy voters bowed to the high-toned Cyrano. No matter, though. Holden's Oscar loss was cinema's gain.

Nancy Olson as Betty Schaefer with our boy, Bill, as Joe Gillis.
"Who wants true? Who wants moving?"

The tide was finally turning on Holden's screen career. Later in 1950, Holden appeared in another success, George Cukor's classic adaptation of Garson Kanin's Broadway stage comedy, Born Yesterday. He kept busy the next couple of years in solid-yet-unmemorable, bread-and-butter pictures, but in 1953, Holden had major success with two features--Otto Preminger's scandalous-for-its-time sex comedy, The Moon is Blue, and the big one, Billy Wilder's Stalag 17.  Wilder's comedy about a group of Americans in a Nazi POW camp was originally a successful Broadway play. In the film version, Holden plays Sergeant J.J. Sefton, a cynical, isolated G.I. con man who only looks out for himself. When a spy is suspected of giving the German's information on an escape plan, Sefton is the natural suspect and must find the real spy to prove his innocence to his fellow prisoners. When Wilder approached him for the film Holden was intrigued but skeptical. Ultimately, however, Holden trusted Wilder's instinct and valued his talent as writer and director, and took the role. The film was a kind of precursor to the 1960s television comedy, Hogan's Heroes, with some buffoonish comedy stuck in between a genuinely serious theme. Released in July 1953, Stalag 17 was a popular and critical success, and in early 1954, Holden was up for an Oscar again. Competition was tough. Montgomery Clift and Burt Lancaster were also nominated for 1953's big winner in the Oscar sweepstakes, From Here to Eternity. Also nominated was a Shakespearian Marlon Brando in Julius Caesar and newcomer Richard Burton in the Cinemascope extravaganza, The Robe. Unlike the 1951 ceremony, this time Holden prevailed. Professionally, he was on top of the world, and his biggest financial successes were still in front of him.

As Sefton, his Oscar winning role in Stalag 17

1954, the year Holden won his Oscar was also another huge one for him on screen as he appeared in five high-profile films (a testament to the efficiency of filmmaking in the mid-20th Century, this could never happen today) with three of them landing on Variety's Top Twenty Moneymaking films. The films varied in subject and content, including the comedy, Forever Female; the western, Escape From Fort Bravo; and the all-star drama, Executive Suite. But the two that stand out for me are The Country Girl and Sabrina. In these two movies, Holden did not play the lead, yet he contributed his distinctive presence.

Released in the fall, Sabrina, with Audrey Hepburn in the title role, is undoubtedly the best remembered of the two. Humphrey Bogart--stepping away from his usual tough guy roles--plays Linus Larrabee, a Wall Street whiz to Holden's playboy younger brother, David. Directed for the third time by the expert Billy Wilder, Holden has less to do in the film as it progresses, though he plays the integral role of bringing together Linus and Sabrina. Some feel Bogart was miscast in this Cinderella-like, romance, but I feel that the craggy Bogart is believable as the all-work, no-play executive who finally falls under Sabrina's spell. As David, Holden is winning as the ever-smiling, carefree brother. Of course, Sabrina is one of Hepburn's signature roles along with Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany's. The film scored a slew of Oscar nominations and a bucketful of box office gold for Paramount Studios.

Lunch time on the Paramount lot with Holden, Hepburn, Wilder,
and unknown man on the left.

The Country Girl stars Holden along with Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly as an alcoholic, out-of-work former Broadway musical star and his dowdy wife (played by Crosby and Kelly, respectively), and  details what happens when Crosby's Frank Elgin is offered a plum comeback role by director Bernie Dodd, played by Holden. Based on a play by Clifford Odets (the same playwright who wrote the original material behind Holden's first success, Golden Boy), the film was a stretch for Crosby and Kelly, and they both received Oscar nominations. In all these 1954 releases, Holden is in very good company--at times even overshadowed, though all of them would be poorer without him. Interestingly, as big a star as he was at the time, Holden only received top billing in two of these five 1954 releases. Nevertheless, his name was a draw: in 1954 Holden appeared at number six on the Quigley Box Office Top Ten list for the first time.

Holden with wife, Ardis (a.k.a., actress Brenda Marshall) on Oscar night, 1954

Through the early years of his career, William Holden's private life was as busy as his public one. He married Ardis Ankerson, an actress, in 1942. Together the couple had two sons, Peter and Scott. Though she made eighteen features under the professional name, Brenda Marshall, including the Errol Flynn adventure, The Sea Hawk, in 1940, Ardis essentially retired after 1943 to devote full time to marriage and family. The couple had a variety of friends, including actors Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford, and portrait painter Paul Clemens. They were present at the wedding of Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis in 1952 where Holden, a good friend of Reagan's, served as best man. At the studio Holden enjoyed the company of his fellow actors like Dean Martin, whose sense of humor he especially enjoyed.

Holden likened his life as an actor to that of a successful businessman. He was on the Screen Actor's Guild Board of Directors; he was a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission; and he attended PTA meetings whenever possible at his children's schools. But as his fame grew, his marriage started to fray. Things got so bad at the Holden residence that he bought scuba gear, so he could sit at the bottom of the pool when things became too tense with Ardis. His fondness for large quantities of liquor (few would argue that he was an alcoholic) and his numerous affairs (Grace Kelly, Capucine, Audrey Hepburn) contributed most significantly to the end of his nearly thirty-year marriage in 1971. Also, it is apparent Holden had a real wild side that he tried to suppress. He loved fast sports cars and motorcycles. Eventually, many of these dangerous and bad habits would catch up to him.

1955 continued a hot streak of hit films for Holden: the big, timely Korean War film, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, with Grace Kelly again and Fredric March; a big, romantic, interracial love story, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing with Jennifer Jones; and a big, all-star version of William Inge's stage success, Picnic, with Kim Novak, Rosalind Russell, Cliff Robertson, Betty Field, and Arthur O'Connell. These were all box office winners. By 1957, Holden was looking for ways to get out of the house more and with location work in far away countries becoming more frequent by movie companies looking to capitalize on the popularity of new widescreen technology, he spent more and more time outside the U.S. Holden found that he enjoyed seeing other parts of the world and living like a bachelor since Ardis usually stayed behind with their children. David Lean's epic World War II film, Bridge on the River Kwai, offered him such an opportunity. The film's theme, "war is madness," is well played out on location in Ceylon with Alec Guinness in his Oscar-winning role of Colonel Nicholson, a rigid, by-the-book, prisoner of war of the Japanese. In charge of the POW camp is Colonel Saito played with gusto by famed Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa, who has ordered the prisoners to build a bridge over the Kwai River. Holden plays an American named Shears, who escapes from Saito's prison camp, reaches a base hospital, and declares himself a coward in an attempt to be dishonorably discharged. However, Shears is talked into going back to the Saito's prison war camp to blow up the bridge Colonel Nicholson is building. A huge hit in its day, netting more than 18 million in 1957 dollars in its first year alone, Kwai holds up as an excellent anti-war statement and first-rate entertainment. Holden's percentage of the box office gross deal also ensured that he never had to worry about money again. From the Kwai location, Holden was off to London for The Key, a film in which co-starred with new international sex symbol, Sophia Loren, and British actor, Trevor Howard.

Holden's next film, the Civil War action picture, The Horse Soldiers, paired him with John Wayne for director John Ford. The film was not exceptional, with no one claiming it as the shining hour of anyone involved, but it was popular--number 14 on Variety's 1959 Moneymaking List--and the stars each received $750,000 plus a percentage of the gross. It was one of the biggest deals Hollywood had yet to offer any star, with the deal--an early version of "the package,"in which an agent or agency puts some of its biggest names in one film--more significant that the finished product.

(Stay tuned for the next part of this look back at William Holden's career, which will pick up with Holden's ups and downs in the 1960s and beyond.)


Sources
Books: Golden Boy: The Untold Story of William Holden by Bob Thomas
            William Holden, The Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies by Will Holtzman
            The Films of William Holden by Lawrence J. Quirk
            Reel Facts - The Movie Book of Records by Cobbett Steinberg
Internet: Wikipedia
               All photographs