Golden Holden, The Conclusion

In August 1959, William Holden, his wife Ardis, and their three children boarded a flight for Europe. Holden never looked back. He was joining a group of Hollywood stars who had discovered the tax break that came with living abroad for a portion of the year. When his business manager suggested Switzerland, Holden jumped at the chance: "Great! I'll start looking for a house." Holden had been ready to leave Hollywood behind for a while. He'd been traveling about 100,000 miles each  year, and had seen and experienced much of the world. Now Holden could see even more--and profit from it. Holden drew ire from critics who viewed him only an opportunistic movie star, but he didn't care. As biographer Bob Thomas put it, Holden considered himself a citizen of the world.

In 1960's The World of Suzie Wong, Holden's artist falls for Nancy Kwan's prostitute.

Bill Holden's first film after the decision to move to Europe was The World of Suzie Wong. Directed by the underrated Richard Quine, Suzie Wong tells the story of an American artist who settles in one of the seamier parts of Hong Kong. The hotel he lives in operates as a kind of flop house for prostitutes, of which Suzie Wong is one of the most popular. Holden played Robert Lomax, an artist who falls in love with Suzie, though complications arise before the traditional happy ending. Despite the film's unbelievable plot, Suzie Wong was a hit with stateside audiences to the tune of over $7 million 1960 dollars, making the film number seven on Variety's yearly box office champions. It was to be Holden's last bona fide success for several years.

Holden as the screenwriter in Richard Quine's Paris When It Sizzles, 1964.

Holden had no films in circulation in 1961, but 1962 saw the release of three films in which he appeared: Leo McCarey's Satan Never Sleeps, George Seaton's The Counterfeit Traitor--by consensus the best of the three--and The Lion, directed by Jack Cardiff. None of these was a success, but The Lion introduced Holden to one of the great loves of his life, the French actress Capucine. (Born Germaine Lefebvre in 1935 France, Capucine was a top-line model before her film career. After moving to New York, she was scouted by the Charles Feldman Agency, eventually appearing in a succession of films, including North to Alaska opposite John Wayne and Walk on the Wild Side, a less-than-faithful adaptation of the book by Nelson Algren.) After completing work on The Lion, Holden embarked on a massive drinking spree, the effects of which he was still feeling when he found himself face-to-face with former love Audrey Hepburn.

Two stars with a back story on what appears to be a trying day
on set during Paris When It Sizzles

To say William Holden was not psychologically or physically prepared to take on such a challenge is a massive understatement, for Holden was in one of the worst places in his life--on the outs with Ardis and involved with Capucine. To be thrown into a situation with a lover he had never really got over was more than Holden could take. His alcohol intake was so great during Paris When It Sizzles that the production was close to shutting down when director Quine persuaded Holden to dry out for eight days at a hospital that specialized in alcoholics. Desperate to keep filming, Quine recruited friend Tony Curtis to fill in with some last-minute scenes. Filmed in the summer of 1962, Paris When It Sizzles was not released until 1964 when it bombed, becoming Holden's fourth money loser in a row.

Holden's next four films fared no better than Paris When It Sizzles, and by 1968 when Variety compiled a list of stars whose high salaries didn't warrant their bankability at the box office, Holden's name appeared alongside former heavyweights like Tony Curtis, Marlon Brando, and Yul Brynner. On top of professional embarrassment, in 1966 while in Italy, Holden was involved in a two-car accident that killed the driver of the other vehicle. Most observers assumed Holden would get off with a fine, but the verdict found Holden guilty of manslaughter with a sentence of eight months in prison. The sentence was suspended, and he settled with the other vehicle's widow for $80,000. Holden's reckless lifestyle--one largely kept secret from his public--had finally caught up with him. Not quite 50 years of age, William Holden had reached a personal and professional nadir.

The comeback in The Wild Bunch

By the late Sixties, Holden's affair with Capucine had run its course. Ardis and he finally divorced in July 1971 after nearly thirty years of marriage. But, as fate would have it, Holden was actually on course to career resurrection. Sought out by the notorious hell raiser, director Sam Peckinpah, Holden was cast in The Wild Bunch. Bloody and controversial, The Wild Bunch set the gold standard for movie westerns much like John Ford's Stagecoach did thirty years earlier. Not a huge box office winner, The Wild Bunch was a succès de scandale due to its bloody excess and slow-motion depiction of violence. Even critics who deplored the film, however, had to give Holden credit for his most committed work on film in ages.

For the next few years Holden worked on interesting, but not particularly successful, films like The Revengers, a run-of-the-mill western; Blake Edwards' The Wild Rovers, another western and still-underrated film in which Holden gives a poignant portrait of a man who has outlived his time; Clint Eastwood's Breezy; and big box office winner, The Towering Inferno. Holden recognized Inferno as a bit of nonsense but "disaster" films were popular at the time (Inferno would be the second biggest hit of the season behind Jaws). And appearing alongside the stellar cast of Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, and Jennifer Jones among others did nothing to hurt his reputation.

1974 was to be a good year for William Holden. Along with the success of The Towering Inferno, he won an Emmy for Best Actor for a television adaptation of Joseph Wambaugh's The Blue Knight. Next up for Holden was a role he was not initially considered for: 1976's ever-prescient Network. Starring with Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall, and a scene-stealing Peter Finch, Holden once again reminded film audiences why he was still a top screen presence. In the role of Max Schumacher--a part first offered to Jack Lemmon--Holden gave his best performance in twenty years, as an aging television executive in charge of a failing network's news division and a failing marriage.

His best work in over twenty years:
Sidney Lumet's Network which netted Holden his first Best Actor nomination in 23 years.

Network is a great film in a year of great films--All The President's Men, Taxi Driver, The Omen, Seven Beauties, Carrie, The Bad News Bears, Silent Movie, 1900, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Shootist, Robin and Marian, Obsession, and the year's best picture Oscar winner, Rocky. In Network Holden did possibly his best work ever, yet his performance was basically overlooked. While it's true that he was Oscar-nominated, most of the press went to Finch for his "mad prophet of the airwaves" and Dunaway for her heart-of-stone network programmer. In this sea of loud performances, Holden had the role of a man at a crossroads in his life, fighting age, trying to help his friend Finch, and falling for the tough-as-nails Dunaway. Holden underplays as only he could and reveals a side he grappled with in real life--the unfaithful husband, successful on the outside, lost on the inside and deeply dissatisfied, looking for fulfillment in the arms of another (younger) woman. Oscar voters rewarded Finch, Dunaway, and Beatrice Straight (as Holden's wife). Holden went home empty-handed but with a renewed sense of pride and recognition from the industry that had nearly forgotten him. Life imitated art as he also found love in the arms of a woman much younger than he, actress Stefanie Powers. The two were together nearly ten years before Holden's alcoholism drove too deep a wedge between them.

With Marthe Keller in the underrated Fedora, director Billy Wilder's take on the price of movie fame

After Network, Holden worked regularly in mostly forgettable movies like Damien: Omen II; When Time Ran Out, another Irwin Allen disaster picture with a stellar cast; and Escape to Athena. A couple that stand out is in the underrated, under-seen Fedora, in which Holden reunited with Billy Wilder, and his swan song, Blake Edwards' S.O.B. Holden plays a filmmaker in both--a producer in Fedora, a close descendant of Sunset Boulevard's Joe Gillis (i.e., a down-on-his-luck, cynical yet hopeful), and a director in S.O.B. In Fedora, Holden gave his last great performance, and it would have been a fitting swan song. But his final farewell belonged to Blake Edwards' S.O.B. in which Holden played a film director subservient to his producer pal played by Richard Mulligan. Whereas Fedora was a bittersweet valentine, S.O.B. is strictly bitter. Edwards' Hollywood is quite different from Wilder's. Fedora is a throwback to when film stars had a real aura--even if that aura was maintained in the medical clinics of Europe--and how a persona can suck the life right out of them. On the other hand, S.O.B. is--hilariously--all orgies, pot smoking, corpse stealing, and revenge getting. Through all the madness and wild agendas S.O.B. shows us, Holden's character Cully, a seen-it-done-it-all, could have been Holden himself. By this time--1981--Holden had seen any- and everything Hollywood and the world had to offer. No longer out to prove himself, Cully, like Holden, just wants to survive, live and let live. For Cully life is too short to get caught up in studio politics and intrigues. As another of the film's characters aptly puts it, "He's probably shacked up with a couple of broads and a bottle of Jack Daniels. What the hell does he care." Sad thing is that after S.O.B. premiered in July 1981, that's essentially what Holden did.

But it wasn't a bottle of Jack Daniels, it was a bottle (or two) of vodka and a few beers. And he didn't have "a couple of broads" with him. He was alone. Doing what he must have done hundreds of times: breaking the sound barrier, drinking himself into a stupor before collapsing into bed. Only this time William Holden didn't make it to bed. Completely trashed, Holden tripped on a throw rug and hit his head on the edge of the nightstand. Not realizing the seriousness of his wound, Holden tried to stop the bleeding with several tissues before passing out and dying from loss of blood. Loner that he was, it was several days before his body was discovered. Billy Wilder reflected, "I really loved Bill, but it turned out I didn't know him.... To be killed by a bottle of vodka and a night table--what a lousy fadeout for a great guy." It's an assessment that's hard to argue with, though looking at his life, it's an entirely apt end. Bill Holden, international film star, rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams, lover to some of the worlds most desirable women, died alone and drunk. It's who Bill Holden really was, feeling himself unworthy of the accolades and fame, still the frightened beginner that Barbara Stanwyck mentored on the Golden Boy set way back in 1939 when he was close to being fired. Despite all he had done and the worldwide recognition he had gained, William Holden was, at heart, still that terrified youngster, vulnerable, and insecure. Ironically, it is these characteristics that made him such a good film actor, always underplaying a scene, always believable, careful not to push a scene too hard for fear it would spill into overacting. Holden was like Spencer Tracy or Robert Mitchum or Gary Cooper in that you couldn't see him acting. He was just being. Embodying, breathing, reacting, being the person he was pretending to be. Any performer worth his salt will tell you that is the hardest thing to do. And Bill Holden did it better than anyone. His life may have had a tragic end, yet he left us the gift of his talent and the legacy of his films. He did not die in vain.    

Sources: See blog post Golden Holden, The Rise