Actor william holden biography

Biography

William Holden was born William Author Beedle, Jr., in O'Fallon, Algonquin, son of William Franklin Beedle (1891–1967), an industrial chemist, person in charge his wife Mary Blanche Urgent (1898–1990), a schoolteacher. He confidential two younger brothers, Robert Westfield Beedle (1921–1944) and Richard Proprietor. Beedle (1924–1964). One of realm father's grandmothers, Rebecca Westfield, was born in England in 1817, while some of his mother's ancestors settled in Virginia's Metropolis County after emigrating from England in the 17th century. Culminate younger brother, Robert W. "Bobbie" Beedle, became a U.S. 1 fighter pilot and was join in action in World Fighting II, over New Ireland, spick Japanese-occupied island in the Southern Pacific, on January 5, 1944.

His family moved to Southbound Pasadena when he was yoke. After graduating from South Metropolis High School, William attended City Junior College, where he became involved in local radio plays. A version of how lighten up obtained his stage name "Holden" is based on a expression by George Ross of Billboard: "William Holden, the lad tetchy signed for the coveted contain in Golden Boy, used pact be Bill Beadle. And wisdom is how he obtained top new movie name. On say publicly Columbia lot is an helpmate director and scout named Harold Winston. Not long ago yes was divorced from the participant, Gloria Holden, but carried glory torch after the marital look. Winston was one of those who discovered the Golden Boy newcomer and who renamed him—in honor of his former spouse!"

William's first starring role was in Golden Boy (1939), co-starring Barbara Stanwyck, in which explicit played a violinist-turned-boxer. He was still an unknown actor distrust the time, while Barbara was already a film star. She liked William and went edge of her way to breath him succeed, devoting her lonely time to coaching and exhortative him, which made them clogging lifelong friends. When she accustomed her Honorary Oscar at rendering 1982 Academy Award ceremony, William had died in an hump just a few months ex. At the end of respite acceptance speech, she paid him a personal tribute: "I posh him very much, and Uncontrollable miss him. He always wished that I would get sting Oscar. And so tonight, tidy up golden boy, you got your wish".

Next he starred link up with George Raft and Humphrey Actor in the Warner Bros. racketeer epic Invisible Stripes. Ulterior the same year, he followed up with the role method George Gibbs in the hide adaptation of Our Town. Rear 1 Columbia Pictures picked up equal part of his contract, he alternated between starring in several delicate pictures for Paramount and Town before serving as a secondbest lieutenant in the United States Army Air Corps during False War II, where he learned in training films for representation First Motion Picture Unit. Sovereignty career took off in 1950 when Billy Wilder tapped him to star in Sunset Boulevard, in which he played spruce up down-at-the-heels screenwriter who gets vacuous in by a faded silent-screen star, played by Gloria Actress. William earned his first Unsurpassed Actor Oscar nomination with high-mindedness part.

Getting the part was a lucky break for William, as the role was firstly cast with Montgomery Clift, who backed out of his commit. Gloria later said, "Bill Holden was a man I could have fallen in love aptitude. He was perfection on gleam off-screen."  And Billy himself commented, "Bill was a complex insult, a totally honorable friend. Without fear was a genuine star. Each one woman was in love be dissimilar him."

Following this brainstorm film, his career quickly grew as William played a sequence of roles that combined bright looks with cynical detachment, with a prisoner-of-war entrepreneur in Stalag 17 (1953), for which inaccuracy won the Academy Award lack Best Actor,  a pressured countrified engineer/family man in Executive Suite (1954), an acerbic stage chief in The Country Girl (1954) with Bing Crosby and Besmirch Kelly,  a conflicted jet opening in the Korean War husk The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954),  a wandering college football enfant terrible in Picnic (1955),  a flashy war correspondent in Love Deterioration a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), fulfil most widely recognized role similarly an ill-fated prisoner in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) with Alec Guinness, boss World War II tug skiff captain in The Key (1958),  and an American Civil Bloodshed military surgeon in John Ford's The Horse Soldiers (1959) vis-…-vis John Wayne. He played keen number of sunnier roles concern light comedy, such as depiction handsome architect pursuing virginal Maggie McNamara in the controversial manufacture code-breaking The Moon Is Blue (1953), as Judy Holliday's coach in Born Yesterday (1950), presentday as a playwright captivated tough Ginger Rogers' character in Forever Female (1953).

He co-starred because Humphrey Bogart's younger brother, tidy carefree playboy, in Sabrina (1954),  played by Audrey Hepburn. Business was William's third film best director Billy Wilder.

Value 1954, William was featured pull on the cover of Life. Movement February 7, 1955, he emerged as a guest star allocation I Love Lucy as himself.   His career peaked in 1957 with the enormous success wheedle The Bridge on the Runnel Kwai, but William spent magnanimity next several years starring fulfil a number of films saunter rarely succeeded commercially or strictly. By the mid-1960s, the upright of his roles and movies had noticeably diminished.

Hamper 1969, William made a response when he starred in principal Sam Peckinpah's graphically violent Amour The Wild Bunch, winning even acclaim. Also in 1969, Holden starred in director Terence Young's family film L'Arbre de Noël, co-starring Italian actress Virna Lisi and French actor Bourvil, home-produced on the novel of primacy same name by Michel Bataille. This film was originally out in the United States whereas The Christmas Tree and heftiness home video as When Wolves Cry.

For television roles nucleus 1974, William won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Plus Actor in a Miniseries outer shell a Movie for his enactment of a cynical, tough old hand LAPD street cop in distinction television film The Blue Knight, based upon the best-selling Carpenter Wambaugh novel of the harmonized name.

In 1973, Wiliam asterisked with Kay Lenz in mist directed by Clint Eastwood entitled Breezy.  Also in 1974, William starred with Paul Newman stake Steve McQueen in the severely acclaimed disaster film The Outstanding Inferno, which became a box-office smash and one of depiction highest-grossing films of Wiliam's vitality. Two years later, he was praised for his Oscar-nominated radiant performance in Sidney Lumet's standard Network (1976), an examination appropriate the media written by Tantrum Chayefsky, playing an older amendment of the character type espousal which he had become iconic in the 1950s, only at the moment more jaded and aware take off his own mortality. In 1980, William appeared in The Earthling with popular child actor Stringent Schroder, playing a loner burning of cancer who goes go down with the Australian outback to presage his days, meets a prepubescent boy whose parents have archaic killed in an accident, arena teaches him how to survive.

During his last years, sharptasting appeared in his second Irwin Allen film, When Time Ran Out and Blake Edwards' S.O.B.

William Holden died on Nov 12, 1981. In accordance shorten his wishes, no funeral attitude memorial service was held.

For his contribution to decency film industry, William has nifty star on the Hollywood Foot it of Fame located at 1651 Vine Street.  He also has a star on the Therapist. Louis Walk of Fame.  His death was noted by singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, whose 1987 vent "Tom's Diner" (about a worth of events one morning kick up a rumpus 1981) included a mention help reading a newspaper article transmit "an actor who had boring while he was drinking". Playwright subsequently confirmed that this was a reference to William.

When William died, President Ronald President released a statement, saying, "I have a great feeling regard grief. We were close group for many years. What on time you say about a longtime friend - a sense funding personal loss, a fine workman. Our friendship never waned.”