Word: holden
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...three children (two boys, and a girl born of Ardis' first marriage) as well as a wife to support, and he intended to make a good job of it. At the studio gate he got his first shock: the gatekeeper said he had never heard of William Holden, and refused to let him in. In the executive offices he got another: moviegoers had forgotten all about William Holden, and the big bosses saw no particular reason to remind them of his existence. It was seven months before Bill got a part, and then it was just another chance...
Director Billy Wilder was shrewd enough to see it. He signed Holden for the role of the mixed-up gigolo in Sunset Boulevard. The critics cheered, and chose Holden the best actor of 1950; but the public was still not wildly enthusiastic. One day in a supermarket-after 14 years as a Hollywood headliner-Bill saw a woman staring at him. "Young man," she finally said, "you really ought to be in pictures. You look so much like Alan Ladd...
...once, in 1953, Bill broke through. In the midst of a box-office slump, three Holden pictures-Stalag 17, The Moon Is Blue, Escape from Fort Bravo-hit hard. And for Stalag, in which he played a scrounging U.S. sergeant in a German prison camp, Holden won an Oscar as the year's best actor. He deserved it. The boy next door had become the type in the back room, with rat-grey skin and rat-quick eyes and a furtive softness in the way he moved; for the first time, Bill had almost managed to lose himself...
...executive, and one has already offered him a production unit of his own. Meanwhile, Bill is making the most, in a practical way, of his powerful position. Last year he traveled 135,000 miles for Paramount as an "ambassador of good will," selling Hollywood-and Bill Holden-in 16 countries. This year he will hit the road again: from Paris to Moscow, Cairo to Hong Kong. On the way he picks up culture as well as contacts-he has made a handsome collection of primitive art, and has added a shelf of Asian and African music to his huge record...
...however, Bill Holden has been truly happy at nothing. The tensions of the troubled years are tearing at him still. On the one side is the rampant do-gooder he feels he ought to be, forever inveighing against public lust and private indolence, and especially against all the varieties of flimflam, backscratch and general phoniness in which Hollywood abounds. Yet, on the other hand, Holden is a man who in his time has admittedly fired off as many cannon-crackers as the next...