Earl Holliman

Ruggedly handsome, slack-jawed actor Earl Holliman was born on September 11, 1928, in northeastern Louisiana amid meager surroundings. His father, a farmer named William Frost, died several months before Earl's birth, forcing his poverty-stricken mother to give up seven of her ten children. He was adopted as a baby by an oil-field worker named Henry Earl Holliman and his waitress wife Velma, growing up in the Louisiana and Arkansas areas. Though Henry died when Earl was 13, the adoptive parents were a source of happiness and inspiration growing up. Entertaining became an early passion after ushering at a local movie house and Earl at one point was a magician's assistant as a young teen. Hoping to discovered, Earl ran away from home hoping to be discovered in Hollywood. Following that aborted attempt, the teenager returned to Louisiana and immediately enlisted in the United States Navy during World War II by lying about his age (16). Assigned to a Navy communications school in Los Angeles, this re-stimulated his passion for acting, spending much of his free time at the Hollywood Canteen. Discharged from the Navy a year after enlisting when his true age was discovered, he returned home to work in menial jobs and complete his high school education. Reenlisting in the Navy, he was cast as the lead in several Norfolk (Virginia) Navy Theatre productions. This led to a trek back to Hollywood after his (this time) honorable discharge[ where he attended USC and studied acting at UCLA Drama School and the Pasadena Playhouse, working as a Blue Cross file clerk and airplane builder at North American Aviation.

A 1946 graduate of Oil City High School in Oil City, Louisiana, he was Senior Class President and played right tackle on the football team. He returned in 1965 for a week long motivational seminar as an Honorary Guest Speaker. Prior to Oil City High School, he had previously attended Fair Park College Preparatory Academy and C.E. Byrd High School.

On the side, the never-married Holliman found a brief, yet successful, career in the late 1950's as a singer and copped a record deal with Capitol Records at one point, while scoring as Curly in a tour of the musical "Oklahoma" in 1963. Other non-musical roles included "Sunday in New York," "The Country Girl," "The Tender Trap," "Camino Real," "A Streetcar Named Desire" (as Mitch) and "A Chorus Line" (as Zach).

Earl started off apprenticing in uncredited film bits in several films -- Smuggler's Island (1951), Destination Gobi (1953) and Scared Stiff (1953). He soon rose in rank and gained clout playing jaunty young rookies and tenderfeet and young stud types in rugged westerns, war drama and rollicking comedy.

On Holliman's 25th birthday, East of Sumatra (1953), in which he starred as "Cupid", had its Hollywood premiere.

His swaggering characters in such films as Tennessee Champ (1954), Broken Lance (1954), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), Big Combo, The - 1955 (1955), I Died a Thousand Times (1955), Forbidden Planet (1956), The Burning Hills (1956) and Giant (1956) ranged from dim and good-natured to impulsive and threatening.

Holliman won a Golden Globe for his support performance as a girl-crazy brother in The Rainmaker (1956), holding his own against stars Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn. Without progressing to star roles, he continued to provide durable late 50's support to big name stars including [link-tt0050468] starring Lancaster and Kirk Douglas; Trooper Hook (1957) starring Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck; Don't Go Near the Water (1957) starring Glenn Ford; Hot Spell (1958) starring Shirley Booth, Anthony Quinn and Shirley MacLaine; The Trap (1959) starring Richard Widmark; and Last Train from Gun Hill (1959) again with Douglas and Quinn.

In 1957, the Associated Press reported Holliman was Hollywood's biggest "Overnight Sensation".

Between 1958-63, Holliman had a moderately successful career as a pop and country singer and had a record deal with such major recording studios as Capitol Records, Prep, and HiFi. Songs he recorded included: "A Teenager Sings The Blues", "Nobody Knows How I Feel", "Don't Get Around Much Anymore", "Sittin' And A Gabbin'", "If I Could See The World Through The Eyes Of A Child", "La La La Lovable", "Wanna Kiss You To-Night", "I'm In The Mood For Love", "We Found Love", "Willingly", "There'll Be No Teardrops Tonight", and "Road To Nowhere".

Holliman found a highly accepting medium in TV with a lead series role as reformed gunslinger "Sundance" (not The Sundance Kid) in the short-lived western series Hotel de Paree (1959), plus showed off a virile stance in episodes of "The Twilight Zone," "Bus Stop," "Checkmate," "Bonanza," "Dr. Kildare," "The Fugitive," "Marcus Welby, M. D. ," "It Takes a Thief," "Alias Smith and Jones," "Gunsmoke," "Medical Center," "Ironside," "The Magical World of Disney" and "The F. B. I.

Although film offers began drying up in the 1960s, Earl was enjoyable boorish in his dealing with innocent alien Jerry Lewis in the wacky comedy Visit to a Small Planet (1960); had a touching final scene in a park with Geraldine Page in the somber Tennessee Williams period piece Summer and Smoke (1961); played one of John Wayne's younger punch-drunk brothers in the freewheeling western The Sons of Katie Elder (1965); portrayed a salesman on trial for murdering his wife in A Covenant with Death (1967); and was a platoon sergeant in command in Anzio (1968).

" He also appeared in a number of TV movies that became popular in the late 1960's.

He played hard-ass, redneck types in the action adventure The Desperate Mission (1969) and in the military drama Tribes (1970), but did a complete turnaround as a good guy psychologist trying to help get a kid hooker off the streets in Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn (1977).

He also owned the Fiesta Dinner Playhouse for a decade in the late 1970's and performed there, between film and TV assignments, in such shows as "Mister Roberts," "Arsenic and Old Lace" and "Same Time, Next Year.

After seeing his dramatic performance of Luhan in the 1971 made for TV movie, Montserrat, a critic in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was noted as saying of him, "I didn't know he could act".

This all culminated in his most popular series program, a four-year stint as the macho partner to sexy Angie Dickinson in Police Woman (1974), a role that helped make him a household name.

He served as a guest presenter at the 1979 National Film Society Convention.

"An intermittent presence in later years, Earl was seen primarily on TV including the acclaimed miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983), as well as the TV programs "Empty Nest," "In the Heat of the Night," "Murder, She Wrote" and "Caroline in the City. " regular roles on three drama series: the urban drama P. S. I.

On April 8, 1987, he, Veronica Hamel, and Jo Anne Worley, traveled to New York City to host the first annual 9 Lives National Morris Award, a cat lovers tournament where the judges choose the top household cat in the entire city.

Luv U (1991); the comedy series Delta (1992) (Golden Globe nomination) which starred Delta Burke in a short-lived follow-up to her "Designing Women" exit; and the sci-fi action adventure NightMan (1997).

In addition to his Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture for The Rainmaker, Holliman also earned a nomination for a Golden Globe Award for "Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Television Series" for his performance as Darden Towe alongside Delta Burke in her short-lived 1992 series Delta (1992).

In a July 1998 fan letter response, he said that if he hadn't gone into acting he would've either become a schoolteacher, a writer, or even both.

On March 8, 2006, he was featured in an interview segment of Box Office Mojo.

On March 12, 2010, he was caricatured by American illustrator James O'Brien in his Twilight Zone appearance with the drawing simply titled, "Earl".

In 2015, Holliman appeared in the documentary Children of Giant (2015), which took an in-depth look into the making of of the film Giant (1956).

He is profiled in the 2017 book "Television Western Players, 1960-1975: A Biographical Dictionary" by Everett Aaker.

On February 24, 2018, South Carolina based artist Greg Joens submitted a caricature of Holliman on his official website honoring Earl as his Sketch of the Day.