Born April 29, 1917 in New York, New York, Celeste Holm was an only child whose father was an insurance adjustor for Lloyd’s of London and her mother a portrait artist. Because of her parents’ occupations, she traveled extensively with them as a child, later studying drama while attending the University of Chicago. She became a stage actress in the late 1930s after marrying actor and future director Ralph Nelson in 1936 when he was twenty and she was nineteen. Their son, philosopher Ted Nelson, was born the following year. They were divorced in 1939. She gave her son over to her parents to raise as she continued to pursue her career, seeing him only occasionally throughout his childhood. She married second husband Francis Davies in 1940.

Holm made her Broadway debut in 1938, and continued to make appearances on the Broadway stage off and on through 1991. Her most significant roles were as Ado Annie in the original 1943 production of Oklahoma! and as Evalina in the following year’s Bloomer Girl. She was later one of the replacements for both Gertrude Lawrence and Angela Lansbury in the original runs of The King and I and Mame, respectively.

Divorced from Davies in 1945, she married third husband, A. Schuyler Dunning, in 1946, the year she made her film debut in Three Little Girls in Blue. The following year she returned to work six months after giving birth to son Daniel Dunning to co-star in Gentleman’s Agreement for which she would later win a supporting Oscar. In the next five years she was the lead, second lead or, in one memorable instance, the narrator of eight highly successful films. Among them were The Snake Pit, A Letter to Three Wives for which she supplied the voice of the husband-stealing narrator, Come to the Stable for which she received a second Oscar nomination and All About Eve for which she received a third.

For the remainder of her career, Holm would be seen more often on TV than in any other medium, guest-starring in numerous series, as well as starring in one series (Honestly, Celeste! and playing major supporting roles in three others (Nancy, Archie Bunker’s Place, Promised Land) . Her film roles became sparse, but remained significant, and included major co-starring roles in The Tender Trap, High Society and Tom Sawyer. She received an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Florence (Mrs. Warren) Harding in the 1979 mini-series, Backstairs at the White House.

Holm divorced Dunning in 1953. She married character actor Wesley Addy in 1961. They remarried married until his death in 1996. In 1999 she met opera singer Frank Basile, 46 years her junior, at a fund raiser. They would marry five years later, setting up a family feud over the by now senile actress’s estate. She remained estranged from both of her sons and her grandson, Daniel, born in 1981, from 2007 until her death five years later.

Celeste Holm died of a heart attack on July 15, 2012 at the age of 95.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT, directed by Elia Kazan (1947)

Kazan’s film of Laura Hobson’s novel has not aged well. Gregory Peck’s once heralded portrayal of the magazine writer posing as a Jew to get the lowdown on anti-Semitism is now generally considered stiff, as is Dorothy McGuire’s once equally heralded portrayal of his fiancée. Nothing, though, has aged the still potent portrayals of John Garfield as Peck’s Jewish friend, Anne Revere as his wise mother, a young Dean Stockwell as his son and Celeste Holm as a tart tongued fashion writer at Peck’s magazine. That performance, only her third on screen, earned her one of the film’s three Oscars out of eight nominations.

COME TO THE STABLE, directed by Henry Koster (1949)

This perennial Christmas favorite starred Loretta Young and Celeste Holm as nuns from a French convent who come to a small New England town with a plan to build a children’s hospital. Young (The Farmer’s Daughter) and Holm (Gentleman’s Agreement) were both Oscar winners two years earlier. This time around they had to settle for two of the film’s seven nominations. Hugh Marlowe as a Broadway tunesmith and Elsa Lanchester, also Oscar-nominated as the artist who provides shelter for the nun, co-stars. The film’s highlight is a tennis match featuring Holm in her nun’s habit.

ALL ABOUT EVE, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1940)

Nominated for fourteen Oscars, and winner of six, this beloved Hollywood take on Broadway Theatre denizens provided a rare five acting nominations for Bette Davis as the aging star being pushed out by up-and-comer Anne Baxter, George Sanders as an acerbic critic, Thelma Ritter as Davis’s faithful maid and Celeste Holm as Davis’s best friend, the wife of playwright Hugh Marlowe. Gary Merrill co-stars as Davis’s director husband. Sanders was the only acting nominee to win. The warm friendship between Davis and Holm’s characters is underscored by the fact that the two did not like each other in real life and only spoke when in character.

HIGH SOCIETY, directed by Charles Walters (1956)

This musical version of The Philadelphia Story with a score by Cole Porter featured Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm in the roles played in the original by Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart and Ruth Hussey with Louis Calhern, Sidney Blackmer, Margalo Gillmore and Lydia Reed in the roles played earlier by Roland Young, John Halliday, Mary Nash and Virginia Weidler. Holm, Broadway’s original Ado Annie in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! and Dolly Bloomer’s niece in Bloomer Girl gets to sing a duet with Sinatra.

TOM SAWYER, directed by Don Taylor (1973)

There have dozens of films based on Mark Twain’s classic novel both before and after this musical version with a score by the Sherman Brothers (Mary Poppins, The Happiest Millionaire, Bedknobs and Broomsticks). Johnny Whitaker had the title role, Jeff East was Huckleberry Finn, Jodie Foster was Becky Thatcher, Warren Oates was Muff Potter and Celeste Holm was Aunt Polly. Of the film’s nine songs, Holm gets to perform three of them, two in part and one, Aunt Polly’s Soliloquy in which she is obviously the sole performer.

CELESTE HOLM AND OSCAR