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William Holden was born William Franklin Beedle Jr. in O'Fallon, Illinois in 1918, but his family moved to Pasadena, California, when he was three. After high school, he went to Pasadena Junior College and started acting. He was in a play where he was seen by a talent scout from Paramount Pictures in 1937, who signed him to a contract.

After two uncredited parts, he had his first giant break when he was given the lead in Columbia's Golden Boy, about a young man who is torn between being a violinist or a boxer (it had been written by Clifford Odets for John Garfield).

The star of the movie was Barbara Stanwyck, and she insisted on casting Holden, and after filming began the studio didn't like him, but Stanwyck insisted he be kept, and he was!

Holden made 9 not very memorable film appearances over the next 4 years, and then joined the Army Air Force in 1943. After the war, he picked up where he had left off, making another 10 not so great movies, but then in 1950, he got his second big break when he was given the part of Joe Gillis in Sunset Blvd. (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film)

Holden was wonderful, as was the movie, which is surely one of the handful of finest movies ever made, That same year he played the lead in Born Yesterday, opposite Judy Holliday, and he was a major star. While he still made a few "lesser" movies, he had a remarkable run of great ones in a short period, including Stalag 17 (for which he won the Best Actor Oscar), Executive Suite, Sabrina, The Country Girl, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, and Picnic, all of which were made in a three year period!

In 1957, Columbia was about to make The Bridge on the River Kwai, and they felt they badly needed a major American star to increase the box office of this story of English prisoners of war in a Japanese prison camp. They turned to Holden, who was able to negotiate a salary of $300,000, plus 10% of the gross, especially remarkable because the entire budget for the movie was three million dollars, and the bridge itself cost $250,000 to build. Of course the movie was a huge success, and Holden made a fortune from his deal.

In 1959, Holden and co-star John Wayne used their considerable box office clout to negotiate a $775,000 contract, plus 20% of the profits for each of them for making The Horse Soldiers, and that deal marked the beginning of major stars getting out of this world deals. Ironically, the movie was a real dud!

In the late 1960s, Holden's career appeared to be waning, but he made the great move of taking the lead in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, and Holden and the movie were wonderful. He was a great aging street cop Bumper Morgan in TV's The Blue Knight, and he took a supporting role in The Towering Inferno.

He had one more great role in him, as Max Schumacher in Network (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film) in 1976. He starred with Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway (and an incredible supporting cast), and the movie was wonderful on all levels!

William Holden passed away in 1981 at the age of 63. He is not considered one of the all-time greatest actors by many, and his name does not come to mind when you think of the most charismatic actors ever, and yet he was in more truly great movies playing very different roles than almost any other actor (perhaps second only to Humphrey Bogart). He left behind a remarkable body of work, and I highly recommend all the movies named above!

Important Added Info: Note that this REPRODUCTION still has been personally autographed (signed) by William Holden!

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In our last two all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning 211 more items (mostly 8x10 stills and repro 8x10s, but also 58 other items like playbills and more)!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 still or repro (or sometimes another item) from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this photo (and the vast majority of the other photos we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the late 1970s or 1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.

As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775