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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 these are the negatives that were in the camera when the photographer shot each photo. Each one has been retouched, but the retouching was done by the photographer, and this was not unusual in this time when it was important stars needed to look "perfect" on and off camera. We have taken a scan of the negatives as they appear, and also a special scan of the negatives that show the "positive image" of each. We will provide the winning bidder of this auction with those positive image scans. They often (but not always) have retouching on the emulsion side, and negative numbers written in India ink on the front. Depending on the studio some 8x10 negatives may be trimmed or have numbers or information embedded into the sides of the negative. Many smaller format camera original negatives do not have retouching on them or numbers due to their smaller size. 8x10, 5x7 and 4x5 negatives were primarily the sizes used in the 1920s through the 1940s. 2 1/4" Rollei negatives and 35mm negatives became an industry standard in the 1950s and beyond until the digital revolution in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

This is a very special auction of 444 extremely rare negatives and transparencies of various sizes. EVERY single one in this auction is either "studio issued" (meaning it was created by the studio and sent to theaters and movie outlets), OR it is a "camera original" (meaning it was the actual negative that was in the camera when the photographer took the picture). Every auction clearly identifies which they are, and there are no items being auctioned that are not either "studio issue" or "camera originals". We have divided them by type and size.

Also note that every one of these 444 auctions have had their transparencies and/or negatives scanned expertly. This auction contains that scan with the "eMoviePoster.com" watermark over it. ONLY the winner of this auction will, on request, be sent UNWATERMARKED scan(s) of the items in this auction, which will both save them the time and expense of scanning them themselves, and also allow them to make high quality positive prints of the items they purchased.

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