July 15
Seven Gamesters went to Manhattan (as usual) where they collected on a
one-point hit from Academy Award-winning actress Celeste Holm. Holm, who
first grabbed our attention as Ado Annie in the original Broadway production of
"Oklahoma," won her Oscar for best supporting actress in the 1947 film
"Gentleman's Agreement." Holm went on to have a six-decade career on stage
and screen.
Hawaii's Death Wish was the highest ranking hitter - he improved to 30 &
10 and climbed to 7th-place. He was followed closely by Felted who Went
Wild for the bonus and climbed to 29 & 8 (9th-place).
Further down the big board a number a veterans made a move with the hit.
Dead Wait, of Albany, NY, rose five spots as they improved to 11 & 4.
California's Penguin (8 & 5) rose four spots and earned QPA status while the
Connecticut love birds known as the Necromancers (8 & 6) followed close
behind.
Florida's Fire Ants kept in the running for Clete's Cup as she rose to 7 &
7 and the super flirty Women With Spurs teased their score up to 4 & 4.
Editor's Note: One Gamester lost out on this hit as her spelling was so
far off we couldn't justify credit and a few hits back another Gamester
almost lost credit for a similar issue. Be careful when filling out those
lists - sloppiness matters.
IMDb: _http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002141/_
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002141/)
Video:
"Gentleman's Agreement" trailer
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2eAXa7rNXw_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2eAXa7rNXw)
"The Snake Pit" trailer _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CBLJoNETqU_
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CBLJoNETqU)
On "What's My Line" _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jppJ0h-YovM_
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jppJ0h-YovM)
The Obituary (New York Times)
By _ANITA GATES_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/anita_gates/index.html)
Published: July 15, 2012
Celeste Holm, the New York-born actress who made an indelible Broadway
impression as an amorous country girl in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!,
” earned an Academy Award as the knowing voice of tolerance in “Gentleman’
s Agreement” and went on to a six-decade screen and stage career,
frequently cast as the wistful or brittle sophisticate, died early Sunday at her
apartment in Manhattan. She was 95.
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Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Celeste Holm in 2011.
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Associated Press
Celeste Holm in rehearsal for a circus at Madison Square Garden in 1951.
Her death was announced by Amy Phillips, a great-niece. Ms. Holm had a
heart attack at Roosevelt Hospital in New York last week while being treated
there for dehydration, but she was taken home on Friday.
Ms. Holm was 25 and had already appeared in at a number of Broadway
productions, including William Saroyan’s “Time of Your Life,” when she was cast
as Ado Annie in “Oklahoma!,” the period musical that reinvented the form.
Her character’s shining moment was the twangy lament “I Cain’t Say No,”
about Annie’s inability to resist men’s romantic advances. The role made
her a star, and she played the lead in the musical comedy “Bloomer Girl” the
next year.
Hollywood soon called, and in her third film she hit the jackpot._ “
Gentleman’s Agreement” _ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYDIWrcevkQ) (1947),
starring Gregory Peck, was based on Laura Z. Hobson’s novel about a journalist
pretending to be Jewish in order to expose the depth and scope of American
anti-Semitism. Ms. Holm was cast as a witty, worldly fashion editor who
saw through hypocrisy. “And some of your other best friends are Methodists,”
her character reminded one self-congratulating man, “but you never bother
to say that.” Her performance garnered her the Oscar for best supporting
actress.
Her film career flourished. She played a fellow psychiatric patient of
Olivia de Havilland’s character in “The Snake Pit” (1948). She earned two
additional Oscar nominations, for portraying a French nun in “Come to the
Stable” (1949) and a playwright’s well-meaning wife in _“All About Eve”_
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg-ckMup6SI) (1950), the classic drama about
the New York theater world.
If her best-known roles shared one quality, aside from Ms. Holm’s
signature sparkle, it was that her characters rarely got the guy. The fashion
editor lost out to the rich girl in “Gentleman’s Agreement.” As a smart
magazine photographer in “High Society” (1956), Ms. Holm was ignored by her
reporter colleague (Frank Sinatra), who had eyes for a society bride (Grace
Kelly) instead. In “The Tender Trap” (1955) she married at the end of the film,
only because her 33-year-old character felt she was so old that she had to
settle or be alone forever. Even in “A Letter to Three Wives” (1949), as
the voice of a suburban femme fatale, the man she ran away with went back
to his wife.
Between movie roles Ms. Holm returned to the stage, appearing in eight
Broadway shows in the 1950s and ’60s. She filled in for Gertrude Lawrence in “
The King and I” and for Angela Lansbury in “Mame” and played the title
role in “Anna Christie.” When she was 73, she charmed audiences and critics,
after a 12-year absence, as a theatrical agent revisiting a long-ago
romance with John Barrymore by having a fling with Barrymore’s ghost in “I Hate
Hamlet” (1991). It was her last Broadway role.
_She spent her last years estranged from much of her family._
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/nyregion/love-and-inheritance-celeste-holms-family-feu
d.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all) In 2002, her two sons set up a trust that
provided living expenses for their mother. When she remarried in 2004, she and
her new husband, Frank Basile, went to court in an attempt to overturn the
trust. This led to a long legal battle, which created serious financial
problems for Ms. Holm.
Celeste Holm was born in Brooklyn on April 29, 1917, the only child of
Theodor Holm, an insurance adjuster for Lloyd’s of London, and Jean Parke
Holm, an artist. (She was of Norwegian descent on her father’s side and in 1977
was knighted by King Olav V of Norway.) She grew up in Manhattan, around
Gramercy Park, and spent summers at the family farm in Hackettstown, N.J.
(where she continued to live as an adult); she liked to say that she won the “
Oklahoma!” role because she told Richard Rodgers she was adept at
hog-calling.
Interested in acting since childhood, she studied at the University of
Chicago and began working in summer stock and community theater in the 1930s.
She made her Broadway debut at 21 in “Gloriana” (1938), a British
historical play. After “Oklahoma!” brought her to public attention, she made her
film debut in “Three Little Girls in Blue” (1946), a musical set in 1902
Atlantic City, as the title characters’ man-crazy cousin.
She acted in television films and made guest appearances on series
throughout much of her career, but she never had a hit series of her own. “
Honestly, Celeste!,” about a Midwestern teacher who became a New York City
reporter, lasted only a few months in 1954. Later she played the White House
chaperon of the first daughter on “Nancy” (1970-71) and the grandmother in the
family adventure “Promised Land” (1996-99). In the 1980s she had a
recurring role as an imposing widow on the nighttime soap “Falcon Crest.” She is
also remembered as the fairy godmother in the 1965 television version of “
Cinderella.”
In 1987 she played Ted Danson’s mother in the film “3 Men and a Baby.”
She was last seen on the screen in “Alchemy,” a 2005 romantic comedy that
starred Tom Cavanagh and Sarah Chalke. But she had completed two other films
by the time of her death: “Driving Me Crazy,” a romantic-comedy road movie
that also features Mickey Rooney, and “College Debts,” another comedy.
Neither has yet been released. She also continued to perform in theater and
cabaret at least into her late 80s.
Ms. Holm married five times. Three relatively brief marriages — to Ralph
Nelson (1938-39), an actor and director; Francis E. H. Davies (1940-45), an
auditor; and A. Schuyler Dunning (1946-52), an airline executive — all
ended in divorce. She married the actor Wesley Addy in 1961. They were together
until his death in 1996. In 2004 she married Mr. Basile, a singer more
than 45 years her junior, and surprised friends with the news at a party at
Sardi’s, the theater-district restaurant. He survives her, as do her sons,
Theodor Nelson, an information technology pioneer, and Daniel Dunning. Her
other survivors include three grandchildren.
Asked in 2007 how the art of acting had changed during the 70 years since
she began her career, Ms. Holm told a writer for The Star-Ledger: “Truth is
still truth. That’s what people go to theater for. To see our version of
truth.”
