Celebrity Biographies
Celeste Holm
Celeste Holm, a Broadway star, established herself in the cinema with her leading role with Anne Baxter and Bette Davis in the legendary “Naked Eve.” The actress herself passed away on July 15, 2012 at the age of 95 at her residence in New York. “She died peacefully in her home, with her husband and her friends close by,” Ammy Phillips, her niece, explained.
Born on April 29, 1917, Celeste Holm was the only daughter of a Norwegian painter and insurance broker. She studied Drama at the University of Chicago, and later married filmmaker Ralph Nelson ( Duel in Diablo ) in 1936, with whom she had her first child.
Divorcing at the age of 3, she began her stage career with a production of “Hamlet” opposite Leslie Howard . In “The Time of Your Life” she shared the scene with a very young Gene Kelly . With “Oklahoma!” she became a Broadway star.
In cinema, Celeste Holm made her debut in 1946 with Three Little Girls in Blue , followed by Carnival in Costa Rica . After accepting a permanent contract with Fox, she made her debut with this production company in Elia Kazan ‘s The Invisible Barrier , where Gregory Peck plays a guy who poses as a Jew to experience the anti-Semitism around her. The actress won the only Oscar of her career, for best secondary.
After a couple of anecdotal roles, in The Bells Speak and If She Knew It , she played her best-known role, the friend of the diva played by Bette Davis in Naked Eve , where her character introduces the latter to the young aspiring actress who triggers the plot. For her work, Celeste Holm was again nominated for an Oscar also as a supporting actress.
However, despite the success of the film, Fox did not offer her roles that interested her, so the actress decided to break the contract. She focused on her theatrical career and she also appeared in various television series. She occasionally returned to film in titles like The Bachelor and Love and High Society , where she played photographer Liz Imbrie.
Divorced from Ralph Nelson, she was united to Francis Emerson Harding Davies, A. Chuyler Dunning –with whom she had another son–, the character actor Wesley Addy ( The Bostonians ) and Frank Basile.
Since the 1960s, Celeste Holm has hardly appeared in titles for the big screen, but she has taken part in numerous television series. She has been active until her death, as she left Driving Me Crazy , a low-budget romantic comedy, in post-production.