Celeste Holm, the consummate pro, returns to television
By 808 THOMAS Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) - When Celeste Holm made her “Falcon Crest" debut with the season finale, she naturally enough asked what was in store for her character when she returns for five new episodes in the fall. “We don’t know,” said the producers of the hit CBS serial. “We haven’t written it yet.”
Did Miss Holm worry? Not a bit. Since 1946 she has been contributing her skills to Hollywood with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of professionalism. Her visits here have often been rewarding, including the supporting actress Academy Award for “Gentleman’s Agreement” in 1947 and nominations for “Come to the Stable” in 1949 and “All about Eve” in 1950.
Her latest assignment casts her as Anna Rossini, the Italian mother of Cassandra Wilder (Anne Archer) who has dedicated her life to ruining the domineering vineyard matriarch Angela Channing (Jane Wyman) in “Falcon Crest.” “Obviously,” remarked the blonde, blue-eyed Miss Holm, “I come from the northern part of Italy.” She is no stranger to television. Back in 1954 she starred in “Honestly Celeste,” a comedy that lasted less than three months even though it was written by the estimable Larry Gelbart of later “MASH’fame. A White House comedy called “Nancy” perished after a few episodes in 1970 from “a lack of similitude.” She also bears scars of last season’s “Jesse,” the Lindsay Wagner series about a police psychiatrist that was shot down by network sniping. “It’s fun to be in a series that works,” she said of the “Falcon Crest” assignment. Celeste Holm is a brainy Easterner who never quite fit into the local pattern.
After a brilliant career on Broadway, especially as the original Ado Annie in “Oklahoma!” and the title role in “Bloomer Girl,” she began work for 20th Century-Fox in 1946. Her first films were unpromising: “Three Little Girls in Blue” and “Carnival in Costa Rica.” Then came “Gentleman’s Agreement.” “I never really felt comfortable out here,” Miss Holm recalled. “My agents used to take me to parties. Social life was much more organized in those days. People stared at me, and I could read in their eyes what they were saying; I wonder how much money I could make out of her.’ I became very defensive.” Her career at Fox was progressing well until 1950 when the studio started making cutbacks during a box-office slump due to television. When her contract called for a raise, studio boss Darryl Zanuck asked her to stay on at the same salary. “When I declined, Zanuck said he would call all the other studios and tell them not to hire me,” the actress said.
“I couldn’t get a job in films for two years. At the moment it seemed like a dumb decision on my part, but I was young and impatient.” Strangely, Zanuck allowed her to be cast in Joseph Mankiewicz’s landmark “All about Eve.” She remembered co-star Marilyn Monroe as a “pretty little dumb girl who kept everyone waiting.” Of George Sanders she recalled: “Offstage he said not one word to anyone, just disappeared into his dressing room. Anyone that alienated is in a lot of trouble.” Sanders took his own life in Barcelona in 1972, ascribing his end to “boredom.” Miss Holm and her fourth husband, actor Wesley Addy, divide their time between Manhattan and her family’s fifth-generation farm in New Jersey. She heads New Jersey’s film and TV commission and serves on the National Endowment for the Arts.
By
Paul Raven ·
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