Broadway star, Oscar-winning actress, and television perennial Celeste Holm has died at the age of 95:
NEW YORK – Celeste Holm, a versatile, bright-eyed blonde who soared to Broadway fame in “Oklahoma!” and won an Oscar in “Gentleman’s Agreement” but whose last years were filled with financial difficulty and estrangement from her sons, died Sunday, a relative said. She was 95.
Holm had been hospitalized about two weeks ago with dehydration after a fire in actor Robert De Niro’s apartment in the same Manhattan building. She had asked her husband on Friday to bring her home, and she spent her final days with her husband, Frank Basile, and other relatives and close friends by her side, said Amy Phillips, a great-niece of Holm’s who answered the phone at Holm’s apartment on Sunday.
Holm died around 3:30 a.m. at her longtime apartment on Central Park West, Phillips said.
“I think she wanted to be here, in her home, among her things, with people who loved her,” she said.
In a career that spanned more than half a century, Holm played everyone from Ado Annie — the girl who just can’t say no in “Oklahoma!”– to a worldly theatrical agent in the 1991 comedy “I Hate Hamlet” to guest star turns on TV shows such as “Fantasy Island” and “Love Boat II” to Bette Davis’ best friend in “All About Eve.”
She won the Academy Award in 1947 for best supporting actress for her performance in “Gentlemen’s Agreement” and received Oscar nominations for “Come to the Stable” (1949) and “All About Eve” (1950).
Holm was also known for her untiring charity work — at one time she served on nine boards — and was a board member emeritus of the National Mental Health Association.
A great talent and a great-hearted woman.
Funny. I just ran across High Society on cable a few weeks ago. She does a duet with Sinatra in that movie.
Another great talent gone.
If you have never seen Gentleman’s Agreement, the movie for which she won her Academy Award, you owe it to yourself to do so. It is a genuinely great movie.
I have mixed feelings about High Society. On the one hand it’s a great document. It’s wonderful that we have records of the numbers with Bing and Pops, two of the greatest of the greats who performed together on film just twice IIRC. Grace Kelly was certainly born to play that role and she’s okay. Celeste Holm is, as usual, wonderful but largely wasted. I think that Frank Sinatra is miscast.
One gets the impression that Sinatra was cast in the movie almost solely so that they could get that duet with Bing Crosby on the big screen.
I’ve been trying to catch up on classic movies in recent years, but I haven’t seen Gentlemen’s Agreement yet, I’ll have to make sure to check it out.
Which opens the opportunity for me to kvetch about another big screen musical featuring Frank Sinatra, Guys and Dolls. Why oh why did they cast Sinatra as Nathan Detroit rather than Sky Masterson? Sinatra was born to play Sky Masterson. We should have him on screen singing My Time of Day. It’s a crime we don’t. He, apparently, thought so, too. There are reports that he bitched and moaned about Brando during the entire production.
Who could have played Nathan Detroit instead? Practically anybody in Hollywood. The place is full of Nathan Detroits.