Henry Earl Holliman (September 11, 1928 – November 25, 2024) was an American actor, animal rights activist, and singer known for his many character roles in films, mostly Westerns and dramas, in the 1950s and 1960s. He won a Golden Globe Award for the film The Rainmaker (1956) and portrayed Sergeant Bill Crowley on the television police drama Police Woman throughout its 1974 to 1978 run.
Holliman also had important roles in major films such as Broken Lance (1954), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), The Big Combo (1955), I Died a Thousand Times (1955), Forbidden Planet (1956), Giant (1956), Hot Spell (1958), Anzio (1968), The Desperate Mission (1969), The Biscuit Eater (1972), Sharky's Machine (1981), and Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge (1987). He also had several notable television appearances in The Twilight Zone, Hotel de Paree, The Thorn Birds, Gunsmoke, Murder, She Wrote, and Caroline in the City.
From 1958 to 1963, Holliman also performed as a singer and had record deals with such notable recording studios as Capitol Records, Prep, and HiFi. Aside from acting, Holliman was also an activist and was an honorary chairman for Toys for Tots. He was also the president of Actors and Others for Animals for 25 years.
Henry Earl Holliman was born on September 11, 1928, in Delhi, Louisiana. His biological father, William A. Frost, was a farmer who died six months before his birth. His mother, Mary Smith, was living in poverty with several other children and gave him up for adoption at birth, while her other children were sent to orphanages until she could take them all back, which she did. Earl was the seventh of ten children overall and, in later years, he was able to reconnect and establish relationships with them.
He was adopted a week after his birth by Henry Holliman, a traveling oilfield worker, and his wife Velma, a waitress, who then gave him the name Henry Earl Holliman. He was so frail in his infancy that one doctor predicted he would not live long enough to see childhood, but Velma's sister provided him with a generous dose of castor oil shortly after, which saved his life. Although his upbringing and family history have strong ties to Louisiana, during his teenage years he and his family lived in Kerrville, Texas, for a time, as well as some parts of Arkansas, which he once stated made him out to be a "red-blooded Ark-La-Texan".
Holliman's early years were normal until Henry died when he was 13. Earl credited Henry and Velma with providing him with so much love and encouragement that despite their own poverty they helped him in terms of looking deep within himself to discover his self-confidence in converting his dreams into reality. In addition, when he began his career in films, Velma was so supportive of him that she once even went to a theater in Louisiana an hour before it opened just so she could be the first attendee present. She wanted to see him in his first major film appearance and to work with the theater manager, show columnist, and a friend of the family to go through a vast set of stills for that particular movie so she could begin the composition of an album for him reflecting the start of his professional career as an actor.
Holliman saved money from his positions as an usher at the Strand Theatre, as a newsboy for The Shreveport Times, and as a magician's assistant before he left Louisiana for Hollywood. After an unsuccessful first attempt finding work in the film industry, he soon returned to Louisiana after being in California for only one week. Meanwhile, Velma had remarried, and Holliman disliked his new stepfather Guy Bellotte so much that he lied about his age and enlisted in the United States Navy during World War II. Assigned to a Navy communications school in Los Angeles, Holliman spent his free time at the Hollywood Canteen, talking to stars who dropped by to support the servicemen and women. A year after his enlistment, the Navy discovered his real age and he was immediately discharged.
Holliman returned home, worked in the oilfields in his spare time, washed dishes at various restaurants, and after some attendance at Louisiana Avenue, Fair Park, and Byrd High School in Shreveport, completed his public education at Oil City High School in Oil City, graduating with high honors in 1946; while a student there, he also played right tackle on the school football team and served as senior-class president. After rejecting a scholarship to Louisiana State University, he re-enlisted in the Navy and was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. Interested in acting, he was cast as the lead in several Norfolk Navy Theatre productions. When he left the Navy for good, he studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. He also graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles. During the time he studied acting at both the Playhouse and UCLA, he supplemented his income working as a file clerk for Blue Cross (later known as Blue Cross Blue Shield Association) and with North American Aviation constructing airplanes.
While at the Pasadena Playhouse, Holliman entered the Paramount lot by claiming he had an appointment with a studio barber. Eventually he became friendly with studio executives. Holliman first got a small bit part opposite Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in Scared Stiff (1953). Next he was cast as a marine in The Girls of Pleasure Island (1953), for which he needed a G.I. haircut. Finally he saw the barber and ended up with a haircut (and bangs) that changed his life.
After he gained popularity for his image following a change in hairstyle, he then followed with three more films released in 1953. His many credits include: Broken Lance (1954), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), The Big Combo (1955), I Died a Thousand Times (1955), Forbidden Planet (1956), Giant (1956), The Rainmaker (1956), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Don't Go Near the Water (1957), Hot Spell (1958), The Trap (1959), Last Train from Gun Hill (1959), Visit to a Small Planet (1960), Armored Command (1961), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Anzio (1968), The Desperate Mission (1969), Smoke (1970), The Biscuit Eater (1972), The Solitary Man (1979), Sharky's Machine (1981), and Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge (1987).
Holliman played a doomed helicopter crewman in the William Holden war drama The Bridges at Toko-Ri and a gangster's double-crossed thug in The Big Combo. He co-starred with Jack Palance in the crime drama I Died a Thousand Times (1955), a remake of High Sierra. He starred in The Rainmaker (1956), opposite Katharine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster, playing a rancher's timid son, who finally must defy his brother to gain self-respect, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture; he was cast in the role instead of Elvis Presley. His role in Rainmaker brought him such praise that columnist Louella Parsons cited him being "as dedicated as though he were Marlon Brando and Anthony Perkins combined".
He was the soft-spoken son-in-law of rancher Bick Benedict, played by Rock Hudson, in the epic Western saga Giant. Holliman played many roles set in the American West. He was Wyatt Earp's deputy in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, co-starring Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and a sniveling coward guilty of murdering and raping the wife of a lawman (Kirk Douglas) in Last Train from Gun Hill. He played a drunken deputy sheriff whose brother Richard Widmark returns to town in a modern-day Western, The Trap (1959), and the brother of John Wayne, Dean Martin, and Michael Anderson Jr., out to avenge their murdered father, in a traditional Western, The Sons of Katie Elder.
Holliman became known to television audiences through his portrayal as Sundance in CBS's Hotel de Paree, with co-star Jeanette Nolan, from 1959 to 1960, and in the title role of Mitch Guthrie with Andrew Prine in NBC's Wide Country, a drama about modern rodeo performers that aired for 28 episodes between 1962 and 1963. He also had the distinction of appearing in the debut episode of CBS's The Twilight Zone, titled "Where Is Everybody?", which aired on October 2, 1959, the same night as the premiere of Hotel de Paree. In 1967, Holliman guest-starred on Wayne Maunder's short-lived ABC military-Western series Custer. In 1970 and 1971, Holliman made two appearances in the Western comedy series Alias Smith and Jones starring Pete Duel and Ben Murphy.