Celeste Holm

Following her film debut in Three Little Girls in Blue (1946), she was cast by her studio, 20th Century-Fox, in the role of the love-starved fashion editor in the prestige feature Gentlemen's Agreement (1947), for which she won an Academy Award. The important role of Bette Davis' understanding friend in another Oscar-winner, All About Eve (1950), has immortalized Holm amongst the film cultists. Stage, nightclub and television assignments followed (she starred in the short-lived 1950s sitcom Honestly, Celeste), and from the late 1950s onward, Holm was more at home on stage than in films. Her performance in the touring company of Mame won Holm the Sara Siddons Award -- coincidentally the same award presented to the title character at the beginning of All About Eve. Always choosy about her roles, Holm remained active in the 1980s and 1990s whenever a good part struck her fancy; one of her most frequently rebroadcast assignments was as a custody court judge in an early-1980s episode of Archie Bunker's Place. When giving on-camera interviews on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Oklahoma, Holm appeared much too youthful to have participated in the landmark musical. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide