AT least in the classic films of Hollywood from the 1930s up, these actors and actresses who never became leading stars, but remained nearby, interacting with leading characters, were known as supporting actors. And in many ways, many films, despite the great performances by their lead stars, would not have become the permanently great films they became without these supporting actors. Ethnic input
One of the best of many first-class supporting actors to emerge in Hollywood since the 1950s is Earl Holliman. What makes Holliman uniquely superb is his ability to bring to his roles multi-characteristic qualities based on his ethnic background in the American southern state of Louisiana; simple good-natured attitudes, but also simple-minded reactions and bigotries, including friendships or group loyalties based on twisted faulty reasons.
Holliman has an educated knack for elevating the specific American situations of his roles to a generalized human relevance far beyond any perimeter, defining only North American culture. In this sense, his roles, when carefully looked at, exemplify the best qualities of high professionalism in cinematic or dramatic art.
Indeed, the very act of young Holliman moving from his rustic roots in southern Louisiana to the liberated intellectuality of California — where he studied at UCLA, then had some auditions which landed him on the screen — showed an early serious interest in perhaps a specific creative direction which his many films came to deliver in clear-cut, vivid characterizations.
American cultural freedom
Before we look at a few of these Holliman roles, we should recognize the debt owed to the tradition of American social freedom which, in the first place, permitted such screen-writing to be the basis of many amazing Hollywood film productions. Holliman’s involvement with powerful scripts and directors begins with ‘BROKEN LANCE’ of 1954, directed by Edward Dmytryk, whose films of the 40s and 50s relentlessly exposed and attacked racial and social bigotry.
‘Broken Lance’ rises above any secular idea of ‘North American culture’, and proves its relevance of all Americans, north and south, by its focus on the reality of miscegenation within numerous families of the hemisphere, and its social and personal effect on members of such families.
Holliman is one of four brothers — two of them being Richard Widmark and Hugh O’Brian, who, like Holliman, are from the deceased White wife of a stern pioneering father played by Spencer Tracy. However, the fourth son’s mother is a strong, attractive and wise Native Indian woman, played by the brilliant Mexican actress, Kathy Jurado, and it is this son, played by young Robert Wagner, whom Tracy favours over his other three sons because of his dedication and trustworthy qualities, his appreciation of the land and his father’s hard work to build something out of it, in comparison with the three White sons — one of whom is Holliman — whose crude behaviour, dishonesty, schemes and jealousies alienate them from their father.
This is the supporting role that began Holliman’s unique but humble explorations of character traits belonging to those White Americans who came to have derogatory names like ‘Jim Crow’, ‘Redneck’, ‘Hilly-billy’, ‘Cracker’, etc, applied to them. Such cinematic characters critically exposing their own racial and cultural biases were delivered by the brilliant skill of Holliman, who revealed traits of group-bonding and group-thinking, based on little more than shallow, hasty evaluations and interpretations of others, who appear to be the ‘odd-man-out’ because of their refusal to represent social platitudes and individual dogmatism.
Holliman’s gentle, humorous roles
Holliman equally represented wonderful joviality and camaraderie in other roles, some of science fiction quality, which balanced his excellent supporting actor’s identity. Films like ‘THE BRIDIGES OF TOKO RI’ of 1955; ‘DON’T GO NEAR THE WATER’, 1957; and the Jerry Lewis comedy, ‘VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET’, are such examples. However, in serious villainous roles such as Stuart Heisler’s classic Film Noirs, ‘THE BIG COMBO’ and ‘I DIED A THOUSAND TIMES’, Holliman digs deep into the male bonding theme, revealing its gullible overlapping into confused homo-eroticism behind the false front of toughness and innocent friendships.
Holliman and John Sturges
It is director John Sturges who provided two complete opposite roles which allowed Holliman to reach the peak of his supporting actor’s effective characterizations. As Wyatt Earp’s (Burt Lancaster) Deputy in 1957’s ‘THE GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL’, Holliman steals every scene he appears in with his subtle portrayal of understanding, lenience, a few words of advice and observation here and there, which leaves a cool, humane, easygoing mood hanging in the air.
In one beautifully touching scene where jilted Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas) asks Deputy Holliman about the whereabouts of his girlfriend as he leans on a corral, hung with the gun-belts of disarmed cowboys entering town (the scene emphasizing Holliman’s practical peacemaker role), Holliman’s face, which mastered the close-up, shows all the sympathy and uneasiness for Doc’s situation as he lies about seeing Doc’s girl anywhere, in order to avoid arousing his anger.
In 1958, Sturges provided Holliman with the ultimate role, combining youthful simple-mindedness, racism and glorification of father and son kinship in ‘LAST TRAIN FROM GUNHILL’, as Anthony Quinn’s spoilt, rich son, who, with his friend, rapes his father’s old friend’s (Kirk Douglas) Native Indian wife. Holliman, in memorable roles, dug into his Faulknerian roots with the speech and naïve mannerisms associated with White ethnic backwoods phrases like “Aw shucks, Pa!”, or “God dang it!”, or Erskine Caldwell’s famous novelistic line: “Why in pluperfect hell…!”, etc.
All this, especially in ‘Last Train from Gunhill’, created some of the greatest characterizations of a Hollywood supporting actor. Indeed, his characterization in ‘Last Train from Gunhill’ is the perfect mirror which reflect
s Quinn’s and Douglas’s opposing situation.
If anyone tried to pigeonhole Holliman’s gift for the supporting role, they would fail, as his different characterizations in the science-fiction TV series, ‘THE TWILIGHT ZONE’, or his four-year (1974 to 78) stint as one of Angie Dickinson’s detective crew in the fine TV series, ‘POLICE WOMAN’, proved.
Cool, dapper, hip, urban, mixing it up with America’s other ethnicities, Earl Holliman is simply one of the ace supporting actors Hollywood ever produced.
One of the best of many first-class supporting actors to emerge in Hollywood since the 1950s is Earl Holliman. What makes Holliman uniquely superb is his ability to bring to his roles multi-characteristic qualities based on his ethnic background in the American southern state of Louisiana; simple good-natured attitudes, but also simple-minded reactions and bigotries, including friendships or group loyalties based on twisted faulty reasons.
Holliman has an educated knack for elevating the specific American situations of his roles to a generalized human relevance far beyond any perimeter, defining only North American culture. In this sense, his roles, when carefully looked at, exemplify the best qualities of high professionalism in cinematic or dramatic art.
Indeed, the very act of young Holliman moving from his rustic roots in southern Louisiana to the liberated intellectuality of California — where he studied at UCLA, then had some auditions which landed him on the screen — showed an early serious interest in perhaps a specific creative direction which his many films came to deliver in clear-cut, vivid characterizations.
American cultural freedom
Before we look at a few of these Holliman roles, we should recognize the debt owed to the tradition of American social freedom which, in the first place, permitted such screen-writing to be the basis of many amazing Hollywood film productions. Holliman’s involvement with powerful scripts and directors begins with ‘BROKEN LANCE’ of 1954, directed by Edward Dmytryk, whose films of the 40s and 50s relentlessly exposed and attacked racial and social bigotry.
‘Broken Lance’ rises above any secular idea of ‘North American culture’, and proves its relevance of all Americans, north and south, by its focus on the reality of miscegenation within numerous families of the hemisphere, and its social and personal effect on members of such families.
Holliman is one of four brothers — two of them being Richard Widmark and Hugh O’Brian, who, like Holliman, are from the deceased White wife of a stern pioneering father played by Spencer Tracy. However, the fourth son’s mother is a strong, attractive and wise Native Indian woman, played by the brilliant Mexican actress, Kathy Jurado, and it is this son, played by young Robert Wagner, whom Tracy favours over his other three sons because of his dedication and trustworthy qualities, his appreciation of the land and his father’s hard work to build something out of it, in comparison with the three White sons — one of whom is Holliman — whose crude behaviour, dishonesty, schemes and jealousies alienate them from their father.
This is the supporting role that began Holliman’s unique but humble explorations of character traits belonging to those White Americans who came to have derogatory names like ‘Jim Crow’, ‘Redneck’, ‘Hilly-billy’, ‘Cracker’, etc, applied to them. Such cinematic characters critically exposing their own racial and cultural biases were delivered by the brilliant skill of Holliman, who revealed traits of group-bonding and group-thinking, based on little more than shallow, hasty evaluations and interpretations of others, who appear to be the ‘odd-man-out’ because of their refusal to represent social platitudes and individual dogmatism.
Holliman’s gentle, humorous roles
Holliman equally represented wonderful joviality and camaraderie in other roles, some of science fiction quality, which balanced his excellent supporting actor’s identity. Films like ‘THE BRIDIGES OF TOKO RI’ of 1955; ‘DON’T GO NEAR THE WATER’, 1957; and the Jerry Lewis comedy, ‘VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET’, are such examples. However, in serious villainous roles such as Stuart Heisler’s classic Film Noirs, ‘THE BIG COMBO’ and ‘I DIED A THOUSAND TIMES’, Holliman digs deep into the male bonding theme, revealing its gullible overlapping into confused homo-eroticism behind the false front of toughness and innocent friendships.
Holliman and John Sturges
It is director John Sturges who provided two complete opposite roles which allowed Holliman to reach the peak of his supporting actor’s effective characterizations. As Wyatt Earp’s (Burt Lancaster) Deputy in 1957’s ‘THE GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL’, Holliman steals every scene he appears in with his subtle portrayal of understanding, lenience, a few words of advice and observation here and there, which leaves a cool, humane, easygoing mood hanging in the air.
In one beautifully touching scene where jilted Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas) asks Deputy Holliman about the whereabouts of his girlfriend as he leans on a corral, hung with the gun-belts of disarmed cowboys entering town (the scene emphasizing Holliman’s practical peacemaker role), Holliman’s face, which mastered the close-up, shows all the sympathy and uneasiness for Doc’s situation as he lies about seeing Doc’s girl anywhere, in order to avoid arousing his anger.
In 1958, Sturges provided Holliman with the ultimate role, combining youthful simple-mindedness, racism and glorification of father and son kinship in ‘LAST TRAIN FROM GUNHILL’, as Anthony Quinn’s spoilt, rich son, who, with his friend, rapes his father’s old friend’s (Kirk Douglas) Native Indian wife. Holliman, in memorable roles, dug into his Faulknerian roots with the speech and naïve mannerisms associated with White ethnic backwoods phrases like “Aw shucks, Pa!”, or “God dang it!”, or Erskine Caldwell’s famous novelistic line: “Why in pluperfect hell…!”, etc.
All this, especially in ‘Last Train from Gunhill’, created some of the greatest characterizations of a Hollywood supporting actor. Indeed, his characterization in ‘Last Train from Gunhill’ is the perfect mirror which reflect
s Quinn’s and Douglas’s opposing situation.
If anyone tried to pigeonhole Holliman’s gift for the supporting role, they would fail, as his different characterizations in the science-fiction TV series, ‘THE TWILIGHT ZONE’, or his four-year (1974 to 78) stint as one of Angie Dickinson’s detective crew in the fine TV series, ‘POLICE WOMAN’, proved.
Cool, dapper, hip, urban, mixing it up with America’s other ethnicities, Earl Holliman is simply one of the ace supporting actors Hollywood ever produced.
