The corpse of a young man floats in the pool of an old Hollywood mansion. A voiceover, that of the dead man, is about to tell who and why he shot him in the back. The Twilight of the Gods (Billy Wilder, 1950) is one of the best starts in the history of cinema. And that voice was that of William Holden, the great gallant of the fifties, who achieved stardom thanks to this film.
He played a B-movie screenwriter who, in order to solve his financial problems, allows himself to be loved by a former silent film star, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), and ends up trapped by the woman’s delusions, unable to accept that his times of glory are already behind. Holden got an Oscar nomination for that role, although his career had started a few years earlier, in the late 30s.
The actor, born on April 17, 1918, was the son of a middle-class family who settled in California when Holden was three years old. He studied chemistry, but immediately opted for theater and radio and, after a couple of roles as an extra, he made his debut as a leading man in Golden Dream (Rouben Mamoulian) in 1939 accompanied by Barbara Stanwyck, another of the great stars of classic Hollywood.
Holden was blond, handsome and could boast impressive big blue eyes so he did not miss the job. During the 1940s, he shot twenty movies, romantic comedies, westerns, some gangsters and several war movies. Despite all that activity, he had time to enlist and become an aviator during World War II.
Back in Hollywood and after the success of Twilight of the Gods, Holden’s career was already unstoppable. That same year, 1950, he shot Born Yesterday under the command of George Cukor where he played a teacher who was in charge of teaching Judy Holliday, the girlfriend of a millionaire, four basic things, because the girl was very cute and a good person, but quite uneducated. and that embarrassed her lover, Broderick Crawford. Naturally, love arose between the teacher and the student.
And with the good roles also came the Oscar. He did it, how could it be otherwise, from the hand of Billy Wilder who gave Holden the protagonist of Traitor in Hell (1953) turning him into a cynical aviator imprisoned in a German camp during World War II that his companions They suspect that he may be an informer.
The fruitful collaboration between Wilder and Holden continued with Sabrina (1954), an unforgettable comedy where Audrey Hepburn is the daughter of the chauffeur of a family of millionaires, the Larrabees, who is dying of love for the young son, David (Holden). Poor Sabrina, not feeling reciprocated, goes to study in Paris and returns home years later turned into a lady. David falls at her feet, but she ends up falling in love with her older brother, the serious and sane Linus (Humphrey Bogart).
Holden’s career continued apace with outstanding titles such as Picnic (Joshua Logan, 1955), Farewell Hill (Henry King, 1955), The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957) or The World of Suzie Wong ( Richard Quine, 1960). But starting in the 1960s, things started to get worse. The actor kept his big eyes, but already somewhat old, he took refuge in the western and in catastrophic films with an ensemble cast such as The Colossus in Flames (John Guillermin, 1974).
Holden did not age well, perhaps because he refused to undergo cosmetic surgery like most of his colleagues, and it was precisely this that brought him his last great role. Evidently at the command of Wilder, who wanted an aging actor for Fedora (1978) to play a veteran film producer.
It was not long before the tragic end. Holden suffered from cancer, but death came to visit him before the disease developed. The actor was very rich, he had married the young actress Stephanie Powers and lived between his mansions in Hollywood and Switzerland. But he drank. His body was found on November 16, 1981 in a huge pool of blood. He had been dead a week.
His mysterious death sparked all sorts of rumours. It was even said that Holden had been crushed by an anaconda, but things had been much more prosaic: the actor had been drinking, the autopsy revealed, and apparently tripped over a rug, fell and hit a marble table. It wasn’t a swimming pool and he hadn’t been shot in the back, but Wilder could have scripted the tragic death of one of his favorite actors.
