\nEarl Holliman, a Louisiana native born in 1928, has always wanted to be a movie star.\n
When he was just 14 years old, he worked at Shreveport\u2019s Strand Theater, leading moviegoers through the aisles to their seats for 25 cents an hour.\n
The future star \u201csaved a few bucks,\u201d and when he was 15, he \u201chitchhiked to Hollywood.\u201d\n
\u201cI brought along a pair of dark sunglasses, which I associated with Hollywood, and, on my first day in Hollywood I went to Grauman\u2019s Chinese Theater and I remember walking up and down the forecourt of Grauman\u2019s [where movie stars put their handprints and footprints] in my dark glasses hoping everyone would wonder who I was,\u201d Holliman, 95, recounted in a previous interview. \u201cI did not last long. I expected to be able to acquire a job, but I couldn\u2019t.\u201d\n
\n
Feeling defeated, the young guy went home and finished high school. After graduation, he joined the navy, which placed him at a radio communications school in Los Angeles.\n
But Hollywood was unkind to the ambitious man, who often heard during auditions: \u201cYou just don\u2019t look the part.\u201d\n
\u201cI was informed that, even though I was a fine actor, I wasn\u2019t beautiful enough to be a leading man or eccentric enough to be a character actor. \u201cI was kind of in the middle,\u201d he recounted.\n
Holliman chose to obtain a makeover in order to achieve popularity and get a role in the 1953 film The Girls of Pleasure Island.\n
\nOver the next several years, Holliman, who also had a successful singing career, featured onscreen with Hollywood icons such as John Wayne, Dean Martin, Kirk Douglas, and Rock Hudson.\n
From 1974 until 1978, the star of the TV series Wide Country portrayed Sergeant Bill Crowley in Police Woman, a show co-starring Angie Dickinson.\n
Speaking on his chemistry with his co-star, who is now 92 years old, the Giant star adds, \u201cShe was very sexy, but there was something about her that you wanted to protect, a little girl quality, that made you want to put your arm around her and say it was going to be [okay].\u201d Holliman goes on, \u201cWe were together 12 or 14 hours a day, and Angie\u2019s extremely opinionated; when she believes she\u2019s right, that\u2019s how it is, and we had our share of arguments, but you could see we had a connection. It appeared like two persons admired one other. It was there.\n
\nSince leaving the screen, he has concentrated on his work as an animal rights advocate.\n
The former celebrity, who has treated a blind possum, injured doves, and battered cats, does not discriminate.\n
He also likes pigeons.\n
\u201cI feed at least 500 of them each day. In fact, it\u2019s like a pigeon McDonald\u2019s on my land,\u201d he explains.\n
Holliman was president of Actors and Other Animals for 25 years, and the group was backed by many celebrities, including the late Betty White, Lily Tomlin, Valerie Bertinelli, and Wendie Malick. What are your films or TV shows featuring Earl Holliman? Please share your opinions with us, and then share this story so that others may hear from you!\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Earl Holliman, a Louisiana native born in 1928, has always wanted to be a movie star. When he was just 14 years old, he worked at Shreveport\u2019s Strand Theater, leading moviegoers through the aisles to their seats for 25 cents an hour. The future star \u201csaved a few bucks,\u201d and when he was 15, he\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":87595,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[670],"tags":[693],"class_list":{"0":"post-87363","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-news"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Earl-Holliman.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87363"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87600,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87363\/revisions\/87600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}