| Tim Holt | |
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![]() in the trailer for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) |
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| Born | Charles John Holt III February 5, 1919 Beverly Hills, California, U.S. |
| Died | February 15, 1973 (aged 54) Shawnee, Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1927–1971 |
| Spouse(s) | Birdee Stephens (1952-1973) (his death) Virginia Ashcroft (?-?) (divorced) Alice Harrison (?-?) (divorced) |
Tim Holt (February 5, 1919 – February 15, 1973) was an American film actor.
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Born Charles John Holt III in Beverly Hills, California, he was the son of actor Jack Holt and his wife, Margaret Woods. He was sent to study at Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana from which he graduated in 1936 then immediately went to work in the Hollywood film business.
After five minor roles, in 1938, at the age of nineteen, Holt had a major role under star Harry Carey in The Law West of Tombstone. It was the first of the many Western films he made during the 1940s. At the same time, his sister, Jennifer Holt, also became a leading star in the Western film genre.
After playing young Lieutenant Blanchard in the 1939 classic Stagecoach, Tim Holt had one of the leading roles in Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). He also starred as a Nazi in Hitler's Children (1943). Immediately after making this film, he became a decorated combat veteran of World War II, flying in the Pacific Theatre with the United States Army Air Forces as a B-29 bombardier. He returned to films after the war, appearing as "Virgil Earp" to Henry Fonda's "Wyatt Earp" in John Ford's Western My Darling Clementine. Holt was next cast in the role that he is probably most remembered for, in a film in which his father also appeared in a small part, portraying "Bob Curtin" next to Humphrey Bogart's character "Fred C. Dobbs" in John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, made in 1946. Holt did another four Western films before The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was released in 1948. He made two dozen more Western films until 1952, when the genre's popularity waned. He was then absent from the screen for five years until he starred in a less than successful horror film, "The Monster that Challenged the World", in 1957. He then appeared in only two more uninspiring motion pictures during the next fourteen years.
In 1973, at the age of fifty-four, Tim Holt died from bone cancer in Shawnee, Oklahoma, where he had been managing a radio station. He was interred in the Memory Lane Cemetery in Harrah, Oklahoma. Harrah, the town in which he and his wife resided, subsequently named Tim Holt Drive in his honor.
In 1991 Tim Holt was inducted posthumously into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
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