Medford mail tribune., June 05, 1960, Image 43

Family Weekly jP 5 mo
THE MANY WORLDS
(
OF BILL HOLDEN
By PEER J. OPPENHEIMER '
He's hkkn called "Golden Boy," after tin- title
i)f his lirst picture which catapulted him to
stardom, and because he seems to have everything
a man can ask for success, wealth, recognition, a
happy family.
lie's been called a solid citizen and a playboy,
a liberal and a conservative. He's been described
as a hypochondriac, a restless, disillusioned man
running away from himself and his family be
cause he no longer has an aim in life.
He's been referred to as a lonely man with a
mania for self-destruction that led him to drinking
and taking unnecessary chances. He has been de
scribed as fascinatingly interesting, and exceed
ingly dull.
In fact, William Holden has been called just
about everything--except easy to understand.
Although he's one of the top box-oflice stars,
little has been written about him in the past four
years because he's been constantly on the move,
It took me two years to find out about this para
doxical mystery man and begin to understand
what makes him behave the way he does. 1 hail
to travel to all corners of the world. I talked to his
Hong Kong tailor, his coworkers in Hollywood, his
Swiss banking partner, Carl Hirschmann, and his
old friend and business partner, Texas oil-millionaire
Hay Ryan.
I accompanied Hill on a transatlantic flight from
Paris to New York, and finally spent a week witli
him and his wife Ardis (whose screen name was
Uremia Marshall) in London, where he was shoot
ing scenes for "The World of Suzie Wong."
I saw him tipsy and sober, gay and depressed,
elated and worried. And I got to know him.
In a way, our first lengthy get-together proved
to be one of the most informative.
When I joined Bill at Orly Field, Paris, for a
transatlantic flight to New York two years ago, I
knew him only slightly. There were four of us in
the first-class section of the plane Bill, a public
relations executive, an attorney, and myself.
Getting to Know Him
It was Bill who broke the ice. He was charming,
cheerful, and talkative. We discussed everything
from hunting lions in Africa to the political situa
tion in various countries.
It was apparent that Bill was vitally interested
and fully informed about our foreign relations.
While his knowledge was extensive, he rejected
then and still does any thought of getting into
politics himself. "I'm qualified for only one type
of work acting," he tpld me. "I don't even have
the desire to get into such related fields as direct
ing or producing." In his opinion, the best argu
ment for this was a fiasco called "Toward the
Unknown," a picture he produced independently
for Warner Brothers and his only one in recent
years that lost money.
Holden's talkativeness on that plane was stimu
lated by Scotch on the rocks, a frequent and heavy
indulgence in those days. When he climbed out of
his berth the next morning, he could barely steady
his hands until he poured down another drink
from a plastic container wedged in between bottles
of shaving lotion and hair tonic in his travel kit.
"Don't you ever get that stuff mixed up?" I
asked him.
His face drew into contortions. "I did once.
What an experience!"
A severe case of hepatitis, a liver ailment, ended
Bill's heavy drinking. Today he drinks rarely, but
that still leaves the question what drove him to
the bottle before?
For one thing, Bill was fighting Paramount to
. get out of a contract which made a small fortune
for the studio but little for him.
He also was torn physically by a love of travel
ing and the tremendous strain which globe
hopping puts on a man. It kept getting worse. "It
used to take me a day to get adjusted after I Hew
from the United States to Europe." he told me.
"Now it takes me a week to get back on my feet."
Flying made him tense and a couple of drinks
helped him relax. And Bill never had an easy
time relaxing under the best of circumstances.
Take the night we had dinner together in Lon
don and got back to our hotel too early to turn in.
Bill asked our whole party to join him in his
suite. We listened to jazz music, danced the eha-cha-cha,
heard Bill mimic the sounds of lions,
zebras, monkeys, and elephants, and play "bones"
on a pair of broken hangers.
In fact, Bill was a one-man entertainment com
mittee. He worked harder that night having a
"good time" than he had in front of the cameras
all week long and he is considered one of the
most conscientious actors in the business!
F'aiuilu VWrfcly. June 5, l.lflll