April 25th, 1917- Celeste Holm
I met her once. It was really rather a thrill because I am truly a fan & at the time, a berserk musical theatre queen. I was over the moon to meet the original Ado Annie from Oklahoma!. As a film-savvy young gay man, my head was simply spinning to be meeting the real Karen, Margo Channing’s best friend in All About Eve, one of my very favorite films.
The occasion was upon being received backstage by Betty Garrett, after her one-woman show Betty Garrett & Other Songs at the Westwood Playhouse in Spring 1976. Garrett had been in my acquaintance for a couple of years, & we had recently been at a very informal outdoor dinner thrown by mutual friends & Garrett offering me the house seats to her show the very next evening. I took her up on the offer. The show was splendid, sparkling & sentimental. Right before her big finish, but before the curtain call, Garrett looked into the house with her hands shielding her eyes from the spotlight & announced while pointing out to the audience: “My dear friends Celeste & Stephen… I want to see you both in my dressing room in just a few minutes.” I turned to the person next to me, nudged them & whispered: “That’s me she is talking about! I’m Stephen. I mean, I’m not Celeste.”
So, Oscar winner & consummate character actor Celeste Home & little curly haired Stephen hung out in the small dressing room while Garrett got out of costume & make up. Holm & our hero made small talk & loudly praised Garrett’s show. I heaped some praise on Holm’s stage performance in Mame which I had seen in 1968.
Unbelievable now, I declined an offer from this pair of amazing stars from Hollywood’s Golden Era to move on to the next party as a trio. Instead, I would opt for Studio One in West Hollywood, hoping that some hot guy would shove that little brown bottle under my nose, that would make me feel all sexy & really connected with the thumping music & he might then take me home with him. I did meet a beefy redhead that evening. He took me back to his place in Venice Beach, used me for my considerable talents & then made me breakfast. I came to a fork in the road, & I made the wrong decision. I could have partied away the evening with the woman who introduced the world to the showstopper I Can’t Say No & instead I took the fork that might have got me forked.
Holm tells this story: she was nominated for an Oscar for a film she made with Loretta Young, Come To The Stable, in which they both played nuns! Young had become quite pious after having given birth to Clark Gable‘s love child (talk about virgin birth, she adopts her own daughter) & she had announced to the cast & crew that there would no swearing or strong language on the set of the nun flick. Young had set up a penalty box. If anyone slipped & used a fuck or a shit, they were required to place a dime in the box, the money going to a Vatican charity after the film wrapped. Holm’s good friend Ethel Merman stopped by the set for a visit. Merman took a 10 dollar bill out of her purse & slipped it into the swearword box & for the whole set to hear stated: “There you go Loretta. Now you can go fuck yourself”. I told this story to a group of young people that I used to supervise here in Portland. Not a single one knew of Celeste Holm, Loretta Young, Ethel Merman, or All About Eve, even the gay ones. I hate getting old.
Holmes also relates:
“I walked onto the set of All About Eve on the first day & said, ‘Good Morning,’ to Miss Bette Davis, & do you know her reply? She said: ‘Oh shit, good manners’. I never spoke to her again … ever.”
Brooklyn born Celeste Holm resided in her native NYC for most of her life. She married 5 times. She wed her 5th husband, opera singer Frank Basile, on April 29, 2004, her 87th birthday. He was 45 years younger. Sweet!
Holm made more than 100 films beginning in 1946, excellent in dramas, comedies & musicals. She outlived the entire cast of All About Eve, my favorite of her films. She continued to work in theatre & cabaret until her late 80s. Holm took her final curtain call in 2012, shortly after her 95th birthday, a life well lived.
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