Charles John Holt, Jr.[1] (May 31, 1888 – January 18, 1951) was an American
motion picture actor who was prominent in both silent and sound movies, particularly
Westerns.
Following Holt's father's death, the family moved to New York City, where Jack, his mother, and brother Marshall lived with his married sister, Frances.[2]
Holt worked at various jobs including construction of the Pennsylvania Railroad's tunnel under the Hudson River and being a "surveyor, laborer, prospector, trapper, and stagecoach driver, among many other jobs" during an almost six-year stay in Alaska.[2]
Military service
Holt was prevented from serving in World War I because of "chronic foot problems" that resulted from frostbite that he suffered during his time in Alaska.[2] On January 28, 1943, Holt reported for duty with the rank of captain in the Army Quartermaster Corps. He began training at
Fort Francis E. Warren.[4]
In his 1914 film debut, Holt rode a horse down a steep embankment into the
Russian River in a scene for
Salomy Jane. The stunt cracked some of Holt's ribs and injured the horse so badly that it had to be destroyed. The film, which was considered lost for years, was included in the DVD released 2011 anthology Treasures 5 The West 1898—1938 by the
National Film Preservation Foundation after a print was discovered in Australia.[2]
Jack Holt, with his dapper mustache, prominent jaw, and quick-with-his-fists manner, personified
rugged masculinity. Holt became
Columbia Pictures' most reliable
leading man, and scored personal successes in three
Frank Capra action dramas: Submarine (1928), Flight (1929) and Dirigible (1931). Holt's no-nonsense characterizations were eclipsed by younger, tough-talking actors like
James Cagney and
Chester Morris, although he was still entrusted with tough-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold leads. Two mid-1930s features, Whirlpool and The Defense Rests, starred Holt opposite up-and-coming ingenue
Jean Arthur.
Exhibitors had come to associate Jack Holt with rough-and-tumble action, and so Holt continued to work in low-budget crime dramas (mostly for Columbia) through 1940. The series came to an end when he argued with studio chief
Harry Cohn. Cohn thought the actor so arrogant that he assigned Holt the leading role in a lowbrow 15-chapter
serial, Holt of the Secret Service (1941). Holt — the star of longest standing with the studio — was insulted by Cohn's demotion and, although he turned in a professional performance in the serial, he walked out on both Cohn and Columbia.
Holt married divorcee Margaret Wood in 1918. She obtained a divorce in Mexico in 1932, but on January 9, 1940, a judge in Los Angeles ruled that the divorce was invalid.[6] Her father, tycoon Henry Morton Stanley-Wood, disowned her because she married an actor; they later made up after he had lost most of his money in the Great Depression. She already had a daughter when they married, and together they had a son, Charles John Holt III, and a daughter, Elizabeth Marshall Holt. Better known as
Tim and
Jennifer respectively, both of them became actors in western films.[2]
Holt was a lifetime member of the
Society of Colonial Wars, admitted to the California Society on July 13, 1928.[7][8]
^Source Citation: Year: 1900; Census Place: Bronx, New York, New York; Roll: 1127; Page: 17A; line 15; Enumeration District: 1041; FHL microfilm: 1241127.
^Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 25047-25048). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.