‘The Rainmaker’ Star Earl Holliman Dies at 96

Award-winning display screen star Earl Holliman died on Monday, Nov. 25. He was 96. The actor’s partner, Craig Curtis, confirmed the information to The Hollywood Reporter. 

Born on Sept. 11, 1928, in Delhi, La., Holliman was adopted and named by oil discipline employee Henry Holliman. He studied appearing on the College of California, Los Angeles, and the Pasadena Playhouse. After making his display screen debut reverse Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in 1953’s Scared Stiff, he starred in lots of hit Westerns and dramas all through the Fifties and ’60s. 

Holliman gained a Golden Globe Award for his supporting efficiency as Jim Curry — a task he beat out Elvis Presley for — within the 1956 Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn movie The Rainmaker. That very same 12 months, he appeared within the groundbreaking sci-fi hit Forbidden Planet alongside Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis and Leslie Nielsen.

The actor additionally had the excellence of showing within the debut episode of CBS’ Rod Serling-created hit The Twilight Zone, the 1959 episode “The place Is Everyone?”

From 1974 to 1978, Holliman grew to become a beloved fixture for NBC audiences as Sergeant Invoice Crowley on the tv cop drama Police Girl. He and costar Angie Dickinson remained pals within the years following. 

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Holliman adopted up his Golden Globe win with one other nomination for a 1992 episode of Delta starring Delta Burke. He was offered with a star on the Hollywood Stroll of Fame in 1977.

A longtime animal rights activist, Holliman served because the president of Actors and Others for Animals for many years. It was at an animal adoption occasion that Holliman was emceeing that the late Bob Barker met his longtime girlfriend Nancy Burnet.

In an August 1982 problem of PEOPLE, the Picks & Pans part singled out Holliman for his work in 1979 TV film The Solitary Man: “A much-worked-over topic—divorce—comes off recent on this TV film due to a complicated script and Earl Holliman’s wonderful efficiency.”

Per Selection, Curtis, 85, remembered his partner as “a gracious, form confidant, a consummate host, a person whose indefatigable positivity was evergreen and powered by a 1000-watt smile, a simple attraction and infectious goodwill. A pleasure and a privilege to spend time with, he was even-keeled and compassionate, possessing a deep sensitivity and mischievous humorousness which had been belied by his stoically good-looking countenance.”