Earl Holliman was ushering moviegoers to their seats through the dark hallways of a Shreveport, Louisiana, theater approximately 80 years ago. But he truly wanted to be on screen. Struggling through tryouts, the eager young actor was frequently told “you just don’t look the part,” so he went to the Paramount Studio barbershop and changed his appearance.

When he was just 14 years old, he worked at Shreveport’s Strand Theater, leading moviegoers through the aisles to their seats for 25 cents an hour. The future star “saved a few bucks,” and when he was 15, he “hitchhiked to Hollywood.””I brought along a pair of dark sunglasses, which I associated with Hollywood, and, on my first day in Hollywood I went to Grauman’s Chinese Theater and I remember walking up and down the forecourt of Grauman’s [where movie stars put their handprints and footprints] in my dark glasses hoping everyone would wonder who I was,” Holliman, 95, recounted in a previous interview.

“I did not last long. I expected to be able to acquire a job, but I couldn’t.” Feeling defeated, the young guy returned home and finished high school. After graduation, he joined the navy, which placed him at a radio communications school in Los Angeles.”Whenever I had liberty [shore leave], I’d head over to the Hollywood Canteen and meet people I’d later work with, such as Roddy McDowall.” Later, I applied and was accepted at the Pasadena Playhouse,” said Holliman, who played a minor role in the 1953 picture Scared Stiff alongside Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin.

But Hollywood was unkind to the ambitious man, who often heard during auditions: “You just don’t look the part.” “I was informed that, even though I was a fine actor, I wasn’t beautiful enough to be a leading man or eccentric enough to be a character actor. “I was kind of in the middle,” he recounted. Holliman chose to obtain a makeover in order to achieve stardom and get a role in the 1953 film The Girls of Pleasure Island. ‘A funny-looking haircut.’ The hero of Forbidden Planet describes his big break with his new look:

“Well, when I sat in the barber’s chair…they cut my hair about a quarter of an inch long and in the front it laid down like bangs…”With my large ears, broken nose, two front teeth, small eyes, and odd-looking haircut, I was instantly a character actor. “Exactly like that.”Following his part in The Girls of Pleasure Island, Holliman won a Golden Globe for his portrayal in 1956’s The Rainmaker, co-starring Katharine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster. “That’s still my favorite film,” he told the Calgary Herald in 1991. “It was the one that made all the difference in lifting my career to a whole new plateau.”

Over the next few years, Holliman, who also had a successful singing career, featured onscreen with Hollywood icons such as John Wayne, Dean Martin, Kirk Douglas, and Rock Hudson. From 1974 to 1978, the star of the TV series Wide Country portrayed Sergeant Bill Crowley in Police Woman, a show co-starring Angie Dickinson.
Speaking on his chemistry with his co-star, who is now 92 years old, the Giant star says, “She was very sexy, but there was something about her that you wanted to protect, a little girl quality, that made you want to put your arm around her and say it was going to be [okay].”

Holliman goes on, “We were together 12 or 14 hours a day, and Angie’s extremely opinionated; when she believes she’s right, that’s how it is, and we had our share of arguments, but you could see we had a connection. It appeared that two persons adored each other. It was there. The Thorn Birds actor, who received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1977, retired from acting after making minor appearances in TV shows such as the Twilight Zone and the short-lived Delta with Delta Burke, as well as films such as Bad City Blues (1999) and The Perfect Tenant (2000).

Since leaving the screen, he has focused on his work as an animal rights advocate. The former celebrity, who has treated a blind possum, injured doves, and mauled cats, does not discriminate. He also likes pigeons. “I feed at least 500 of them each day. In fact, it’s like a pigeon McDonald’s on my land,” he explains. Holliman was president of Actors and Other Animals for 25 years, and the group was backed by many celebrities, including the late Betty White, Lily Tomlin, Valerie Bertinelli, and Wendie Malick.