(photo courtesy of Flickr.com)
I know I haven’t written a blog in quite a while. I tested positive with Covid this past Thursday April the 14th. Since that day I have spent a lot of time in bed confined to the enclosing four walls of my bedroom and have had plenty of time to watch a lot of television, work on college related stuff and look at Facebook and Twitter. In looking at Facebook, I noticed just yesterday that people were posting about the birthday anniversary of the great American actor William Holden, who was born April 17, 1918.
Holden was known for many great films throughout a career that spanned from the late 1930s to his death in 1981, my favorites being Network, The Wild Bunch, Picnic and Bridge on the River Kwai. Holden did win an Academy Award for his film Stalag 17 in 1953. He brought a masculine, ordinary look to his characters that women liked because of his good looks and men liked because of his rugged nature. Many of the characters he played were tragic figures and he ended up living out his life as a tragic figure as well, dying during an alcoholic binge, alone. His body was found on November 16, 1981, in his apartment in Santa Monica, California. He had lacerated his forehead on the edge of a bedside table after a fall and bled to death. It is believed that he had been conscious for about half an hour before he died, trying to stop the bleeding himself instead of calling for help, but he eventually passing out due to blood loss.
The reason I am writing about Holden is because my grandfather Chester Baudoin, whom I have posted about in the past and have written my second book about, met William Holden one time. My grandfather, in the late 1970s, flew the Concorde to Europe and guess who he was sitting next to? None other than Holden! They talked through the entire flight. Both men were very attractive, flamboyant and got along well perfectly with one another.
I never had the chance to interview my grandfather personally about this experience but heard the story through my mother. She told me in my interview process for my book (Two Wings and a Star: The Life and Times of Sheriff Chester Baudoin) that one thing they talked about was the ranch that Holden owned in Kenya. Holden was big into wildlife preservation towards the later years of his life and his partner, actress Stephanie Powers, whom some of my generation might know from the 1980s television show Hart to Hart with Robert Wagner, was a founding President of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation and a director of the Mount Kenya Game Ranch in Kenya, which Holden established.
Supposedly Holden had invited my grandfather to join him at his ranch to attend one of the African safaris. According to my mother they had exchanged phone numbers and they did call each other but my grandfather never ended up going on the safari. My mother believes that my grandfather declined because of Holden’s much publicized alcoholism and the fact that my grandfather himself was an alcoholic. I guess my grandfather possibly didn’t want to take a trip in which he would be influenced to drink when he was trying to kick the habit at the time.
In the many interesting encounters with famous people that my grandfather experienced, this one was the most fascinating and I wish I had asked my grandfather more about this one!
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