Born in 1928, Louisiana’s Earl Holliman always dreamed of being on the big screen.
When he was about 14, he had a job, where he earned 25 cents per hour, guiding movie patrons through the aisles to their seats at Shreveport’s Strand Theater.
Saving his money, 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, said in a earlier interview. “I didn’t last long. I thought I’d be able to get a job, but I couldn’t get one.”
Feeling like he failed, the young man returned home and completed high school. After graduation he served in the navy, that set him up at a radio communications school in Los Angeles.
“Whenever I’d get liberty [shore leave], I’d hightail it over to the Hollywood Canteen and I met people I’d later work with like Roddy McDowall. Later, I applied for and was accepted at the Pasadena Playhouse,” said Holliman, who had a small role in the 1953 film Scared Stiff with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin.