Earl Holliman, whose more than 100 film and TV roles included the first episode of The Twilight Zone, has died. He was 96. Holliman's husband, Craig Curtis, said the actor died Monday at his home in Los Angeles, the New York Times reports. Beginning in the early 1950s, Holliman appeared in such films as The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Sons of Katie Elder, Giant, and Sharky's Machine. His won a Golden Globe for best supporting actor in 1956's The Rainmaker, in which he played Katharine Hepburn's teenage brother, a role Elvis Presley also sought.
"I had to fight to get a test for it," Holliman said, per the Los Angeles Times. He added that "working with Katharine Hepburn was the joy of my life." Holliman was a regular on TV as well, launching Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone in October 1959, playing an Air Force man with amnesia wandering through an apparently deserted world in "Where is Everybody?" His best-known part might have been his four-season run as Lt. Bill Crowley, the boss of undercover police Sgt. Pepper Anderson, played by Angie Dickinson, on Police Woman. "She'd get into trouble and I'd run in and save her," Holliman said, per the Hollywood Reporter. "I would make some smart remark and she would come back at me in some sexy kind of way, and a lot of that was ad-libbed."
Holliman said his friendship with Dickenson was his fondest memory of the 1970s series. He'd moved into an unfurnished house, then left for a film project, Holliman told the Los Angeles Times in 1993. When he returned, Dickenson had had the place furnished for him. Holliman was an animal rights activist, serving as the longtime president of Actors and Others for Animals. He received a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame in 1977. (More obituary stories.)
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