Jack Holt — Blue Book of the Screen (1923) 🇺🇸

No act of courage gave Jack Holt his opportunity to go into motion pictures. Although the son of an Episcopal clergyman, he had a bent for adventure, and in his youth had gone to Alaska to prospect for copper, been a civil engineer and punched cows in the West.

Then, in 1916, a motion picture company making pictures along the Russian River in California needed a man to double for one of its featured actors. The double was to fall with a horse twenty-five feet off the bank of the river into the water. Holt applied for the fall, and accomplished it so successfully that he was given a small part in the production and remained in motion pictures after that.

Holt made a reputation as a powerful actor in plays of action. His early roles were curiously similar in atmosphere, if not in specific acts, to his own experiences in private life, and his strong face and fine figure made him a marked figure on the screen. His erect bearing was the result partly of his outdoor life and partly of his early training. As a boy he attended the Virginia Military Institute, where he went after the health of his father had compelled him to give up a pastorate at Fordham, N. Y.

In 1916 he was given a part in “Salome Jane,” a picture produced by San Rafael Company near San Francisco. After that he worked in several two reelers for a film company in Alameda.

His first Paramount picture, in which he was featured with Kathlyn Williams, Theodore Roberts and Tom Forman, was “The Cost of Hatred,” made in 1920. It was directed by George Melford.

Among the photoplays in which he has starred are “While Satan Sleeps,” “The Man Uncontrollable,” “North of the Rio Grande,” “On the High Seas” with Dorothy Dalton, “Making a Man,” “Nobody’s Money,” “The Tiger’s Claw,” and he was featured in “Bought and Paid For.”

Holt is six feet tall and weighs 184 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes. He is married and has three children — Imogene, Jack, Jr., and Betty. They live in Hollywood. He was born on May 31, 1888, at Winchester, Va.

He is one of the best polo players in the country and believes there is no sport for the outdoor man finer than this.

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Jack Holt reading his script to his price polo pony.

Portrait by Evans • Los Angeles

Collection: The Blue Book of the Screen (1923)