Thomas Holding, Leading Man for Petrova (1917) 🇺🇸

Madame Olga Petrova, who recently engaged Thomas Holding to play the part of the Crown Prince of Belmark in the first of the eight pictures to be made by the Petrova Picture Company this year, has just signed a contract with Mr. Holding whereby he becomes her leading man for the next four pictures. A clause in the agreement also gives her an option on Mr. Holding’s services for further pictures.

The first picture in which Mr. Holding appears with the Polish star will be completed on Wednesday or Thursday of this week and will be released on or about Oct. 22. The second picture will be started almost immediately after the completion of the first one.

Thomas Holding first went on the stage under the management of Charles Hawtrey, with whom he appeared in A Message From Mars, Tom, Dick and Harry, In the Soup and other London productions. He then attracted the attention of the late Charles Frohman and signed with him for the juvenile lead in Are You a Mason? After a Shakespearean tour through Australia in which he appeared in the principal role of ten of the Bard of Avon’s plays, the versatile young Englishman returned to the Strand theater, London, to sing the leading baritone’s part in The Chinese Honeymoon. At the end of two seasons of musical comedy he went back to the dramatic stage in Edward Terry’s company.

It was Charles Frohman who first brought Thomas Holding to America. In this country, Holding has played the leading man with Billie Burke, Maxine Elliott and many other equally well known players. His portrayal of the young Jew, Ben Hur, for two seasons, under Klaw and Erlanger’s management, brought him considerable praise and recognition.

In the motion picture field Mr. Holding’s career has been no less distinguished. His first picture was The Eternal City for the Famous Players, and while he was still in Rome, Oliver Morosco signed him up for the revival of Peg o’ My Heart as soon as he should again reach America. After a season with Peg, Holding returned to the Famous Players under a yearly contract as Pauline Frederick’s leading man. More recently he has been seen on the screen with Jane Grey in Her Fighting Chance, with Doris Kenyon in The Great White Trail, and with Clara Kimball Young in Magda.

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French Buyer on Way to America.

American producers of high class photoplays are advised that an important French buyer is due in New York about October 10, and all such who have subjects which they are anxious to sell for France, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal are requested to immediately send full particulars regarding same to Inter-Allied Films, 220 West 42d street, New York.

Collection: Moving Picture World, October 1917

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see also

• L. B. Burstein, President of the King-Bee (1917)
• William S. Davis, Metro Director (1917)