
He came to the forefront one more time, co-starring with gold prospecting rivals Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston in John Huston's masterpiece The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), arguably the high point of Tim's entire film career, which rightfully earned him the best notices he ever received. He made an auspicious return to films in the role of Virgil Earp in Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) and then continued in a somewhat lesser vein with "B"-level oaters. Wounded in Tokyo on the last day of the war, he was also given the Purple Heart. He was a decorated hero (Distinguished Flying Cross, Victory Medal, and Presidential Unit Citation among his awards) while serving in the Air Corps and was discharged with the rank of second lieutenant. World War II interrupted his thriving career.
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He starred in a series of dusty RKO features partnered with comic Cliff Edwards by his side and also appeared solo elsewhere. By the mid '40s, however, Tim had settled into the western genre. He reached an early peak when Orson Welles cast him against type as the cruel, malicious son George in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), a role Welles initially contemplated playing himself. Hardly confined to westerns at this early stage, Tim showed impressive acting abilities in comedy (5th Ave Girl (1939)), adventures (Swiss Family Robinson (1940)), and high drama (Back Street (1941)), all for RKO Pictures. His horseback riding capabilities and fast-drawing technique quickly kicked in with The Law West of Tombstone (1938), and he joined a superb cast in John Ford's classic western Stagecoach (1939) as a by-the-book cavalry lieutenant. He then earned strong notices in the classic Barbara Stanwyck tearjerker Stella Dallas (1937) and as Olivia de Havilland's brother in Gold Is Where You Find It (1938). Tim apprenticed at various stock companies before he eased his way back into films with an unbilled part in History Is Made at Night (1937). Virginia herself made a very brief foray into acting. At this point he decided to try to put together an acting career. While studying at college, he married his college sweetheart, Virginia Ashcroft, in 1938.


The boyishly rugged, athletically inclined Tim attended military school in his teens, excelling in polo. He played Jack's character as a young boy. Tim, in fact, made his debut at age 10 in one of his father's westerns, The Vanishing Pioneer (1928), based on a Zane Grey story. Nicknamed "Tim", he was raised on his father's ranch in Fresno, where he performed outside chores and learned to ride a horse. in Beverly Hills on February 5, 1918, to Jack and his wife, Margaret Woods, at a time when Jack was just making a dent in silent films.

The three, however, never performed together in a single film. Also a part of the acting Holt clan was the beautiful "prairie flower" Jennifer Holt (nee Elizabeth Marshall Holt), Tim's younger sister, who appeared in scores of 1940s oaters.

The two actually appeared together as father and son in the western The Arizona Ranger (1948), and Jack was glimpsed (as a hobo in the Mexican flophouse that Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, and Tim were staying in) in the classic The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Charles John Holt), who appeared in hundreds of silents and talkies (many of them westerns) over the years. Cowboy hero Tim Holt avidly followed in the boots of his famous character-actor dad, the granite-jawed Jack Holt (b.
