- Born
- Died
- Birth nameSterling Price Holloway Jr.
- Height5′ 10½″ (1.79 m)
- Popular American character actor of amusing appearance and voice whose long career led from dozens of highly enjoyable onscreen performances to world-wide familiarity as the voice of numerous Walt Disney animated films. Born in the American Deep South to grocer Sterling P. Holloway Sr. and Rebecca Boothby Holloway, he had a younger brother, Boothby. Holloway spent his early years as an actor playing comic juveniles on the stage. His bushy reddish-blond hair and trademark near-falsetto voice made him a natural for sound pictures, and he acted in scores of talkies, although he had made his picture debut in silents. His physical image and voice relegated him almost exclusively to comic roles, but in 1945, director Lewis Milestone cast him more or less against type in the classic war film A Walk in the Sun (1945), where Holloway's portrayal of a reluctant soldier was quite notable. He played frequently on television, becoming familiar to baby-boomers in a recurring role as Uncle Oscar on Adventures of Superman (1952), and later in television series of his own. His later work as the voice of numerous characters in Disney cartoons brought him new audiences and many fans, especially for his voicing of beloved Winnie the Pooh. He died in 1992.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
- ChildrenRichard Holloway
- ParentsSterling Price HollowayRebecca DeHaven
- RelativesBoothby Holloway(Sibling)
- Distinctive high-pitched, soft-spoken voice, best known as Winnie the Pooh
- Roles in Disney films
- Turned down a contract with Louis B. Mayer at MGM because he didn't want to be a star.
- His father, who was a grocer, was also the mayor of his birthplace, Cedartown, GA, for a time in 1912.
- A director once told him he was "too repulsive" for the screen and he stopped making movies for nearly five years. Following the stock market crash of 1929, the money factor eventually drew him back to making sound pictures.
- Although he never married, he did adopt a son named Richard Holloway, who survived him when he died in 1992.
- Worked on a few Will Rogers movies and was injured in a couple of them. Once, a shelf loaded with objects fell on his head after Rogers lassoed the prop and pulled it out of place. Another time, a gun that Holloway was supposed to fire in a scene accidentally exploded in his hand.
- If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there.
- [in 1967, on how he was cast as "Kaa" in The Jungle Book (1967)] Walt [Walt Disney] came to me, and he's such a stickler for voices, and said, "When you're finished with what you're doing today on Winnie the Pooh, see what you can do with a snake because I can't find the right voice for it". I thought, "Wouldn't it be funny to have a snake with an aching back because it would be such a looong ache?".
- I came to Hollywood at a bad time. The movies were in a state of turmoil. Sound was coming in and silents were going out. Nobody thought I was suitable for talkies.
- I didn't like making silent movies. Perhaps it was because I was from the stage and accustomed to a completely different routine.
- I've always loved the theater very much. I've always been in it. I hate being away from it. I'm very stubborn--I like to do what I want to do. And what I want to do most is theater.
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