Celeste Holm, Remembered by Her Husband and Friends

“Nothing is forever in the theater. Whatever it is, it’s here, it flares up, burns hot, and then it’s gone,” Celeste Holm’s character muses in the 1950 backstage drama All About Eve. Ms. Holm, whose silver-screen career resonated with the truth of her own line, died on Sunday at the age of 95.

“She had an incredible run at life,” said Maria Cooper Janis, daughter of actor Gary Cooper. “If you look at her roles, she was funny, she was bawdy, she was sexy, she sang up a storm . . . But she did not do it with artifice—it was something that came from inside her.”

In 1943, Ms. Holm, a bright-eyed ingénue with golden hair, stepped onto a Broadway stage and sang “I Cain’t Say No” in broadest Americanese. The show was Oklahoma! and her future, not to mention that of the American musical, was changed forever. She headed for Hollywood, winning a best-supporting-actress Oscar for Gentleman’s Agreement four years later. The movie, a frank statement about anti-Semitism in America, solidified Ms. Holm’s reputation as a film actress and led to a series of sophisticated, straight-talking female roles, including the one in All About Eve, in which Holm appeared alongside Bette Davis.

“No one looked like Celeste. She had a heart-shaped face and a quality in her voice different from anybody else’s,” remarked Tammy Grimes, Tony-award-winning star of the musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown. “But it was her honesty that always got to me.”

As Ms. Holm’s career developed, so did her desire to work for charity. Over the years, she passionately served as a spokesperson for the National Mental Health Association, a member of the National Council on the Arts, and a tireless fundraiser for UNICEF, to name a few. Evelyn Echols, former vice president of the N.M.H.A., recalls walking down Fifth Avenue with Ms. Holm, who was carrying a stick with a spike at the end of it. A man just in front of them dropped an empty pack of cigarettes onto the sidewalk, which Ms. Holm expertly speared. She hurried after the man and asked, “Did you drop this?”  

Dumbfounded, the stranger recognized Ms. Holm, apologized profusely, and scurried away . . . never to be seen again.

In 2004, Ms. Holm married her fifth husband, Frank Basile, an operatic baritone more than 45 years her junior. The union sparked a legal battle between Ms. Holm and her children, who were concerned about their mother’s considerable assets. It also gave the actress a new lease on life.

“Her last years were made possible by Frank . . . it was just a beautiful, beautiful relationship. He gave her years that she wouldn’t have had—happy, fulfilled, interesting years,” Mrs. Cooper Janis explained.

The couple, who often attended parties and performed together, would launch into duets of “Getting to Know You” from The King and I. Mr. Basile, in turn, would serenade his wife with Cole Porter’s “You’re Sensational” from High Society, the 1956 movie musical in which she appeared with Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, and Louis Armstrong.

“She called me the love of her life, and she was the love of mine,” Mr. Basile told Vanity Fair in the days following his wife’s death. “I loved her smile and her eyes; they were the perfect way to start and end each day. I will miss her to my dying day.” 

Although fractured family relations and financial worries continued to plague Ms. Holm and her husband, she remained resilient. At one point, when troubles seemed at their worst, Mr. Basile asked his wife what the secret of her happiness was. She explained it simply: “I only remember the good times.”