Henry Earl Holliman (born September 11, 1928) is an American actor, animal-rights activist, and singer known for his many character roles in films, mostly Westerns and dramas, in the 1950s and 1960s. He won a Golden Globe Award for the film The Rainmaker (1956) and portrayed Sergeant Bill Crowley on the television police drama Police Woman throughout its 1974–1978 run.
Holliman was born on September 11, 1928, in Delhi, Louisiana. His biological father William A. Frost was a farmer. His mother Mary Smith was living in poverty with several other children and gave him up for adoption at birth, while her other children were sent to orphanages until she could take them all back, which she did. Earl was the seventh of ten children overall, and in later years, he was able to reconnect and establish relationships with them. He was adopted a week after his birth by Henry Holliman, a traveling oilfield worker, and his wife Velma, a waitress, who then gave him the name Henry Earl Holliman. He was so frail in his infancy that one doctor predicted he would not live long enough to see childhood, but when Velma's sister provided him with a generous dose of castor oil shortly after, the ingredients proved to heal him tremendously and helped save his life. Although his upbringing and family history have strong ties to Louisiana, during his teenage years he and his family lived in Kerrville, Texas, for a time as well as some parts of Arkansas (which he once stated made him out to be a "red-blooded Ark-La-Texan").
Holliman's early years were normal until Henry died when he was 13. Earl credited Henry and Velma with providing him with so much love and encouragement that despite their own poverty they helped him in terms of looking deep within himself to discover his self-confidence in converting his dreams into reality. In addition, when he began his career in films, Velma was so supportive of him that she once even went to a theatre in Louisiana an hour before it opened just so she could be the first attendee present. She wanted to see him in his first major film appearance and to work with the theatre manager, show columnist, and a friend of the family to go through a vast set of stills for that particular movie so she could begin the composition of an album for him reflecting the start of his professional career as an actor.

Return to Earl Holliman Autograph Profile