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Eleanor Holm

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Full name
  
Eleanor G. Holm

Role
  
Swimmer

National team
  
Sport
  
Movies
  
Tarzan's Revenge

Name
  
Eleanor Holm


Eleanor Holm Eleanor Holm Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Born
  
December 6, 1913 (
1913-12-06
)
Brooklyn, New York

Club
  
Women's Swimming Association of New York

Died
  
January 31, 2004, Miami, Florida

Spouse
  
Thomas J Whalen (m. 1974–1986), Billy Rose (m. 1939–1954), Art Jarrett (m. 1933–1938)

Olympic medals
  
Swimming at the 1932 Summer Olympics – Women's 100 metre backstroke


Similar
  
Billy Rose, Art Jarrett, Fanny Brice

Eleanor holm competes in a swimming championship united states hd stock footage


Eleanor G. Holm (December 6, 1913 – January 31, 2004) was an American competition swimmer and Olympic gold medalist. She is best known for having been expelled from the 1936 Summer Olympics team after she was found severely intoxicated after attending a cocktail party on the transatlantic ship taking the team to Germany. She went on to have a high-profile celebrity career as a socialite and interior designer, and co-starred in a Hollywood Tarzan movie --- Tarzan's Revenge. She appeared in that film with Glenn Morris, another Olympian.

Contents

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1930 Eleanor Holm Sets Backstroke Record


Biography

Eleanor Holm Crooked Sister Local Olympian Eleanor Holm

Holm was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of a fireman; she learned to swim while very young. Winning her first national swimming title at age 13, she was selected to compete in the 1928 Summer Olympics, where she finished fifth in her specialty, the 100-meter backstroke. She was talented in several other strokes as well, winning several American titles in the 300-yard medley event.

Eleanor Holm TIME Magazine Cover Eleanor Holm Aug 21 1939

At the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Holm won her favorite event, though defending champion Marie Braun had to forfeit the final due to an insect bite. "I was hardly dry at those Olympics when I was whisked from one studio to another — Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount — to take screen tests," she told the New York Times in 1984. In 1932, she was one of 14 girls named as a WAMPAS Baby Star, including Ginger Rogers, Mary Carlisle, and Gloria Stuart. The following year, on September 2, 1933, she married her first husband, Art Jarrett, a fellow graduate of Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, after a whirlwind five-month romance. He was a singer and bandleader at the Cocoanut Grove night club. She even performed with his band while wearing a white bathing suit and white cowboy hat with high heels, singing "I'm an Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande."

Eleanor Holm Crooked Sister Local Olympian Eleanor Holm

Competing as Eleanor Holm Jarrett, she was selected for the 1936 Summer Olympics. After a drinking party aboard the ship transporting the team, Holm was found, according to the team doctor, in a state approaching a coma. According to David Wallechinsky in The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics, the Olympic team doctor reported that she was suffering from acute alcoholism, but Holm denied it. Team leader Avery Brundage promptly expelled her from the Olympic team. Holm admitted to having had a few drinks but subsequently maintained that her dismissal arose from a personal grudge held by Brundage.

Eleanor Holm Eleanor Holm competes in a swimming championshipUnited States HD

This chaperone came up to me and told me it was time to go to bed. God, it was about 9 o'clock, and who wanted to go down in that basement to sleep anyway? So I said to her: 'Oh, is it really bedtime? Did you make the Olympic team or did I?' I had had a few glasses of Champagne. So she went to Brundage and complained that I was setting a bad example for the team, and they got together and told me the next morning that I was fired. I was heartbroken.

Holm's Olympic teammates unsuccessfully petitioned to overturn the dismissal. The top favorite for the 100-meter backstroke event, Holm watched from the stands as the gold medal went to Dutch swimmer Nida Senff. Decades later Holm told Olympic sprinter Dave Sime that Brundage held a grudge from an incident in which he propositioned her and she turned him down.

Eleanor Holm Eleanor Holm Comet Over Hollywood

Although she appeared in at least four films as herself, Holm appeared in only one Hollywood feature film, starring opposite fellow Olympian Glenn Morris in the 1938 film Tarzan's Revenge. On November 10, 1939, a year after Jarrett divorced her, claiming that his wife's expulsion from the 1936 Olympics and her affair with another man had caused him embarrassment, she married her lover, impresario Billy Rose, who had divorced first wife Fanny Brice. At the 1939 New York World's Fair she did 39 shows a week at Rose's "Aquacade", co-featured with Tarzan swimmer Johnny Weissmuller and, later, Buster Crabbe. In 1954, she divorced Rose — receiving $30,000 per month (worth $267,546 today) in alimony and a lump sum of $200,000 (worth $1,783,643 today) to be paid in 10 yearly installments, according to the New York Times. This sensational divorce trial was called "the war of the Roses" and is the subject of a chapter in Louis Nizer's book My Life in Court. Several months later, she married Thomas Whalen, an oil-drilling executive.

Eleanor Holm 071654 Former Olympic backstroke champion Eleanor Holm gives swin

In 1966, Holm was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. She died of renal disease in Miami, Florida, on January 31, 2004 at the age of 90.

A protagonist based on Eleanor Holm, with the fictionalized name Eleanor Emerson, appears in the 2012 novel Flight from Berlin by David John, published by HarperCollins.

References

Eleanor Holm Wikipedia


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