Appearances

Title	Role	Year	Approx. Age
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1938	Sid Sawyer	1938	11
Sons of the Legion	Jimmy Hynes	1938	11
Straight From the Shoulder	Johnny Hayden	1936	9

David Holt was born on August 14, 1927 in Jacksonville, Florida. Four years later, his sister Betty was born, who also became an actor. At a young age, David's dancing skills so impressed Will Rogers that Rogers purportedly told David's mother that if ever they were in Hollywood they should contact him and he would get young David into pictures. Relying on this understanding, David's father promptly quit his job with Ford Motors. Intent on holding Rogers to his promise, the Holt family drove to California. Despite their best efforts, Rogers refused even to see them.

With no income, David's father worked as a casual laborer. His mother took David to auditions, sometimes sharing transport with Shirley Temple and her mother. Initially, David found it difficult to get acting jobs. He did, however, get a job as "body double" for Cheeta's chimpanzee predecessor in Tarzan the Fearless (1933), and had a small role in the Our Gang (Little Rascals) comedy Forgotten Babies (1933).

At age seven, in 1934, David got his acting break in the movie You Belong to Me, a melodrama in which his character's mother dies. He was now a child star, and Paramount Pictures put him under a long-term contract and promoted him as a male version of Shirley Temple. Over the next six years, David Holt made 20 films, but did not come close to the superstardom set by his friend, Shirley Temple.

David was initially cast in the title role in David Copperfield, alongside W. C. Fields. However, producer David O. Selznick developed misgivings about having an American youngster portray a quintessentially British boy. When English child actor Freddie Bartholomew became available a couple of weeks into shooting, David was let go. The following year he had a prominent role in Straight from the Shoulder (1936) (also known as Johnny Gets His Gun) alongside noted actor Ralph Bellamy.

David eventually developed a reputation as a troublemaker, and found himself settling for supporting roles like Sid Sawyer in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1939), Beau Geste (1939), and Courage of Lassie (1946) as Elizabeth Taylor's older brother. David may be best remembered as the older Billy in the 1942 critically and publicly acclaimed film, The Pride of the Yankees, where 17-year old Billy attends Lou Gehrig Day and shows Lou Gehrig he walks without a limp, implying that Gehrig's promised World Series home run many years earlier helped him overcome his childhood illness.

David's stress may have been a source of his troublemaking and his restricted success as an actor. By this time he made more money than his father, who openly expressed his resentment at making less income than his prepubescent son. The production line of movies in which Holt was cast compounded his household stress. The Holt family's expenses soon exceeded David's income and the family eventually had to rely on soup kitchens. At one point David had polio, which he believed was a result of the stress he felt in the studios. Amidst all this, David's parents separated.

At age 14, David largely turned his back on acting in favor of songwriting and poetry. Attempting to return to acting in 1948, he found few parts available, and ended up starring in the 1949 cheap drugs-scare melodrama "She Shoulda Said 'No'!". By the early 1950s, the parts had dried up and David returned to song writing.

David did have some success as a jazz pianist and composer, writing the music for numerous jazz albums, including several that featured Pete Jolly, and writing "The Christmas Blues" with Sammy Cahn, which was recorded by Dean Martin and eventually used on the 1997 soundtrack of L.A. Confidential. In the 1990s, David was host of the television show American Music Shop, which featured a different country artist each week.

David married, and had four children: Lamont, Janna, Hayley, and Tina. In the early 1960s, David went into the real estate business to take advantage of Southern California's booming housing market, retiring in 1985 at age 58.

David Holt died on November 15, 2003 at age 76 of congestive heart failure in San Juan Capistrano, California, leaving his autobiography "The Holts of Hollywood" unfinished.

Source: Wapedia.com