Earl Holliman, a ruggedly handsome actor, was born in northeast Louisiana to a poverty-stricken mother who had to give up seven of her ten children after her husband, a farmer, died before Earl's birth. He was adopted by an oil-field worker named Henry Earl Holliman and his waitress wife Velma, growing up in the Louisiana and Arkansas areas.
Earl's early passion for entertainment led him to become a magician's assistant as a young teen, and he even ran away from home to try to be discovered in Hollywood. However, he was forced to return home and enlist in the United States Navy during World War II, where he was assigned to a Navy communications school in Los Angeles and spent his free time at the Hollywood Canteen.
After being discharged from the Navy, Earl returned home and worked in menial jobs while completing his high school education. He then reenlisted in the Navy and was cast as the lead in several Norfolk (Virginia) Navy Theatre productions, which led to his trek back to Hollywood.
At UCLA Drama School and the Pasadena Playhouse, Earl studied acting and worked as a Blue Cross file clerk and airplane builder at North American Aviation. He started off apprenticing in uncredited film bits in several films, including Destination Gobi (1953) and Scared Stiff (1953),and soon rose in rank and gained clout playing jaunty young rookies and tenderfeet in rugged westerns, war dramas, and rollicking comedies.
Earl won a Golden Globe for his support performance as a girl-crazy brother in The Rainmaker (1956),holding his own against stars Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn. He continued to provide durable late 1950s support to big-name stars, including Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) starring Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and Hot Spell (1958) starring Shirley Booth, Anthony Quinn, and Shirley MacLaine.
Although film offers began drying up in the 1960s, Earl was enjoyable boorish in his dealings with innocent alien Jerry Lewis in the wacky comedy Visit to a Small Planet (1960); had a touching final scene in a park with Geraldine Page in the somber Tennessee Williams period piece Summer and Smoke (1961); played one of John Wayne's younger punch-drunk brothers in the freewheeling western The Sons of Katie Elder (1965); and portrayed a salesman on trial for murdering his wife in A Covenant with Death (1967).
Earl found a highly accepting medium in TV, with a lead series role as reformed gunslinger "Sundance" in the short-lived western series Hotel de Paree (1959),and showed off his virile stance in episodes of "The Twilight Zone," "Bus Stop," "Checkmate," "Bonanza," "Dr. Kildare," "The Fugitive," "Marcus Welby, M.D.," "It Takes a Thief," "Alias Smith and Jones," "Gunsmoke," "Medical Center," "Ironside," "The Magical World of Disney," and "The F.B.I."
He also appeared in a number of TV movies that became popular in the late 1960s, including The Desperate Mission (1969) and The Tribe (1970),as well as the TV series "Police Woman" (1974),where he played the macho partner to sexy Angie Dickinson.
