Holm’s Deep

Or

She’s Just a Girl Who Cain’t Say Anything

Celeste Holm, best remembered as Ted Danson’s mom in Three Men and a Baby, has died at the age of 95. She got her big break as the horny hick, the flirt of flyover country, the randy ruralite Ado Annie in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, the girl who just cain’t say no to the menfolk. She soon found the big screen, earning an Oscar for supporting actress as the puncturer of hypocrisy in Gentleman’s Agreement, Hollywood’s assault on anti-Semitism, and she followed up with two more nominations as a French nun in Come to the Stable and as Margo Channing’s well-meaning but dim friend who introduces her to Eve in All About Eve. And after 3 nominations in 4 years, she coasted for 50 years. Along the way she also lost Frank Sinatra to Grace Kelly in High Society, the musical version of The Philadelphia Story. She never really left the stage, taking rolls in The King and I, Mame and Anna Christie between movie rolls, and at the age of 73 tried to nail John Barrymore’s ghost in I Hate Hamlet.