--- name: "Gloria Holden" canonical: "https://film.one/person/gloria-holden" roles: ["Actor"] born: "5 September 1903" died: "22 March 1991" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_fi1m_score: 72 average_as: "actor" average_over: 2 updated: "2026-09-19T23:55:20.073981+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Gloria Holden Actor. Born 5 September 1903 in London, England, UK. Died 22 March 1991. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 5 September 1903, London, England, UK - **Died:** 22 March 1991 - **Active:** 1937–1938 - **Also known as:** Gloria Anna Holden, Глория Холден, Anje Berens - **Average Fi1m score:** 72, as actor, over 2 titles - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Holden, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q263215, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0390192/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/100779 ## Fi1m on Gloria Holden > Gloria Holden played cool, patrician women who watched more than they spoke, and she is remembered for one of them, the reluctant vampire of *Dracula's Daughter*. Later pictures gave her wives and bystanders; in the best, one scene was enough. In *Test Pilot* (1938) Gloria Holden has one scene. She is Mrs May Benson, another flyer's wife at the air race, and while Myrna Loy's Ann is given speech after speech about the fear of being married to the sky, Holden is given none. She stands there and shows Ann what she has signed up for, and the scene tells us more than the script's three or four versions of the same thought. It is the best domestic moment in a film that is otherwise happiest in the air, and it belongs to a player whose name comes well down the bill. That was the shape of her career, more or less. Born in London and taken to America as a child, she came up through stock theatre and had her first credited film part in *Wife vs. Secretary* (1936). The same year she was the Countess Marya Zaleska in *Dracula's Daughter*, and that is the performance she is remembered for: a vampire who does not want to be one, played with a cool, aristocratic reserve that critics still describe as hypnotic. It was her only starring role. Hollywood decided she was the woman who looked down on people, cast her as society wives and femmes fatales, and after 1937 the parts were mostly supporting ones in features and B-pictures, until she stopped with *This Happy Feeling* in 1958. The prestige pictures used her carefully and not generously. In William Dieterle's *The Life of Emile Zola* (1937) she is Alexandrine, wife to Paul Muni's Zola, and her job is to watch him from the doorway while he turns from a thin clerk into a stout man of letters. Muni gives a technician's performance, every gesture chosen; Holden gives the film someone who lives with the technician, and the script gives her very little back. We noticed her anyway, and we noticed the waste. We were moved by that air-race scene in *Test Pilot* more than a scene that size has any right to manage, and we can say why. Victor Fleming's film is built on real aeroplanes doing dangerous things, and Ray June's cameras spend their best minutes in the sky. On the ground Loy carries the argument, Spencer Tracy says almost nothing and quietly takes the film off everyone, and Holden, for a minute or two, does what Tracy does: she lets us read her rather than telling us what to read. Stillness was her instrument. In a decade of actors who talked, she was cast for the way she held her face, and directors mostly spent that on women we were meant to dislike. She did not much care for the one part that kept her name alive. Asked about *Dracula's Daughter* near the end of her life, she is reported to have said only, "Oh, that awful thing." Start there regardless, because it is the one film that keeps her in frame long enough to show what she could do. Then find the air race in *Test Pilot* and watch what she does with no speech at all. ## Biography Gloria Anna Holden (5 September 1903 – 22 March 1991) was an English-born American actress. She trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and began her career in stock theatre before appearing in films from the mid-1930s. She is best known for her title role as Countess Marya Zaleska in *Dracula's Daughter* (1936) and for playing Alexandrine Zola opposite Paul Muni in *The Life of Emile Zola* (1937). Other credits include *Wife vs. Secretary* (1936), *Test Pilot* (1938) and *Dodge City* (1939). Her screen career continued into the late 1950s, with appearances in films such as *Auntie Mame* (1958). *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (2) - *Test Pilot* (1938), Fi1m 73, as Mrs. May Benson — [page](https://film.one/film/test-pilot.md) - *The Life of Emile Zola* (1937), Fi1m 70, as Alexandrine Zola — [page](https://film.one/film/the-life-of-emile-zola.md) ## Complete filmography (38) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The Many Faces of Dracula* (2000), as Countess Marya Zaleska (archive footage) - *Dracula: A Cinematic Scrapbook* (1991), as Countess Marya Zaleska (archive footage) - *Auntie Mame* (1958), as Guest at Garden Party (uncredited) - *This Happy Feeling* (1958), as Mrs. Dover - *The Eddy Duchin Story* (1956), as Mrs. Duchin - *Dream Wife* (1953), as Mrs. Jean Landwell - *Has Anybody Seen My Gal?* (1952), as Clarissa Pennock - *Lux Video Theatre* (1950), series, as Alexandrine Zola - *A Kiss for Corliss* (1949), as Mrs. Janet Archer - *The Sickle or the Cross* (1949), as Louise Cannon - *Perilous Waters* (1948), as Mrs. Ferris - *Killer McCoy* (1947), as Mrs. Laura McCoy - *The Hucksters* (1947), as Mrs. Kimberly - *Undercover Maisie* (1947), as Mrs. Jane Canford - *Sister Kenny* (1946), as Mrs. McDonnell (uncredited) - *Hit the Hay* (1945), as Mimi Valdez - *Strange Holiday* (1945), as Mrs. Jean Stevenson - *The Girl of the Limberlost* (1945), as Miss Nelson - *Adventures of Rusty* (1945), as Louise Hover - *Having Wonderful Crime* (1945), as Phyllis Gray (as Anje Berens) - *Behind the Rising Sun* (1943), as Sara Braden - *Apache Trail* (1942), as Mrs. James V. Thorne - *Miss Annie Rooney* (1942), as Mrs. White - *A Gentleman After Dark* (1942), as Miss Clark - *Don't Talk* (1942), as Beulah Anderson aka Beulah Binvicko - *The Corsican Brothers* (1942), as Countess Franchi - *Passage from Hong Kong* (1941), as Madame Wrangell - *This Thing Called Love* (1940), as Genevieve Hooper - *A Child is Born* (1939), as Mrs. Kempner - *Miracles for Sale* (1939), as Madame Rapport - *Dodge City* (1939), as Mrs. Cole - *Girls' School* (1938), as Miss Laurel - *Test Pilot* (1938), as Mrs. May Benson — Fi1m 73, [page](https://film.one/film/test-pilot.md) - *Hawaii Calls* (1938), as Mrs. Milburn - *The Man Without a Country* (1937), as Marian Morgan - *The Life of Emile Zola* (1937), as Alexandrine Zola — Fi1m 70, [page](https://film.one/film/the-life-of-emile-zola.md) - *Dracula's Daughter* (1936), as Countess Marya Zaleska (Dracula's Daughter) - *Wife vs. Secretary* (1936), as Joan Carstairs ## Gallery - ![Gloria Holden](https://film.one/media/person/1229598/gallery-84376051c4c8.jpg) Gloria Holden — Trailer screenshot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/GloriaHolden2DraculasDaughterTrailerScreenshot1936.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Film actress Gloria Holden. Subjects (LCTGM): actresses (1930)](https://film.one/media/person/1229598/gallery-02da02ed4b42.jpg) Film actress Gloria Holden. Subjects (LCTGM): actresses (1930) — George Maillard Kesslere, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/Film_actress_Gloria_Holden_%28SAYRE_3178%29.jpg/1280px-Film_actress_Gloria_Holden_%28SAYRE_3178%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Gloria Holden](https://film.one/media/person/1229598/gallery-a73cbc00413b.jpg) Gloria Holden — Image via TMDB - ![Gloria Holden](https://film.one/media/person/1229598/gallery-583cbbef86f2.jpg) Gloria Holden — Image via TMDB --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/gloria-holden