Person Biography:
Jennifer Holt was born Elizabeth Randolph Holt, the daughter of film star Jack Holt and Margaret Wood Holt. She had an older half-sister, Imogene, and a brother, Charles John Holt III, nicknamed Tim Holt. Jennifer would later change her name for professional reasons.
She was the granddaughter of industrialist Henry Morton Stanley Wood, who emigrated from England, and her paternal grandmother was the great-granddaughter of John Marshall, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Her grandfather, the first John Charles Holt, was an Episcopal minister.
Jennifer's family lived in Beverly Hills, California, and had a ranch in Fresno. When she was seven years old, she went to Belgium with her governess, where she spent two and a half years. After returning to California, her parents separated, and she joined her mother and Imogene in Scarsdale, New York, before moving to Santiago, Chile.
Jennifer attended The Bishop School in La Jolla and later studied acting with Russian actress and teacher Maria Ouspenskaya. She also studied music and wanted to be a singer. She performed at the Peterborough Players in New Hampshire for a year, appearing in productions of "The Babbitt", "The Far Off Hills", and "Our Town", supervised by playwright Thornton Wilder.
Finding few opportunities on Broadway, Jennifer returned to Hollywood and met Jerry Colonna's agent, Bruce Geer, who negotiated a deal with producer Harry Sherman for a part in the Hopalong Cassidy film "Stick to Your Guns" (1941). She was billed as "Jacqueline Holt" and signed a six-year contract with Universal Pictures using the professional name "Jennifer Holt".
In her film career, Jennifer starred with William Boyd, Russell Hayden, Rod Cameron, Johnny Mack Brown, Tex Ritter, Eddie Dean, and Lash La Rue. In her later years, she attended events like the Raleigh Western Film Fair (1989) and the Sierra Film Festival in Lone Pine, California (1992).
Jennifer Holt died at the age of 77 during a visit to Dorset, England, UK.
