Phillips Raymond Holmes (1907-42) never achieved the Hollywood career to which he aspired, and his potential was ended by his early death as a flyer in the Second World War.
Holmes was talent spotted while still a student and offered a screen test. (IMDb suggests he was an extra in Her Market Value in 1925, but this seems unlikely, given it was shot in California while he was at Princeton on the East Coast.)
His first verifiable appearance was in Varsity (1928). After a variety of supporting roles at Paramount, he starred alongside Walter Huston in The Criminal Code (1931). Other notable lead roles were in Josef von Sternberg’s An American Tragedy (1931) and Ernst Lubtisch’s Broken Lullaby (1932).
Holmes made the mistake of moving to MGM, where he was never given the same quality of roles. After making a couple of pictures in the UK in 1938, he worked on the stage until joining the Royal Canadian Air Force at the start of the war.
Holmes’s sole MGM musical was as Lord Aylesworth in Stage Mother.
