By ROBERT PACE
Celeste Holm, who was best known for her Academy-Award-winning performance in the 1947 film Gentleman's Agreement, passed away on Sunday at the age of 95, according to the Associated Press.
The actress who rose to fame in 1943 after her critically acclaimed role in the Broadway production of Oklahoma! had been hospitalized two weeks ago with dehydration and wanted to spend her final days with her husband and other relatives in her New York apartment, where she passed away early Sunday morning.
"I think she wanted to be here, in her home, among her things, with people who loved her," Holm's great-niece Amy Phillips said.
In addition to receiving an Oscar for Gentleman's Agreement, Holms also received Oscar nominations for Come to the Stable (1949), in which she played a French nun, and All About Eve (1950), which was among the first 50 films to be preserved in the U.S. National Film Registry.
Beyond acting, the New York native was also known for her commitment to charity work, and was also appointed to National Council on the Arts by President Ronald Reagan in 1982.Holm first married in 1936 at age 19 with fellow showbiz man Ralph Nelson, but the couple divorced three years later. After two more short-lived marriages, Holm married actor Wesley Addy, with whom she remained for three decades until his death in 1996.
She is survived by her two sons, three grandchildren, and her husband, Frank Basile, a man over 45 years her minor who she married in 2004.
Holm, who acted in multitudes of films and television shows over the years, was asked in her seventies if she ever thought of retiring.
"No. What for?" she replied. "If people retired, we wouldn't have had Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud...I think it's very important to hang on as long as we can."
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