Eleanor G. Holm was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 swimmer

Swimming (sport)

Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...

. An Olympic champion, she is best known for having been suspended from the 1936 Summer Olympics

1936 Summer Olympics

The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona, Spain on April 26, 1931, at the 29th IOC Session in Barcelona...

 team, after she had attended a cocktail party on the transatlantic cruise ship taking her to Germany. She went on to have a high-profile celebrity career as actress and singer, socialite and interior designer that included co-starring as Jane in a Hollywood Tarzan movie.

Born the daughter of a fireman in Brooklyn, New York, Holm learned swimming while very young. Winning her first national swimming title at age 13, she was selected to compete in the 1928 Summer Olympics

1928 Summer Olympics

The 1928 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the IX Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in 1928 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Amsterdam had bid for the 1920 and 1924 Olympic Games, but had to give way to war-victim Antwerp, Belgium, and Pierre de...

, where she finished fifth in her specialty, the 100-meter backstroke

Backstroke

The backstroke, also sometimes called the back crawl, is one of the four swimming styles regulated by FINA, and the only regulated style swum on the back. This has the advantage of easy breathing, but the disadvantage of swimmers not being able to see where they are going. It is also the only...

. She was talented in several other strokes as well, winning several American titles in the 300-yard medley event.

At the 1932 Games

1932 Summer Olympics

The 1932 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the X Olympiad, was a major world wide multi-athletic event which was celebrated in 1932 in Los Angeles, California, United States. No other cities made a bid to host these Olympics. Held during the worldwide Great Depression, many nations...

 in Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

, Holm won her favorite event, with defending champion Marie Braun

Marie Braun

Maria Johanna Philipsen-Braun was a Dutch swimmer. She won the gold medal in the women's 100 meter backstroke at the 1928 Summer Olympics....

 having to forfeit the final due to an insect bite. "I was hardly dry at those Olympics when I was whisked from one studio to another—Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount—to take screen tests," she told the New York Times in 1984. Also in 1932, she was one of fourteen girls named as a WAMPAS Baby Star

WAMPAS Baby Stars

The WAMPAS Baby Stars was a promotional campaign sponsored by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers in the United States which honored thirteen young women each year whom they believed to be on the threshold of movie stardom. They were selected from 1922 to 1934, and annual...

 alongside Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century....

 and Gloria Stuart

Gloria Stuart

Gloria Frances Stuart was an American actress, activist, painter, bonsai artist and fine printer. Over a Hollywood career which spanned, with a long break in the middle, from 1932 until 2004, she appeared on stage, television, and film, for which she was best-known...

. The following year, on 2 September 1933, she married her first husband, Art Jarrett

Art Jarrett

Arthur L. Jarrett, Jr. born to stage actor and playwright Arthur L. Jarrett, Sr. . Art Jr...

, a fellow graduate of Erasmus Hall High School

Erasmus Hall High School

Erasmus Hall Campus High School is a four-year public high school in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, United States operated by the New York City Department of Education....

 in Brooklyn, the singer and bandleader at the Cocoanut Grove night-club, after a whirlwind five-month romance. She even performed with his band while wearing a white bathing suit and white cowboy hat with high heels, singing "I'm an Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande."

Competing as Eleanor Holm Jarrett, she was selected for the 1936 Olympics

1936 Summer Olympics

The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona, Spain on April 26, 1931, at the 29th IOC Session in Barcelona...

. Unfortunately, after a drinking party aboard the ship transporting the team, Holm was found, according to the team doctor, in a state approaching a coma. According to David Wallechinsky, The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics, the Olympic team doctor reported that she was suffering from acute alcoholism, but Holm denied it.

Team leader Avery Brundage

Avery Brundage

Avery Brundage was an American amateur athlete, sports official, art collector, and philanthropist. Brundage competed in the 1912 Olympics and was the US national all-around athlete in 1914, 1916 and 1918...

 promptly suspended her from the Olympic team. Holm, admitting to having had a few drinks, subsequently maintained that her suspension arose from a personal grudge held by Brundage.

"This chaperone came up to me and told me it was time to go to bed. God, it was about 9 o'clock, and who wanted to go down in that basement to sleep anyway? So I said to her: `Oh, is it really bedtime? Did you make the Olympic team or did I?' I had had a few glasses of Champagne. So she went to Brundage and complained that I was setting a bad example for the team, and they got together and told me the next morning that I was fired. I was heartbroken."

Holm's Olympic teammates petitioned unsuccessfully to overturn the suspension. The top favorite for the 100-meter backstroke event, Holm watched from the stands as the title went to Dutch swimmer Nida Senff

Nida Senff

Dina Willemina Jacoba Senff was a swimmer from the Netherlands, who won the 100 metres backstroke at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. She did so after missing a turning point, went back to push the wall and still managed to win the race, at the expense of her teammate Rie Mastenbroek...

. Decades later Holm confided in fellow Olympian Dave Sime that Brundage's grudge stemmed from an incident in which he propositioned her sexually and she turned him down.

Though she would appear in at least four films as herself, Holm appeared in only one Hollywood feature film, starring opposite fellow Olympian Glenn Morris

Glenn Morris

Glenn Edgar Morris was a U.S. track and field athlete. He won a gold medal in the Olympic decathlon in 1936, setting new world and Olympic records....

 in the 1938 film Tarzan's Revenge

Tarzan's Revenge

Tarzan's Revenge is an adventure film starring Glenn Morris in his only outing as Tarzan. Eleanor Holm, a popular swimming star, co-starred as Eleanor Reed. The movie was produced by Sol Lesser, written by R. Lee Johnson and Jay Vann and directed by D. Ross Lederman...

.

In 1939, a year after Jarrett divorced her, claiming that his wife's suspension from the 1936 Olympics and her affair with another man had caused him embarrassment, she married her lover, impresario Billy Rose

Billy Rose

William "Billy" Rose was an American impresario, theatrical showman and lyricist. He is credited with many famous songs, notably "Me and My Shadow" , "It Happened in Monterey" and "It's Only a Paper Moon"...

. At the 1939 New York World's Fair

1939 New York World's Fair

The 1939–40 New York World's Fair, which covered the of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park , was the second largest American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people...

 she did 39 shows a week at Rose's "Aquacade

Billy Rose's Aquacade

Billy Rose's Aquacade was a music, dance and swimming show produced by Billy Rose at the Great Lakes Exposition in 1937.Later Aquacade moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair where it was the most successful production of the fair . The Art Deco 11,000 seat amphitheatre was designed by architects...

", co-featured with Tarzan

Tarzan

Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...

 swimmer Johnny Weissmuller

Johnny Weissmuller

Johnny Weissmuller was an Austro-Hungarian-born American swimmer and actor best known for playing Tarzan in movies. Weissmuller was one of the world's best swimmers in the 1920s, winning five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal. He won fifty-two US National Championships and set sixty-seven...

 and, later, Buster Crabbe

Buster Crabbe

Clarence Linden "Buster" Crabbe was an American athlete and actor, who starred in a number of popular serials in the 1930s and 1940s.-Birth:...

. In 1954, she divorced Rose-- receiving $30,000 a year in alimony and a lump sum of $200,000, to be paid in 10 yearly installments, according to the New York Times -- and several months later married Thomas Whalen, an oil-drilling executive.

Eleanor Holm Whelan died of renal disease in Miami, aged 90.

Sources

• New York Times obituary, February 2, 2004
• William O. Johnson, All That Glitters Is Not Gold
• Lewis H. Carlson and John J. Fogarty, Tales of Gold

External links

• http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00E6D9163BF931A35751C0A9629C8B63 New York Times obituary, February 2, 2004