Fay Holden
American actress (1893-1973)
Dorothy Fay Hammerton (26 September 1893 – 23 June 1973), known professionally as Fay Holden, was a British-born, American-based actress. She was known as Gaby Fay early in her career.
Biography
Holden was born in Birmingham, England. After leaving England in 1929, Holden and her husband moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada for a time. They co-owned The Empress Theatre until 1933, and they created a theatre company, The British Guild Players, that specialized in comedies during the depression era. Eventually they left Vancouver and moved to Hollywood.
Holden appeared in 46 motion pictures between 1935 and 1958, and she is best known for her recurring role as Emily Hardy, mother of Mickey Rooney's character in the Andy Hardy film series. The series was enormously popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and Holden was in 15 of the 16 Hardy movies, surpassed only by Rooney, who was in all 16.
Holden is remembered for her performance as Hazel, the mother of Samson (Victor Mature), in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah, in which she utters her character's most notable line: "He wants to marry a Philistine!"
She was married to David Clyde from 1914 until his death in 1945. She died in Los Angeles, California, aged 79, from cancer.
“Fay Holden” enters the record as american actress (1893-1973). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Holden, American and actress can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Fay Holden” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Holden, American and actress provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 5, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q511274. VIAF identifies the subject as 63562986. The Library of Congress control number is no89001636. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1893, 1973, 1929 and 1933.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fay Holden” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.