Phillips Holmes

A future in movies for this fair-haired, fresh-faced young adult of the 1930s was by no means certain at the time of his untimely death in a mid-air plane collision. Hints of the All-American leading man promise Phillips Holmes managed to convey during the early to mid decade, particularly in the film adaptation of Theodore Dreiser 's novel An American Tragedy (1931), had faded significantly. In the meantime he was maintaining with stage work and had just graduated from Air Ground School as an aircraftsman when he suddenly died at age 35 on August 12, 1942.