In her new autobiography, “One From the Hart,” Stefanie Powers finally opens up on her near-decade love affair with William Holden, the Oscar-winning actor who starred in such classics as “Stalag 17,” “Sunset Boulevard” and “Network.”
She hopes the book helps to set the record straight on Holden, a raging alcoholic who managed to stay off the bottle for long lengths of time while with Powers. But Holden, a notorious loner, would often slip, disappearing from view while on a bender. Powers, 67, feels that a lot of the books about him play up his demons and don’t give a true depiction of his character.
“There was another book about Bill that had ‘direct’ quotes from people that I know the author could never had gotten because they were dead by the time he wrote the book,” she says, relaxing with her little dog Bounce in her woodsy Benedict Canyon home. Holden, who was 24 years Powers’ senior, died at age 63 in 1981.
“I thought son of a gun, all that has ever been written about Bill is going to remain the standard by which everybody judges him,” she explains. “Maybe I should write down the truth — the truth about our relationship and the truth about him as I saw it and put him in the light, not the light of a knight in shining armor but in the light of what the real man was.”
Full story: Classic Hollywood: Stefanie Powers reveals affair with William Holden in ‘One From the Hart’ – latimes.com