Born in England, Gloria Holden emigrated to the U.S. as a child. Her mother Eska (née Bergmann) was German. She attended school in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and later studied at New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Holden’s early stage work included small parts in plays such as The Royal Family, in which she spoke four lines playing a nurse. She was an understudy to Mary Ellis in Children of Darkness, and had a minor role in The Ferguson Family. She succeeded Lilly Cahill as in As Husbands Go at the John Golden Theatre on Broadway, in June 1931. In August 1932, Holden was part of the cast of Manhattan Melody, at the Longacre Theatre. The Lawrence Hazard play, adapted by L. Lawrence Weber, also featured Helen Lowell, Minnie Dupree and William Corbett as players. She was the leading lady in Survivor (1933), written by D.L. James. Holden was among the cast members in Memory (1933), a Myron Fagan play. She may be best remembered for two roles in her long career, that of Mme. Zola in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), and her “exotic” depiction of the title role in Dracula’s Daughter (1936). Her performance in the latter influenced the writings of horror novelist Anne Rice, and Dracula’s Daughter is directly mentioned in Rice’s novel The Queen of the Damned. In July 1937, Holden was assigned to play the character of Marian Morgan in The Man Without a Country (1937). The Technicolor short co-starred John Litel and was nominated for an Academy Award. Holden played a non-singing Julie La Verne on the 1940 Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of Show Boat, based on the 1936 film version. She married Harry D. Reynolds in 1921 & later divorced. She married Harold A. Winston on December 17, 1932. They were divorced December 2, 1937. In 1944, she married her third husband, William Hoyt, to whom she remained married until her death. They had one son, Christopher Hoyt (born 1944 – died in an automobile accident 1970). She died in March 1991 in Redlands, California from a heart attack, aged 87, and is buried in the city’s Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery.