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American Dreamer If Dennis F. Holt’s story sounds like one of 19th-century author Horatio Alger’s books — “rags to riches”
accounts of people overcoming adversity through determination and hard work — it’s fitting.
Holt, who grew up in the Pico-Union area of Los Angeles and began working to support his family at the age of 13 after his father suffered a debilitating heart attack, graduated from USC in 1950 and went on to build the largest media buying company in the world, Western International Media.
Now he is the recipient of a 1998 Horatio Alger Award, given annually by the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans to a handful of citizens who embody the quintessential American ideal. In good company, Holt joins such past recipients as Bob Dole, Colin Powell, Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey.
“I’m more than pleased to receive this particular award,” says Holt. “This one is real. For me, it’s the Academy Award of business.”
Holt and his wife, Brooks, at the School of Public Administration’s Ides of March Dinner last year. |
HOLT'S LIFE IS NO LESS real than the award. To keep his family afloat, he went to work as a stand-in on TV’s “Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” “The acting bug didn’t bite,” he explains. “We just needed the money.”
He continued to work several jobs simultaneously and after graduating from Manual Arts High School attended USC on a baseball scholarship.
“[USC baseball coach] Rod Dedeaux was a mentor of mine,” recalls Holt. “I watched him and other people at USC, how they worked, how they treated people.” He learned more off the field than on. “As a player I was pitiful, I just never got better,” he says, correcting campus lore that he didn’t play due to injury. He says he remains indebted to USC for keeping him on scholarship despite his meager batting average.
A post-USC job selling radio air time took him to New York, where he was to redefine the advertising industry forever. In 1965 he established the world’s first media buying service, representing advertisers large and small. He sold the company a few years later and returned to Los Angeles to found Western International Media, which has grown to 2,000 employees, 1,700 clients and annual billings of more than $4.7 billion generated from 39 bureaus worldwide.
Holt remains loyal to his roots, often speaking to students at inner-city schools. “‘I’m here to tell you it doesn’t matter where you’re from,’ I say to them. ‘What matters is that if you work hard and you don’t give up you’re going to be successful.’”
In 1995, Holt and his wife, Brooks, pledged $1 million to endow the Dennis F. and Brooks Holt Professorship in Public Policy and Communications Technology in the USC School of Public Administration.
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