He was an explorer first portrayed by Neil Hamilton in the first of the Tarzan films starring Johnny Weissmuller: Tarzan the Ape Man. In that 1932 film, Holt is co-leader of the expedition with James Parker, the father of Jane Parker. He is portrayed as a well-meaning but ineffectual person who has a romantic interest in Jane. Hamilton reprised this role in the 1934 sequel Tarzan and His Mate, in which Holt dies during an attack by lions. The character also appears in the 1959 and 1981 remakes of the 1932 film, played by Cesare Danova and John Phillip Law respectively.