Winning her first national swimming title at age 13, Holm was selected to compete in the 1928 Summer Olympics, where she finished fifth in her specialty, the 100-meter backstroke.

At the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Holm won the gold medal in her favorite event, though defending champion Marie Braun had to forfeit the final due to an insect bite.

[8] "I was hardly dry at those Olympics when I was whisked from one studio to another — Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount — to take screen tests," Holm told the New York Times in 1984.

In 1932, Holm was one of the fifteen[9] girls named as WAMPAS Baby Stars, including Ginger Rogers, Mary Carlisle, and Gloria Stuart.

One of her first assignments at Warner Bros. was to join a trainload of actors and Busby Berkeley chorus girls on a barnstorming trip across the country in early 1933 to publicize the movie musical 42nd Street and to show support for the newly elected president Franklin D. Roosevelt at his first inauguration in Washington, DC.

[10] The following year, on September 2, 1933, Holm married her first husband, Art Jarrett, a fellow graduate of Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, after a whirlwind five-month romance.

Holm admitted to having had a few glasses of Champagne but subsequently maintained that her dismissal arose from a personal grudge held by Brundage.This chaperone came up to me and told me it was time to go to bed.

Holm had been the top favorite for the 100-meter backstroke event, and she watched from the stands as the gold medal went to Dutch swimmer Nida Senff.

At the 1939 New York World's Fair, Holm did 39 shows a week at Rose's "Aquacade", co-featured with Tarzan swimmer Johnny Weissmuller and, later, Buster Crabbe.