Born in Conway, Missouri, Holman dropped out of school in the ninth grade and began seeking work as an actor.

[citation needed] In films from at least 1930, he played "a vast array of mayors, justices of the peace, attorneys, millionaires and sugar daddies".

[1] He is best known to modern audiences as the desperate Professor Richmond who tries to transform the uncouth Three Stooges into gentlemen in the film Hoi Polloi (1935).

He also played frequently in the films of director Frank Capra, for example as the mayor in Meet John Doe (1941) and as the befuddled high school teacher Mr. Partridge in It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

On Broadway, Holman portrayed Wilson Prewitt in The County Chairman (1903) and Caesar Augustus Miggs in Ruled Off the Turf (1906).