Hal Holbrook, actor known for amazingly accurate portrayal of Mark Twain, dies at 95
Hal Holbrook, the actor best known for his amazingly accurate portrayal of Mark Twain in the renowned one-man show he performed on stages for more than five decades, has died. He was 95.
Holbrook's former wife Carol Rossen confirmed his death. The New York Times said he died Jan. 23 at his home in Beverly Hills.
Holbrook's Tony Award-winning Twain re-creation on Broadway in 1966 was part of an acting career that spanned stage, movies and television. He first encountered Twain when he portrayed the legendary author and humorist in a two-person sketch that was part of a multi-character revue Holbrook and his first wife took on a high school assembly tour of the Southwest in the late 1940s.
By the time Holbrook turned Twain into a one-man show in 1954, he had performed the brief Twain sketch, "An Encounter With an Interviewer," some 800 times in front of high school, university and women's club audiences.
After developing and performing his one-man Twain show in New York nightclubs and in regional performances — as well as performing pieces of his act on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and other TV programs — Holbrook opened "Mark Twain Tonight!" off-Broadway in 1959.
Reviewers were uniformly ecstatic in their praise, calling Holbrook's Twain re-creation "brilliant" and the show "extraordinary." Life magazine called it "the greatest theatrical surprise of the year."
Holbrook went on to tour the United States, Canada and Europe with his one-man show before bringing "Mark Twain Tonight!" to Broadway in 1966 to rave reviews.
The 41-year-old actor's Broadway triumph was the culmination of more than a decade of research into the life, literature and idiosyncrasies of one of America's best-known literary icons.
Holbrook had honed Twain's speech: his drawl, his slow, casual delivery on the lecture platform and his way of dropping comic nuggets with what Holbrook called "the innocent air of a man who does not realize he has said anything funny."
He had perfected the look: the shock of white hair and drooping mustache, along with the age lines, nose and jowls — make-up that took more than three hours to apply.
He also had refined the costume: a white, three-piece linen suit and black shoes, a maroon cravat with a diamond stickpin, a vintage gold pocket watch with a heavy gold chain, and a small silver penknife that Holbrook used to cut off the ends of the three cigars he smoked during each performance.
Most important, Holbrook had made Twain's words, taken directly from the author's lectures and other writings, his own.
As he ambled on stage, the transformation of Hal Holbrook into Mark Twain was complete.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he would begin, "I wish to present to you a man whose great learning and veneration for truth are only exceeded by his high moral character and majestic presence. I refer in these vague, general terms to myself."
A New York Times critic praised "the theatrical magic of Hal Holbrook. He brought Mark Twain back to life to stir the laughter and stab the conscience of a public yearning for such a voice as that of the nation's one true comic genius."
In 1967, a national audience of 30 million watched Holbrook's Emmy-nominated performance in a televised version of "Mark Twain Tonight!" on CBS.
Not wanting to be trapped in the legendary character that made him famous, Holbrook made a point of shaping a varied career as an actor, which included one of his most famous film roles: the mysterious Deep Throat in the 1976 film "All the President's Men."
On stage, he played everything from Shakespeare's King Lear to Shylock to Willy Loman.
On television, he won Emmy Awards for his 1970-`71 dramatic series, "The Senator," the 1973 TV movie "Pueblo" (for which he won Emmys for actor of the year — special, and best lead actor in a drama) and the 1974 miniseries "Sandburg's Lincoln."
He also earned an Emmy nomination for his role in "That Certain Summer," a landmark 1972 TV movie about a divorced homosexual father; he had a recurring role as Julia Sugarbaker's love interest on the sitcom "Designing Women," which starred his third wife, Dixie Carter, as Sugarbaker; and he played Burt Reynolds' cantankerous father-in-law on "Evening Shade."
Among his film credits are "The Group," "Magnum Force," "Julia," "Wall Street," "The Firm" and "The Majestic."
In 2008, at age 82, Holbrook was nominated for an Academy Award, earning a best supporting actor nomination for the role of a lonely widower in "Into the Wild."
But Holbrook could never shake his image as Mark Twain reincarnated. Nor did he want to stop doing something that was so enduringly successful and "so much fun to do."