Hal Holbrook, A Personal Tribute
Hal Holbrook in “Our Town” at Hartford Stage. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.
There always seemed to be a friendly gravitas about Hal Holbrook. With a gentle, crusty Midwestern accent, the actor came across as a straight talker, a man who has something to say but who said it with humor and a self-effacing slant, a man Mark Twain might have invited into his pool room for cigars and brandy.
Hal Holbrook, the Tony and Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated actor who also made a legacy in his solo-show “Mark Twain Tonight!” and who has a deep connection with Hartford’s Mark Twain House & Museum , died yesterday at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 95, just a few weeks short of his 96th birthday..
Holbrook ‘s relationship with Twain’s home began in the ‘50s shortly after he started his solo show and continued to 2015. On Holbrook’s 90th birthday, the actor returned to Hartford to perform the two-hour show at The Bushnell in a benefit for the historic house. where the Hal Holbrook Hall was dedicated in his name.
But his roles career went well beyond Twain, On stage he starred in ``I Never Sang for My Father,'' ``King Lear'' and ``Death of a Salesman.'' On TV, he won five Emmy Awards for his work in such shows as ``The Pueblo'' and ``The Senator,'' and the watershed film on a gay relationship, 1972's ``That Certain Summer.'' He was a regular on ``Evening Shade'' and ``Designing Women,'' which starred his wife, Dixie Carter, who died in 2010.
Film credits includes ``All the President's Men'' (where he played a shadowy Deep Throat), ``Wall Street,” ``The Firm,” “The Majestic,” “Water for Elephants,” “That Evening Sun” (which featured his wife Dixie Carter) and 2012’s “Promised Land.” He was in Steven Spielbergs film “Lincoln” playing Preston Blair as well as playing tLincoln himself in the 1974-’76 television mini-series.
Television credits were as recent as 2017 with “Hawaii Five-O,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” ”“Bones.” “The West Wing,” and for four seasons, in “Sons of Anarchy.” He was featured for four seasons, starting in 1990, in “Evening Shade” and for four seasons starting in 1986 in “Designing Women.”
In 2007 he became the oldest person to be nominated for a film, for his performance of 2008’s “Into the Wild,” directed by Sean Penn
But his most lasting legacy may be bringing the words of Mark Twain to audiences for more than 60 years and 2,250 performances in all 50 states and around the world.
A 2014 documentary “Holbrook/Twain: An American Odyssey,” chronicled Holbrook’s long association with Twain.
”You can't spend all this time with Twain without being affected by him,” said Holbrook when I interviewed him in 2010; “I guess he's been my major education. The great thing about Twain is that he not only invites you to think, he makes you think.
Starting at the age of 29 in 1954, he played “Mark Twain,” the pen name of Samuel Clemens longer than Clemons did. Twain died in 1910 at the age of 74.
Holbrook preformed as Twain many times in Connecticut over the decades — the last being at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in 2015. But it was his association with the Mark Twain House where Twain lived from 1874 to 1891 that had special meaning for him.
“They inspired me [in] their dedication to that house [and] brought Mark Twain up to another level for me,” he told me in 2015 when the Hal Holbroolk Hall at thge Mark Twain House & Museum was dedicated to hm. “ It wasn't just a job anymore. It added another level to my whole beginning with Mark Twain…and [it] showed me that Mark Twain was more important than I first thought.”
Holbrook also played the role of the omniscient observer Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” first on TV in 1977, then at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre in 1987 and finally in 2007 at Hartford Stage — with stepdaughter Ginna Carter, who played Emily. That run was cut short when Holbrook became hospitalized after a week into the run and had to be rushed to the Mayo Clinic.
Personally, through it was sadly shortened run, it was one of the 10 best performances on stage that I had ever seen.
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux published his autobiography, titled “Harold,” Holbrook's given name.
``The more I write about this little boy named Harold, the more I realize that the thing that I wanted more than anything else was the truth. I wanted people to tell me the truth because they never did,” he told me.
Early Days
Holbrook was born in Cleveland and abandoned by his parents when he was 2. Holbrook spent his boyhood in the small New England town of South Weymouth, Mass., where he and his two sisters were raised by his grandparents until he was 12. It was a town where the family lived for centuries, going back to 1635. Holbrook also went to school at Suffield Academy in Connecticut.
``To this day, we still don't know why our father and mother left us. When we asked our grandparents, they would say they didn't know or couldn't remember. Can you believe it? Come on. They didn't want us to know the truth. Well, I want to know the truth, and it gave me a very strong need in my life to have people stop lying.’'
When I interviewed about the book, Holbrook became mesmerized by a picture of himself at age 8 or 9, with a big grin and his hair shooting off at a 45-degree angle. ``How did this little boy get to look so happy? Think of it. His parents left him; he was sent away to school at 7 and had the hell beat out of him by their weird headmaster. Where did the miracle of this big grin come from?’'
Writing the book, which he does in longhand, has been a pleasure for him, he said ``I have arthritis in my hand, and usually when I write, it hurts me. The amazing thing is that when I am writing, my hand never hurts.’'
Holbrook told me he has no rancor toward his mother. ``My mother had three children by the time she was 21,'' he said, with sadness in his voice. ``I look at her as this poor little kid, because that's all she was. My father was an irresponsible kid, too. He never grew up. There must have been a screw loose, because he was in and out of insane asylums, where we used to visit him. Can you believe it? In the end, he was a hobo. I once found him in a flophouse on Mission Street in San Francisco when I was doing Clint Eastwood's `Magnum Force.' I hadn't seen him in 18 years, and it was a fluke that I found him then.”
“I didn't even know until I was 12 that my mother was in show business, that she ran away to New York City and became a chorus girl. I'm playing now some of the same theaters that my mother played. Can you believe it?''
``My appreciation of [Twain] is more mature and deeper now because the older I've gotten, the more truth of what he was saying becomes apparent to me,'' said Holbrook in a 2001 interview I did with him for The Hartford Courant.``It has more resonance, because I've lived to see and experience the failure of society and see the way human beings behave. You can't live 70 years or so and not be aware of the limited use of common sense and fair play and intelligence. When you're 25 or 30, there's no way you can see what you see when you're twice that age. It has nothing to do with intelligence, but with experience.’'
And what would Twain think of his cottage career, he was asked?
``No one with any kind of ego resembling Mark Twain's — or mine — wants anyone to impersonate them,'' he said. ``No one. I'm sure that if Mark Twain were to look down, he would be amused by it all. I'm sure he would be saying, `What a joke. People think that’s Mark Twain? That's not me at all.' We're all very special to ourselves.’'
Though Holbrook said Twain's writing and thinking have had a profound effect on him (``because I agree with him''), the author has always been a separate character in the actor's life.
``I have never ever, ever wanted or behaved in a way to try to `become' Mark Twain, nor have I aspired to be like anyone else,'' said Holbrook, a bit sensitive on the subject. ``When [the show] became successful in New York in the late '50s, it frightened me so. I was afraid I would be trapped in this character both from a career point of view [and] as a human being. But I haven't followed that deceptive trail at all. I tried everything I could to get away from it, and I believe I have been able to maintain a separateness that also allowed me to maintain a certain objectivity about Mark Twain.’'
Over the years of playing and understanding the character of Twain, said Holbrook, he grew to understand a far more important and difficult identity: His own.
In delving more into Twain's life, ``something happened which was already in me,'' said Holbrook, ``something which was waiting to be awakened by Mark Twain's philosophy and humor, It was like a little genie that was awakened in me.’'
That something, he said, was Twain's tell-it-like-it-is, no-holds-barred truth-telling.
Holbrook also discovered that when he finally stepped out on stage, the ``Here I am!'' feeling was replaced with something far more profound. ``The thing that hit me hard when I first went on stage was that, for the first time of my life, everyone was listening to me -- and I couldn't believe it. There was this tremendous silence, this great force out there in the darkness of these people really listening to me. I think that fed directly into the career that I've had because I have chosen material, whenever I could, which had something to say.’'
“/In the character of Twain I can say things which he said over 100 years ago — and not change a word — and hope the audience will update it and think, 'Holy mackerel, that's like something I read in the paper today.'“
And with Twain, Holbrook has found a mother lode of humor, eloquence and wisdom.
``People return to Twain again and again because they're looking for something that they're not finding today,'' he said, ``not finding it when they turn on the TV, or in books or even in the theater. They're certainly not finding it in government or in any of their leaders.
``What they're looking for is hope and inspiration and the truth. The truth, that's what people have always looked for.''
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