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Biography
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Hal Holbrook
Narrator |
Hal Holbrook was born in
Cleveland in 1925, but raised mostly in South Weymouth, Massachusetts.
His people had settled there in 1635 and were, according to his
grandfather, "some kind of criminals from England." His mother
disappeared when he was two, his father followed suit, so young Holbrook
and his two sisters were raised by their grandfather. It was only later
he found out that his mother had gone into show business.
Holbrook, being the only boy, was the "White Hope of the family." Sent
away at the age of 7 to one of the finer New England schools, he was
beaten regularly by a Dickensian headmaster who, when forced to retire,
committed suicide. At age 12 he was sent to Culver Military Academy,
where he discovered acting as an escape from his disenchantment with
authority. While not the model cadet, he believes Culver saved his life.
In the summer of 1942, he got his first paid professional engagement
playing the son in The Man Who Came To Dinner at the Cain Park
Theatre in Cleveland at $15.00 per week. That fall, he entered Denison
University in Ohio, majoring in Theatre under the tutelage of his
lifelong mentor, Edward A. Wright. World War II pulled him out of there
and put him into the Army Engineers for three years.
The Mark Twain characterization grew out of an honors project at Denison
University after the War. Holbrook and his first wife, Ruby, had
constructed a two-person show, playing characters from Shakespeare to
Twain. After graduation they toured the school assembly circuit in the
Southwest doing 307 shows in thirty weeks and traveling 30,000 miles by
station wagon. On winter mornings in the Texas panhandle they opened
their trunks to find frost on the costumes. Their audiences ranged
widely in age, were often unruly, and they learned to survive on stage
or perish.
Holbrook’s first solo performance as Mark Twain was at the Lock Haven
State Teachers College in Pennsylvania in 1954. The show was his
desperate alternative to selling hats or running elevators to keep his
family alive. By then he had a daughter, Victoria.
That same year, fortune struck by way of a steady job on a daytime
television soap opera, The Brighter Day, but the following year
Holbrook pursued the Twain character at night in a Greenwich Village
night club while doing the soap daytimes. In seven months at the club,
he developed his original two hours of material and learned timing. He
learned lines for the soap opera on the rear platform of the 7th Avenue
subway train between 104th Street and Sheridan Square. Finally, Ed
Sullivan saw him and gave his Twain national television exposure.
In 1959, after five years of researching Mark Twain and honing his
material in front of countless audiences in small towns all over
America, he opened at a tiny theatre off-Broadway in New York. He was a
stunning success, as stunning to Holbrook as anyone else. "The critics
went wild." (Associated Press). "Mr. Holbrook’s material is
uproarious, his ability to hold an audience by acting is brilliant." (New
York Times). "Uncanny. A dazzling display of virtuosity." (The
New Yorker). "One of the treasures of the American Theatre." (Life
Magazine). The White Hope of the family had finally arrived.
Holbrook quit the soap opera. After a twenty-two week run in New York,
he toured the country again, performed for President Eisenhower and at
the Edinburgh Festival. The State Department sent him on a tour of
Europe, during which he became the first American dramatic attraction to
go behind the Iron Curtain following World War II. He was a star who had
never appeared in a Broadway play, a night-time television show or a
movie. He was 36 years old and had to jump start a new career.
When David Merrick offered him co-star billing playing an 80-year old
Mexican bandit in a new Broadway musical, Holbrook turned it down in
favor of younger roles, concerned that he was being typecast as an old
man. He played Hotspur in Henry IV, Pt.I at the Shakespeare
Festival Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut; then Lincoln in Abe
Lincoln In Illinois off-Broadway. In 1963, he joined the original
Lincoln Center Repertory Company in New York appearing in Marco
Millions, After the Fall, Incident at Vichy and Tartuffe. Word got
around that he could act his own age. Starring roles on Broadway came
along: The Glass Menagerie, The Apple Tree, I Never Sang For My
Father, Man of La Mancha, Does A Tiger Wear A Necktie? with the
young Al Pacino.
Meanwhile, he continued to do Mark Twain every year and in 1966, on
Broadway, his second New York engagement won him a Tony Award and a
Drama Critics’ Circle Award followed in 1967 by a ninety-minute CBS
television special of Mark Twain Tonight! which was nominated for
an Emmy Award and seen by an audience of 22 million.
In 1970, after a dozen plays in New York, he was brought to Hollywood to
star in a controversial television series, The Senator, which won
8 Emmy Awards and was cancelled in one year. But his new career had
taken off. In the 37 years since then, Mr. Holbrook has done some 50
television movies and mini-series, been nominated for 12 Emmys and won 5
for The Senator (1971), Pueblo (1974), Best Actor Of The
Year (1974), Sandburg’s Lincoln (1976), and as host and narrator
of Portrait Of America (1989). He has appeared in two sitcoms:
Designing Women and Evening Shade, and has made guest
appearances on West Wing, the sitcoms Becker and Hope &
Faith, The Sopranos and NCIS.
Holbrook’s movie career began with The Group in 1966 when he was
41 years old. Since then, moviegoers have seen him in nearly 40 films
including Magnum Force, Midway, All The President’s Men, Julia,
Capricorn One, The Fog, Star Chamber, Creepshow, Wall Street, The Firm,
The Bachelor, Waking The Dead, Men of Honor, The Majestic, Shade and
Killshot.
Throughout his long career, Holbrook has continued to perform Mark Twain
every year, including his third and fourth New York engagements in 1977
and 2005; and a world tour in 1985, the 150th anniversary of Mark
Twain’s birth, beginning in London and ending in New Delhi. And he has
constantly returned to the stage: in New York (Buried Inside Extra,
1983; The Country Girl, 1984; King Lear 1990; An
American Daughter, (1997); at regional theatres (Our Town, Uncle
Vanya, Merchant Of Venice, King Lear, A Life In The Theatre, Be My Baby
and Southern Comforts, the last two with his wife Dixie
Carter); and a National Tour of Death Of A Salesman.
But Holbrook has never been able to quit Mark Twain and probably never
will. He has toured the show in some part of every year since 1954, with
over 2100 performances, making 2007 the 53nd consecutive year for this
remarkable one man show. Mark Twain Tonight! has become perhaps
the longest running show in theatre history. Holbrook adds to his Twain
material every year, editing and changing it to fit the times and has
mined over sixteen hours of Twain with more coming all the time. He has
no set program – he chooses material as he goes along.
Holbrook is a sailor. In June 1980, he competed in the Single-handed
Transpac Race from San Francisco to Hawaii in his 40-foot sailboat,
Yankee Tar, sailing 2400 miles alone. With one or two friends, he has
sailed through the South Pacific to Tahiti, Samoa, the Tongas, New
Zealand and the Fiji Islands.
Holbrook has received Honorary Doctor of Humanities Degrees from Ohio
State and the University of Hartford, an Honorary Doctor of Humane
Letters from Ursinus College, an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Elmira
College and Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degrees from Kenyon and his
alma mater, Denison University. In 1996, he received the Edwin Booth
Award and in 1998 the William Shakespeare Award from The Shakespeare
Theatre, Washington, DC. In 2000, he was inducted into the New York
Theatre Hall of Fame; and in 2003 received the National Humanities Medal
from President Bush.
He lives in Los Angeles and Tennessee with his wife, actress/singer
Dixie Carter. Together they have five children.
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