Find a Grave Hal Holbrook (1925-2021)
Find a Grave Hal Holbrook (1925-2021)
Hal Holbrook
Birth 17 Feb 1925
Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, USA
Death 23 Jan 2021 (aged 95)
Beverly Hills, Los Angeles County, California, USA
Burial
McLemoresville Cemetery
McLemoresville, Carroll County, Tennessee, USA
Actor
Award winning actor of stage and screen, he is best known for playing Mark Twain in the play “Mark Twain Tonight!,” as well as portraying the historical figures Abraham Lincoln and Deep Throat. A one-man show written and performed by him, he appeared as Twain and recited varied selections from Twain’s writings, emphasizing the more comical ones.
Hal Holbrook (1925-2021)
He first performed it at Lock Haven State Teachers College in 1954 and performed it off Broadway in 1959. The show opened on Broadway in 1966, garnering him a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play. The following year he performed the show on a special CBS television broadcast and received his first Emmy Award nomination. For sixty consecutive years and more than 2100 performances, he entertained audiences with his renditions, alternating his material at each performance.
The program from his original performance noted “While Mr. Twain’s selections will come from the list below, we have been unable to pin him down as to which of them he will do. He claims this would cripple his inspiration. However, he has generously conceded to a printed program for those who are in distress and wish to fan themselves.” This message appeared on every program until he retired the show in September 2017. In addition to repeating the show on Broadway in 1977 and 2005, his other Broadway performances include “Do You Know the Milky Way?” (1961), “Man of La Mancha” (1965), “Incident at Vichy” (1964), and “The Glass Menagerie” (1965). In 1972 he starred opposite Martin Sheen in the ABC Movie of the Week “That Certain Summer,” the first television movie to deal sympathetically with homosexuality.
His role as Doug Salter, a divorced father involved with Sheen’s character, earned him an Emmy nomination. The movie itself earned a Golden Globe Award, a Directors Guild of America Award, and an American Cinema Editors Award. He won his first Emmy award in 1971 for the television series “The Bold Ones: The Senator.” He appeared in eight episodes as Senator Hays Stowe. He received two Emmy awards in 1974 for playing Captain Lloyd Bucher in “Pueblo,” a movie about the capture of the American spy ship U.S.S. Pueblo during the Cold War. He portrayed the notorious figure Deep Throat in the Oscar winning film “All the President’s Men” in 1976, and Abraham Lincoln in the television mini-series “Lincoln” for which he won a fourth Emmy.
He would also portray Lincoln in the 1985 and 1986 mini-series “North and South: Book 1” and “North and South: Book 2.” He won a fifth Emmy in 1989 for his host role on the television series “Portrait of America.” His most notable television roles were as Reese Watson in “Designing Women” and Evan Evans in “Evening Shade.” He appeared in nine episodes of “Designing Women” as the boyfriend of Julia Sugarbaker, played by his wife Dixie Carter; and ninety-three episodes of “Evening Shade” as the father of Burt Reynold’s character.
Find a Grave Hal Holbrook (1925-2021)
In 2007 he played Ron Franz in director Sean Penn’s film “Into the Wild,” and became the oldest actor to receive an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor at the age of 82. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1999 and received a National Humanities Medal in 2003 from President George W. Bush for his portrayal of Mark Twain. He was married three times to actresses Ruby Johnston, Carol Even Rossen, and Dixie Carter. In 2011 he penned his memoir, “Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain.”
