Hal Holbrook

Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. (February 17, 1925 – January 23, 2021) was an American actor. He first received critical acclaim in 1954 for a one-man stage show, titled Mark Twain Tonight!, that he developed while studying at Denison University. He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1966 for his portrayal of Twain. He continued to perform his signature role for more than 60 years, retiring the show in 2017 due to his failing health. Throughout his career, he also won five Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on television and was nominated for an Academy Award for his work in film.

Holbrook made his film debut in Sidney Lumet's The Group (1966). He later gained international fame for his performance as Deep Throat in the 1976 film All the President's Men. He played Abraham Lincoln in the 1974 miniseries Lincoln and the 1985 miniseries North and South. He also appeared in films such as Magnum Force (1973), Julia, Capricorn One (both 1977), The Fog (1980), Creepshow (1982), Wall Street (1987), The Firm (1993), Hercules (1997) and Men of Honor (2000).

Holbrook's role as Ron Franz in Sean Penn's Into the Wild (2007) earned nominations for both an Academy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award in the best supporting actor category. In 2009, he received critical acclaim for his performance as recently retired farmer Abner Meecham in the independent film That Evening Sun. He also portrayed Francis Preston Blair in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012).

In 2003, Holbrook was honored with the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush.

Early life

Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. was born on February 17, 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Aileen (née Davenport) Holbrook (1905–1987), a vaudeville dancer, and Harold Rowe Holbrook Sr. (1902–1982).

Holbrook and his two elder sisters were abandoned by their parents when he was two years old. The three children were raised by their paternal grandparents, first in Weymouth, Massachusetts, and later in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, Ohio. He graduated from Culver Military Academy (now part of the Culver Academies) and then from Denison University, where an honors project about Mark Twain led him to develop the one-man show for which he became best known, a series of performances titled Mark Twain Tonight!. He also studied acting at HB Studio in New York City.

From 1942 through 1946, Holbrook served in the United States Army in World War II, achieving the rank of staff sergeant; he was stationed in Newfoundland, where he performed in theater productions such as the play Lady Precious Stream.

Career

Mark Twain Tonight!

Holbrook's first solo performance as Twain was at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania in 1954. Ed Sullivan saw him and gave 30-year-old Holbrook his first national exposure on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 12, 1956, five days before his 31st birthday. Holbrook was also a member of the Valley Players (1941–1962), a summer-stock theater company based in Holyoke, Massachusetts, which performed at Mountain Park Casino Playhouse at Mountain Park. He joined The Lambs Club in 1955, where he began developing his one-man show. He was a member of the cast for several years and performed Mark Twain Tonight! as the 1957 season opener. The State Department even sent him on a European tour, which included pioneering appearances behind the Iron Curtain.

In 1959, Holbrook first played the role off-Broadway. Columbia Records recorded an LP of excerpts from the show.

Holbrook performed in a special production for the 1964/1965 New York World's Fair for the Bell Telephone Pavilion. Jo Mielziner created an innovative audio-visual ride experience and used Holbrook's acting talents on 65 different action screens for "The Ride of Communications" with the movie itself known as From Drumbeats to Telstar.

In 1967, Mark Twain Tonight! was presented on television by CBS and Xerox, and Holbrook received an Emmy for his performance. Holbrook's Twain first played on Broadway in 1966, and again in 1977 and 2005; Holbrook was 80 years of age during his final Broadway run, older (for the first time) than the character he was portraying. Holbrook won a Tony Award for the performance in 1966. Until he retired in 2017, aged 92, Mark Twain Tonight! toured the country, which amounted to over 2,100 performances. This included one of his first performances in the spring of 1962, when he was 37, and one of his last in September 2014 (when he was 89), at his high-school alma mater in Indiana.

Success

In 1964, Holbrook played the role of the Major in the original production of Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy. In 1968, he was one of the replacements for Richard Kiley in the original Broadway production of Man of La Mancha, although he had limited singing ability. In 1966, Holbrook starred opposite Shirley Booth in the acclaimed CBS Playhouse production of The Glass Menagerie.

Holbrook co-starred with Martin Sheen in the controversial and acclaimed 1972 television film That Certain Summer. Around that same year, Holbrook appeared in a television public service announcement (PSA) commissioned by the Ad Council; aimed at the parents of college students planning to study abroad, the PSA sees Holbrook in a jail cell, warning viewers to inform their children of the penalties for drug abuse in countries outside the US. In 1973, Holbrook appeared as Lieutenant Neil Briggs, the boss and rival of Detective "Dirty" Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) in Magnum Force, an "obsessively neat and prim fanatic" who supports the obliteration of San Francisco's criminals and who is the leader of a rogue group of vigilante officers.

In 1976, Holbrook won acclaim for his portrayal of the sixteenth U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in a series of television specials based on Carl Sandburg's acclaimed biography. He won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for the 1970 series The Bold Ones: The Senator. He was also famous for his role as the enigmatic Deep Throat (whose identity was unknown at the time) in the film All the President's Men, and Commander Joseph Rochefort in the World War II battle film Midway. In 1977, he starred in the World War II film Julia, and the British-American thriller film Capricorn One.

In 1979, Holbrook starred with Katharine Ross, Barry Bostwick, and Richard Anderson in the made-for-TV movie Murder by Natural Causes. He appeared in various mini-series, including as the second U.S. President John Adams in George Washington (1984), North and South (1985/1986) and Dress Gray (1986), and continued performing in theatrical productions, such as King Lear. Holbrook was the narrator on the Ken Burns documentary Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery in 1997.

From 1986 to 1989, Holbrook had a recurring role as Reese Watson on Designing Women, opposite his wife Dixie Carter. Over a short period between 1988 and 1990, Holbrook directed four episodes of the series. Holbrook also had a major role on the sitcom Evening Shade throughout its entire run. Early on in his career, Holbrook worked onstage and in a television soap opera, The Brighter Day.

Holbrook's film roles during the 1980s and 1990s include a priest in The Fog (1980), a professor in Creepshow (1982), senior stock broker in Wall Street (1987), a neighborly lawyer in Fletch Lives (1989), senior partner of a corrupt law firm in The Firm (1993), and the voice of Amphitryon, the adoptive father of Hercules, in the Disney animated film Hercules (1997).

In 1999, Holbrook was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. A year later, Holbrook appeared in Men of Honor, where he portrayed a racist and hypocritical officer who endlessly tries to fail an African-American diver trainee. Holbrook played the role of Albie Duncan in two episodes of The West Wing.

He appeared as the host in the documentary The Seventh Day: Revelations From The Lost Pages of History (2005).

Later career

He appeared in Sean Penn's critically acclaimed film Into the Wild (2007) and received an Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role at the 80th Academy Awards. At the time, this rendered Holbrook, at age 82, the oldest nominee in Academy Award history in the Best Supporting Actor category. Holbrook was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for his work in the film. From late August through mid-September 2007, he starred as the narrator in the Hartford Stage production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, a role he had once played on television.