Hal Holbrook, the award-winning character actor who traveled the world as Mark Twain on a one-man show for over 50 years and delivered the immortal advice ‘Follow the money’ in the classic political thriller ‘All the President’s Men’, has died . He was 95.
Chris Pizzello / Invision / AP
Holbrook died Jan. 23 at his home in Beverly Hills, California, his publicist, Steve Rohr, told CBS News Tuesday.
Actors across the spectrum mourned Holbrook’s passing, including Bradley Whitford, who called him an “incredible actor,” and Viola Davis, WHO wrote “RIP to the always great Hal Holbrook.”
Holbrook pursued a busy career in theater, television and film, winning five Emmys and a Tony. His more than two dozen film credits have ranged from Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” to Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.” He was also a regular on TV, appearing on such shows as “The West Wing,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” and “Bones.”
But his most famous film role was a major source for Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward (played by Robert Redford) in the 1976 adaptation of All the President’s Men, Woodward and fellow Post reporter Carl Bernstein’s best-selling story about their investigation. to Richard Nixon’s government and the Watergate scandal that led to his dismissal.
Holbrook played the mysterious informant “Deep Throat” (it was later revealed that he was an FBI official Mark Felt) who have provided Woodward with important information. The most famous tip, uttered from the shadow of a parking garage – “Follow the money” – immediately became a slogan, but was never said in real life. The line was invented by screenwriter William Goldman.
“Follow the money” may have been his most famous movie words, but Twain was his defining role. The association began in 1954 when an instructor at Denison University in Ohio gave Holbrook the role as part of a thesis assignment.
Holbrook and his first wife, Ruby Johnson, later created a two-person show featuring characters from Shakespeare to Twain. After their daughter, Victoria, was born, he started working on a one-man Twain show while working on the soap opera “The Brighter Day”.
Growing up in Cleveland, Holbrook was 29 when he first acted as Twain (who was portrayed as 70) and eventually developed the role into a two-act, one-man show called ‘Mark Twain Tonight!’, Which took him to schools and nightclubs. . and theaters. He took it to Broadway three times – 1966, 1977, and 2005 – and won a Tony Award for Best Dramatic Actor for the 1966 version.
“The truth is, he’s been a great company,” Holbrook told The Plain Dealer in 2017. “It would be an understatement to say that I like him. He continues to amaze me. Even after all these years, I am still stunned. By his understanding of the human character. So much of what he said over 100 years ago. is good for today. ‘
In 1959, after years of grinding his material in small towns, Holbrook debuted his Twain in an off-Broadway theater in New York to critical acclaim. “Mr. Holbrook’s material is exuberant, his ability to hold an audience through acting is brilliant,” said The New York Times. The New Yorker called it a “dazzling display of virtuosity.”
Holbrook toured as Twain – wearing the writer’s signature white suit and white hair – when he wasn’t busy with other acting assignments. He would adapt the show to the times and played the role some 2,200 times. In 2017 he hung up the white suit.
“He’s done a lot of work over the years, never less than top-notch, but the Twain performances approached perfection, and they will stay with me forever,” tweeted Michael McKean.
He was meticulous in his preparations, took 3 1/2 hours to put on his makeup and insisted on oversized stage furniture so that, at six feet tall, he wouldn’t look taller than the 1, 5 foot long-inch Twain was. He read books by and about the author and searched newspaper files for interviews with Twain and stories about his college trips.
During a performance on the open-sided stage in Wolf Trap near Vienna, Virginia, lightning flashed and thunderstorm cracked, just as Holbrook reached for the humidor to get a cigar. He sped back. A roaring laughter followed. Holbrook looked at the audience over his glasses. When he could be heard again, he said, “He wasn’t talking to you.”
Over the years, Holbrook recorded “Mark Twain Tonight!” to many other countries, including Saudi Arabia. His audience included Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter.
When not playing Twain, Holbrook showed impressive versatility. He was Burt Reynolds ‘erratic father-in-law on the 1990s TV series’ Evening Shade. He appeared as Abraham Lincoln in two different miniseries about the 16th President and won one of his Emmys for the title role in the 1970-71 TV series ‘The Senator’.
Other notable stage credits included “After the Fall,” “Abe Lincoln in Illinois,” and “I Never Sang for My Father.” In 2008, at the age of 82, he received his first Oscar nomination for playing a lonely widower who befriends young drifter Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) in director Sean Penn’s ‘Into the Wild’.
In 1980 he met actress Dixie Carter when he played both in the TV movie “The Killing of Randy Webster”. Although attracted to each other, they had each suffered two failed marriages and were initially wary. They finally married in 1984, two years before Carter landed the role of Julia Sugarbaker on the long-running TV series “Designing Women”. Holbrook appeared regularly on the show as her boyfriend, Reese Watson, in the late 1980s. She died in 2010.
Holbrook had two children, Victoria and David, with his first wife, and a daughter, Evie, from his second marriage to actress Carol Rossen. He was stepfather to Mary Dixie Carter and Ginna Carter.
