Hal Holbrook, an award-winning actor acclaimed for his one-man portrait of American literary legend Mark Twain and whose film work included the mysterious ‘Deep Throat’ in ‘All the President’s Men’, has died at the age of 95, according to the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
Holbrook died Jan. 23 at his home in Beverly Hills, California, the New York Times reported. It said his death was confirmed late Monday by his assistant, Joyce Cohen.
In 2008, at the age of 82, Holbrook became the oldest male artist ever nominated for an Academy Award for his supporting role in “Into the Wild.”
But it was his recreation of the esteemed American novelist, humorist and social critic in “Mark Twain Tonight” that brought Holbrook to his greatest fame. It earned him a Tony Award for his Broadway performance in 1966 and the first of his 10 Emmy nominations in 1967.
Holbrook was still a young man in the mid-1950s when he created the role of Twain, who died in 1910 at the age of 75, and his first big fame came when he took the act on the popular “The Ed Sullivan Show”. brought.
He performed it for former President Dwight Eisenhower and in an international tour sponsored by the United States Department of State. He continued his Twain act well into his 90s.
“Mark Twain is a precious thing to me. It’s my sidearm through life,” Holbrook told NPR in 2007.
Holbrook said he took on the Twain persona after trying to find a figure to portray in a one-man piece. He read a few pages of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and said he felt a connection.
He developed the act in New York City nightclubs and first brought it to Broadway in 1959.
With makeup, wig, bushy white mustache, white suit and a cigar, Holbrook bore a striking resemblance to the author at the age of 70 when he delivered a monologue from Twain’s writings and speeches on topics ranging from religion to politics to human infirmities . He said he had performed the show every year in every state and around the world since then.
Tall, with an air of dignified restraint, Holbrook also gave distinguished portraits of Abraham Lincoln and won an Emmy for Leading Actor in a Limited Series in 1976 for specials based on Carl Sandburg’s biography of the President.
He also won Emmys for a television special with Captain Lloyd Bucher in 1973’s ‘Pueblo’ and as a lead actor in a drama series in 1970 for the series ‘The Bold Ones: The Senator’.
Other important roles were as ‘the lead actor’ in Arthur Miller’s original Broadway production of ‘Incident at Vichy’, as Martin Sheen’s partner in ‘That Certain Summer’, the first TV movie to give a sympathetic portrayal of homosexuality, and as “Deep Throat,” the main source of the Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon’s presidency, in the 1976 film “All the President’s Men.”
Holbrook was born in Cleveland on February 17, 1925, and his mother was a vaudeville dancer. After serving in the military in Newfoundland during World War II, Holbrook attended Denison University in Granville, Ohio, where his senior honors project was at Twain.
He toured small towns like Twain, then took the show off-Broadway, where it was a hit that launched his career. Holbrook made about 2,000 appearances as Twain.
His other films were ‘The Group’ in 1966, ‘Wild in the Streets’ in 1968,’ Magnum Force ‘in 1973,’ The Star Chamber ‘and’ Wall Street ‘in 1987,’ The Firm ‘in 1993 and’ That Evening. Sun “in 2009 with wife Dixie Carter, and Steven Spielberg’s” Lincoln “in 2012.
Holbrook had a recurring role with Carter, a star of the sitcom “Designing Women”, ring role, who died in April 2010 at the age of 70.