Perhaps the best description was given by Martin Sheen, his co-star in T hat Certain Summer, when he called Hal “nothing less than an actor’s actor.”Īnd yet, he also was a living piece of Mark Twain scholarship, not only giving us a best-guess notion of how the great American writer sounded, but also bringing him alive as a complex artist and staggeringly insightful social critic. Hal didn’t get lost in the part when playing Twain, and we shouldn’t lose sight of how many parts he could play. Indeed, his remarkable run of celebrated TV work earned him five Emmy awards, not one of them for playing Twain. Holbrook & Martin Sheen in That Certain SummerĪlthough best known for playing Twain, Holbrook was a versatile actor who starred on Broadway, in movies, and on television. For another thing, I already prized Hal Holbrook as an actor for so many more accomplishments than playing Mark Twain: his portrayal of an idealistic politician in The Senator, the groundbreaking TV movie That Certain Summer, the miniseries Sandburg’s Lincoln, his riveting segments as Deep Throat in All the President’s Men, the masterful mystery Murder By Natural Causes, his Emmy-winning turn as Commander Lloyd Mark Bucher in the TV movie Pueblo, and the horror films Creepshow and The Fog. You can’t continue to be a brilliant interpreter of role if you’ve crossed that line. One of the oldest rules of the theater is, don’t lose yourself in the part. For one thing, I knew it was death for an actor to be overwhelmed and consumed by a role. “You do realize I don’t think I’m Mark Twain, right?” he asked. He looked down at the glass in his hand, then slowly lifted his gaze and arched an eyebrow at me (a look that would become endearingly familiar). I refrained from mentioning that I had been playing Twain on stage for about six years (I mean, upon meeting Picasso, would you tell him, oh, and I draw a little, too?). We were getting ourselves good and worked up, talking about Twain’s life and works. The conversation grew warmer and more fervid and more intense in that special where-two-or-more-are-gathered kind of way. I told Hal how seeing the 1967 CBS airing of Mark Twain Tonight! had sparked my interest in Twain, and how seeing a 1975 performance of the landmark one-man show at the Kennedy Center had fanned that spark into a brush fire. We quickly bonded over, of course, our shared love of that mutual friend who had so enriched both of our lives, Mark Twain. When my colleague snapped off his tape recorder and wandered away in search of another interview, I introduced myself, amazingly, without sounding like the blithering fan boy who was lurking right below the barely controlled professional surface. I established my post within a few feet of them, patiently waiting my moment to jump in, all the while wondering if, when I got my turn at bat, I could possibly maintain some semblance of journalistic integrity. I briskly moved into the on-deck position. On assignment as the television critic for the Akron Beacon Journal, I spotted Hal in a quiet corner of a Los Angeles hotel ballroom, being interviewed by another critic. We met at a network press reception in the mid-’80s. Struggling to even suggest the magnitude of those gifts, I find that the memories wander back to the beginning. For me, for 35 years, Hal was the remarkable gift that kept on giving and giving, in countless wonderful ways – a great actor who also was a great friend. Spurious or not, the quote has been much on my mind since learning of Hal Holbrook’s death at 95. But given Stevenson’s gift for friendship, he undoubtedly believed it. Trouble is, he probably never said it or wrote it.
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