Hal Holbrook

The Man Who Became Mark Twain

Hal Holbrook spent more than sixty years in makeup to look old before he actually was.

He began playing the writer in 1954, when he was barely thirty. That obsession with the author of Tom Sawyer was not just an acting job but a way of life he kept up until 2017. Three hours of daily makeup were the price he paid to step on stage every night.

His parents left his life when he was two years old. He was raised by his grandparents in Massachusetts and found in theater a refuge from family abandonment. At Denison University, he began shaping the monologue Mark Twain Tonight!, which would support him for decades.

And the gamble paid off.

He won a Tony Award in 1966 for that role and toured the world with his stories. But Holbrook did not want to be just a talking bust on a theater stage. So he jumped into film to show that his voice could carry far more contemporary tensions.

Shadows in Garages and Offices

In 1976 he played Deep Throat in All the President's Men. Those scenes in dark parking garages set the tone of the political thriller. He didn't need to shout to command respect, because his baritone voice filled the frame with a natural authority few actors of his generation could match.

But movies were not always generous to him. He worked in minor productions and supporting roles on television series during the 1980s. He appeared in Wall Street in 1987 under Oliver Stone's direction. There he played Lou Mannheim and delivered clipped lines about business integrity that are still studied in finance schools.

In 2007 Sean Penn called him to take part in Into the Wild. He was 82 years old and earned his first Oscar nomination for a role lasting barely twenty minutes. His performance as Ron Franz is an exercise in emotional restraint that overshadows the rest of the young cast.

He was the oldest actor ever nominated in that category until Christopher Plummer later broke the record.

Retreat on the Hill

He was married three times. His longest-lasting relationship was with actress Dixie Carter, with whom he shared the screen in the series Designing Women. Carter's death in 2010 pulled him out of the spotlight for a while, but it did not fully take him off sets.

In 2012, he appeared in Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg. He played Francis Preston Blair and showed that his gift for political drama remained intact despite his advanced age. His final roles included appearances in series such as Sons of Anarchy and Rectify.

He never wanted to write his memoirs in a conventional way. Instead, he put his memories into the book Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain, published in 2011.

He died on January 23, 2021 at his home in Beverly Hills at the age of 95.