Hal Holbrook, the award-winning actor who traveled the world for more than 50 years as Mark Twain at a solo show and delivered the immortal advice “Follow the money” in the classic political thriller “All the President’s Men”, died. He was 95 years old.
Chris Pizzello / Invision / AP
Holbrook died on January 23 at his home in Beverly Hills, California, his publicist, Steve Rohr, told CBS News on Tuesday.
Actors across the spectrum mourned Holbrook’s death, including Bradley Whitford, who called him an “incredible actor” and Viola Davis, Who I wrote “RIP for the ever wonderful Hal Holbrook.”
Holbrook followed a busy career in theater, television and cinema, winning five Emmys and one Tony. His more than two dozen film credits ranged from “Lincoln” by Steven Spielberg to “Wall Street” by Oliver Stone. He was a constant presence on TV too, having appeared on shows like “The West Wing”, “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Bones”.
But his most famous film role was a key source for Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward (played by Robert Redford) in the 1976 adaptation of “All the President’s Men”, Woodward’s bestseller and fellow reporter Carl Bernstein about the investigation of Richard Nixon’s administration and the Watergate scandal that led to his resignation.
Holbrook played the mysterious informant “Deep Throat” (later revealed to be an FBI officer Mark Felt) that provided Woodward with important information. The most famous tip, uttered in the shadows of a parking lot – “Follow the money” – has become an instant catchphrase, but has never been said in real life. The line was invented by screenwriter William Goldman.
“Follow the money” may have been his most famous expression in cinema, but Twain was his definitive role. The association started in 1954 when an instructor at Denison University in Ohio gave Holbrook the role as part of a thesis.
Holbrook and his first wife, Ruby Johnson, later created a show for two, playing characters from Shakespeare to Twain. After his daughter, Victoria, was born, he started working on a Twain solo show while working on the soap opera “The Brighter Day”.
Cleveland-born Holbrook was 29 years old when he first introduced himself as Twain (who was portrayed as 70) and ended up developing the role in a two-act show for a man named “Mark Twain Tonight!” for schools and nightclubs and theaters. He took him to Broadway three times – 1966, 1977 and 2005 – and won the Tony Award for best dramatic actor for the 1966 version.
“The truth is that he has been a wonderful company,” Holbrook told The Plain Dealer in 2017. “It would be an understatement to say that I like him. He never ceases to amaze me. Even after all these years, I am still amazed by his understanding of human character. Much of what he had to say more than 100 years ago is right about money today. “
In 1959, after years of refining his material in small towns, Holbrook debuted his Twain at an off-Broadway theater in New York and received critical acclaim. “Mr. Holbrook’s material is noisy, his ability to arrest audiences in acting is brilliant,” said The New York Times. The New Yorker called it “a dazzling display of virtuosity”.
Holbrook toured like Twain – with the writer’s familiar white suit and white hair – whenever he wasn’t busy with other acting jobs. He updated the program to suit the times and played the role on his own some 2,200 times. He hung up the white suit in 2017.
“He has done a ton of work over the years, never less than first, but Twain’s performances have come close to perfection and will stay with me forever,” tweeted Michael McKean.
He was meticulous in his preparations, taking up to 3 ½ hours to put on makeup and insisting on large stage furniture so that, at 1.80 m in height, he did not appear to be greater than 1.50 m. -inch Twain was. He read books by the author and about him and combed newspaper archives for interviews with Twain and stories about his lecture trips.
During a performance on the open stage at Wolf Trap, near Vienna, Virginia, lightning flashed and thunder broke out just as Holbrook reached out to pick up a cigar from the humidifier. He ran back. A laugh followed. Holbrook looked over his glasses at the audience. When he could be heard again, he said, “He was not talking to you.”
Over the years, Holbrook has done “Mark Twain Tonight!” to several foreign countries, including Saudi Arabia. Its audience included Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Carter.
When he was not playing Twain, Holbrook showed impressive versatility. He was the eccentric father-in-law of Burt Reynolds 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 include “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 wanderer Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) in director Sean Penn’s film “Into the Wild”.
In 1980, he met actress Dixie Carter when they both starred in the TV movie “The Killing of Randy Webster”. Although attracted to each other, each suffered two failed marriages and they were cautious at first. They finally got married in 1984, two years before Carter got the role of Julia Sugarbaker in the long TV series “Designing Women”. Holbrook appeared on the show regularly in the late 1980s as her boyfriend, Reese Watson. 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 the stepfather of Mary Dixie Carter and Ginna Carter.
