Hal Holbrook retires one-man show 'Mark Twain Tonight'

Hal Holbrook retires one-man show 'Mark Twain Tonight' Feb 3, 2021 12:07:21 GMT via mobile petrolino likes this

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Post by hi224 on Feb 3, 2021 12:07:21 GMT

Oct 13, 2017 18:29:55 GMT petrolino said:

Hal Holbrook has decided it's time to call it a day and make no more public appearances as Mark Twain.

'Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain' by Mark Dawidziak

Holbrook has spent a lifetime battling authority and giving the poor and disenfranchised a mouthpiece. Sometimes he takes a lot of heat - for example, his open letter in defense of Nate Parker's controversial feature 'The Birth Of A Nation' (2016) - but this doesn't deter him, it drives him on.

"Lincoln has been portrayed on film and television over 270 times since the dawn of celluloid. That's predictable enough, given his overarching prominence in American history, but one wonders too if the American acting profession still bears the taint of John Wilkes Booth on its collective conscience, so eager have so many of their number been to play Lincoln. (Incidentally, the killer's more talented actor-brother Edwin Booth lived for another half-century, and was a good friend to the parents of actor-director Raoul Walsh, who played Booth in DW Griffith's The Birth of A Nation; now that's some role-research!) Griffith's own Lincoln was played by Joseph Henabery. But the actor whose real stock in trade was Lincoln in the early 'teens was one Francis Ford, directorial mentor and elder brother to the cantankerous genius John Ford. John's fondness for Lincoln surfaced over and over in his work, even though he never let his brother play the role in one of his own movies. Thus Lincoln shows up in Ford's great silent breakthrough The Iron Horse, in 1925, and then briefly in 1936's The Prisoner Of Shark Island, a thriller about the aftermath of Lincoln's murder (called Je n'ai pas tue Lincoln for its French release), in which Francis only got to play comic relief. So often did John torment his elder brother – because, grouchy alcoholic prick that he was, he hated to acknowledge a debt – one has to wonder if he cast Francis in a minor part in Young Mr Lincoln simply to let him witness, day after day, his own signature role being forever obliterated by Henry Fonda's entrancing new reading. Between Fonda and Day-Lewis we have seen Sam Waterston as Gore Vidal's syphilitic Lincoln, and Jason Robards voicing Lincoln in a 1992 PBS documentary miniseries. Spielberg's Lincoln actually contains two, possibly three Lincolns, given that cast member Hal Holbrook has played Abe twice, once in the fondly remembered Carl Sandburg series, and again in North And South."

- John Patterson, The Guardian

"I have another new piece that I think was pretty chancy to add in, and that has to do with Mark Twain's thoughts on the Christian Bible. It’s about how people use the Bible without even understanding what Jesus is saying in it. And I am telling you, it is right on the nose. As a religious nation, we have a tremendous lack of understanding of what Jesus Christ is telling us. We turn it into something else and make a mess of it. That's what happens when you marry politics to religion. That’s what we’ve done, and it is creating a big problem in this country. Politics and religion do not go well together.”

- Hal Holbrook, speaking at the Denver Center For Performing Arts in 2015

"A word of advice to journalists and political junkies of all stripes: When given the chance to interview Hal Holbrook, don't turn it down. You won't be disappointed."

- David Ng, The Los Angeles Times

Hal Holbrook holds Elizabeth Montgomery

Hal Holbrook returns to Denison University

Keep fighting the good fight, Mr Holbrook.

Also starred with Al Pacino within a play as well.