Hal Holbrook Brings Mark Twain to Stephens Auditorium, November 12 at 7:30 pm

Talking to Hal Holbrook on the phone is just like catching up with a favorite uncle who always has a fascinating tale to tell—especially if you have an uncle who’s an Oscar®-nominated actor, known around the world for the iconic one-man show, Mark Twain Tonight! Holbrook’s voice and infectious laugh are instantly familiar, and he is generous with his stories and his time.

Central Iowa will have a chance to experience Holbrook in person when the show comes to Stephens Auditorium in Ames on Tuesday, Nov. 12. 

His portrayal of Twain has been the touchstone of a far-ranging acting career that has earned him Emmy® and Tony® awards and an Academy Award nomination in 2008 for his portrayal of Ron Franz in Into the Wild. He has appeared in more than 35 movies and some 50 television movies and miniseries.

But despite his legendary career, Holbrook didn’t always wear his success so easily.

 “I finally, at my advanced age of 84, have begun to take myself a little more seriously,” he said in an hour-long chat earlier this month.

Holbrook was blindsided by his overnight success after Mark Twain Tonight! had its off-Broadway premiere in 1959 and garnered his first-ever rave reviews.

“I was an unknown working in a soap opera. I’d spent five years putting the show together and doing it all over the country, to very mixed reviews. And then after the first show in New York City, the reviews were beyond anything anyone could have imagined. People said ‘Who the hell is this guy? Where did he come from?’ It was frightening. I could never savor the pleasure of the success—I couldn’t quite believe people hadn’t made a mistake.”

For most of the next 50 years, despite all the acclaim, that feeling of disbelief never quite left him.

“Truthfully, no matter what I did I was never able to take it in,” he said. “It’s only been the past couple of years—and the Oscar nomination—that have made me realize that I have accomplished something.”

Holbrook wrote Mark Twain Tonight!, has never had a director for the show, and has performed it every year since its debut in 1954, changing and adding material continually over the years. He was just 30 when he began performing as Twain; now 84, Holbrook has lived longer than Twain himself. To generation of Americans, he practically is Twain himself.  He has performed the show for three U.S. presidents (Eisenhower, Johnson and Carter). In 1960, he toured Europe and performed behind the Iron Curtain as part of a  cultural exchange set up by the U.S. State Department.

“People tell me it’s the longest-running show for any actor, but I’m always suspicious of records – there could always be someone hiding out there who’s been doing a role longer,” he said with a chuckle.

“I remember when I played an opera house in Columbus, Georgia, and they had displays in the lobby of the famous actors who had performed there. One of them was about James O’Neill, Eugene O’Neill’s father, and it noted he had played the Count of Monte Cristo for 35 years. I involuntarily said, “Only 35?” and everyone around me just burst into laughter.” 

What’s it like to perform the same role so many times? “Oh, it’s just a big pleasure to get out on stage and say the things he had to say about the way we behave, the way we treat each other, treat our country, treat the world, and treat ourselves—all the extraordinary commentary he made about the way we live,” he said with relish.

Remarkably, Twain’s wisdom and humor are as relevant in our time as they were more than a century ago—something Holbrook attributes to the enduring nature of people themselves.

“He wrote that the human race is always interesting, and it never changes; there are only new generations of the same sort of people,” Holbrook says. “That’s so true, and it’s reflected in what people often say after seeing the show: He’s so contemporary!”

Twain’s relevancy is enhanced by the way Holbrook chooses material to fit the times.

“I’m always researching him and looking for new material. Probably half the stuff I’m doing now, I didn’t have when I started this. A month or so ago, I found a line about Wall Street in a letter of his that really speaks to audiences now, describing ‘the limitless rottenness of Wall Street, where theft is practiced as a profession by our most distinguished commercial men.’

“He wrote essays on all the corruption that went on during his lifetime, when wealth began to accumulate with the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers,” Holbrook says. “One of his great lines is, ‘Money is becoming more respectable than virtue.’

On the subject of war, Twain is just as relevant. “I do his ‘War Prayer’ quite a lot now,” Holbrook says, referring to Twain’s searing indictment of war, which was published only after his death.

“And that naturally leads into another number which questions whether we should go on civilizing everyone around the world so they are a reflection of us, which is becoming more and more the question our young president has to face about Afghanistan.”

From that essay, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” Holbrook recites: “Shall we go on extending the blessings of civilization to people that sit in darkness or shall we give those
poor things a rest? Shall we bang right ahead in our old time pious way and commit the new century to the game or shall we sober up and sit down and think it over first.”

But don’t get the idea that Mark Twain Tonight! is all serious—far from it.

“There are a hell of a lot of laughs in this show,” Holbrook says. 

“One of the things you don’t think about is that people laugh at the truth because they never hear it. Someone tells us the truth, and we laugh!” he says with a roar.

And while that quote might sound like Twain, it’s actually vintage Holbrook—wisdom from a man whose storied career is now entering its next chapter.

He has roles in several upcoming movies, including That Evening Sun, an independent film premiering this month (November) after performing well at the film festivals this year. He’s writing his memoirs, immersed in revisions and reminiscences. And he’s blissfully married to the actress Dixie Carter, who plays his wife in flashback scenes in Evening Sun.

“I’m just so happy with her, and so grateful to her,” he says, sounding positively besotted for one who has been married 24 years.

In short, Holbrook is busier than ever.

“Twenty years ago I had the time to take a month off and sail across the ocean on a forty-foot boat, and now I don’t!” he said. “I love my work—I love to work. When I’m feeling bored or overwhelmed or tired, I pick myself up with some kind of work. I go to sleep musing over stuff for the show.”