Friday, May 21, 2004 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Life Lessons

Even though Hal Holbrook has portrayed Mark Twain for 50 years, he 'can't help looking for more'

Hal Holbrook presents his one-man show featuring the writings of Mark Twain on Saturday at Artemus Ham Hall.

For 50 years, actor Hal Holbrook has portrayed Mark Twain on stage, throughout the country and around the world.

Not bad for a man who admits he didn't even read Twain as a child.

"When I came upon him, an immediate connection was made because he tapped into what I was already feeling and experiencing and thinking about," Holbrook said in a recent phone interview from his home in Santa Monica, Calif. "He put stuff in perspective for me, interpreted ideas for me."

Born in Cleveland in 1925, Holbrook grew up in South Weymouth, Mass., and went to Denison University in Ohio in 1942, majoring in theater. World War II interrupted his college career and he served in the Army Engineers for three years.

After the war, Holbrook returned to Denison, where he met his first wife, Ruby. The show began as part of an honors project the Holbrooks put together, doing various characters from the stage, including Twain.

Following graduation, the Holbrooks continued the show at school assemblies in the Southwest. He went solo with the Twain characterization in 1954, at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania.

In the beginning, doing a one-man show about Twain, which he does Saturday at Artemus Ham Hall, was "just a means to help make a living," Holbrook said. "I didn't even think of it as an entire evening in the theater," since the show was only 50 minutes long. "The whole thing just grew."

Holbrook did get steady work on a soap opera, "The Brighter Day," but he kept doing Twain. During a stint in a Greenwich Village nightclub, Ed Sullivan was in the audience and gave Holbrook a shot on network television.

"At the nightclub I learned a great deal," Holbrook said. After Sullivan put him on television "it began to amount to something."

In 1959, seven years after first performing as Twain, Holbrook became an "overnight" success with his off-Broadway "Mark Twain Tonight!" He went on to win a Tony Award in 1966 for best actor in a dramatic role and was nominated for an Emmy Award the following year.

"I didn't want to get waylaid by a one-man show," Holbrook said, "but I always held onto it. I had to support myself from an early age. I had to survive. I realized this was something I could turn to `in extremis' to help me survive. I strived to keep it good and vital."

This year he's doing 38 performances as Twain, stretched out over several months. And he has another 39 set for next year.

"It keeps me on the road a long time," Holbrook said. "That's the only bad part of it. Living out of hotels is grim. It keeps me away from my family."

There's also the problem of flying in a post-Sept. 11 world, with longer waits at airports. And amazingly, considering Holbrook's fame, being pulled out of line for searches.

"I was pulled out of line ... every time for two years," Holbrook said, his voice rising in indignation. "They practically take your clothes off and rip apart your luggage. Then they ask you for your autograph! And there's no explanation."

It's all part of a "radically changing" world in which we live, he said. "I can't update Mark Twain's material, but I try to edit it together in such a way that it addresses things that are going on today in the world. The audience is startled by the creepy feeling that he's talking about something going on now. But he can't be, he's dead. The show became more topical the last three years than ever before. There's so much uncertainty, so much disintegration going on, shifting values that were taken for granted for so many years. You have to wonder whether the replacements for those values are any better. I can't find anything particularly admirable about them."

The shifting sands of moral values were not unfamiliar to Twain either. "He faced many of the same kind of problems in the last half of the 19th century, many of the same questions we have today. Corruption, corporate dishonesty ..."

About two years ago, Holbrook added Twain material about corporate cheating (think Enron).

"It's startling, shocking almost, what he says," Holbrook said. "He gives a picture of how America fell in love with wealth."

Twain also took on the press of his day, comments that are applicable today, Holbrook said.

When it comes to the current fighting in Iraq, Holbrook tries not to use Twain's words to take sides. "It wouldn't be fair to take a politically motivated position on this war. Twain's not alive now. I don't like to take a quote and use it for a particular point. We know he didn't like war, but who does? He never had to deal with a Hitler or a Saddam Hussein."

Holbrook has become so identified with the role that when Ken Burns began his recent documentary for PBS on Twain, he turned to Holbrook for help.

"I warned Ken off of stressing too much of the sad events of his later life," including the death of Twain's daughter and wife. "That's been stressed over the years so much it's been used as an explanation of what's been called his pessimism. People wanted to dismiss Mark Twain's very accurate commentary about the human race."

Holbrook, 79, still does extensive research for the show. "As the years go by, I can't help looking for more. As I get older, instead of getting tired, I get more agitated and riled up than when I was younger. I want to get out there and fight it. This is my machine gun. I never found any better weapon."