The Adventures of a Mark Twain Impersonator: McAvoy Layne recounts his portrayal of author

INCLINE VILLAGE — Dressed in his signature white suit, Samuel Clemens picks up his pipe and recalls the time he challenged a newspaper editor who had been disparaging him to a duel in Virginia City.

Out at Six Mile Canyon east of the city, Clemens and a friend arrived a half-hour early to practice for the duel, and his friend was such a good shot that he took the head off a mud hen just as the editor was riding up, Clemens said.

His friend handed the gun over and said, “Nice shot, Sam. Don’t kill him; just shoot his nasty face off.”

The editor heard that, and off he went, Clemens said.

Of course, Samuel Langhorne Clemens — the writer, humorist and essayist better known by his pen name, Mark Twain — didn’t really come back to life to share the story. Rather, it was McAvoy Layne, an Incline Village resident known as the “Ghost of Mark Twain,” who has impersonated the great American author for so long he remembers Twain’s life more than his own.

Since dueling had just been made illegal in the territory, James Nye, the governor of the Nevada Territory, issued a warrant for Clemens’ arrest, forcing him to leave for California.

“When I said goodbye to Virginia City, Carson City, Lake Tahoe, I knew I was saying goodbye to the most vigorous enjoyment of life I would ever be afforded,” Layne said, quoting Twain/Clemens. “Those days were full to the brim with the wine of life, and there have been no others like them.”

‘Twain Haven’

The 81-year-old has portrayed Twain for over 35 years, and sometimes it’s difficult to tell where Twain ends and Layne begins.

They share bushy white hair and a thick mustache, though their likeness goes beyond appearance. They were both drawn to Northern Nevada, they share a favorite book (Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”) and they both have an affinity for storytelling.

After 35 years of school lectures and performances across the globe, Layne retired from Twain in 2023, thinking it was better to retire “two years too early than two minutes too late.”

But his “retirement ship’s springing a leak,” Layne said, and he continues to find reasons to dust off the white suit.

In March, he performed for the Nevada Legislature, which Samuel Clemens once covered as a reporter for the Territorial Enterprise, where he started using the pen name Mark Twain. He also addressed a group at the governor’s mansion, and he is scheduled to speak to university women at the Chateau at Incline Village.

“These kinds of things I can do, and I love it, because I miss the old boy,” Layne said. “And I miss sharing him with people because I think he has a lot to offer, even today.”

Every morning Layne climbs down the stairs of his “Twain Haven” and looks at a portrait of Olivia, Twain’s wife, hung on the wall.

“We would not be talking about him were it not for her,” he said fondly, explaining that she encouraged him to use his humor to write on more serious matters, and she helped him become the great American writer he is known as today.

Framed photos of Twain from different times of his life hang on Layne’s walls, showing him in his honorary graduation garb, reading in bed and standing behind a pool table. Behind Layne’s couch, Twain joins Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean in the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” diner.

A handwritten copy of “Huckleberry Finn,” covered with Twain’s own edits, sits prominently on a table next to a Mark Twain doll that Layne’s 11-year-old grandson made.

When Layne gets “called home,” half of his Twain possessions will go to the library across the street, which already has a special alcove waiting just for Twain, Layne said.

Standing in front of his bookshelf — which encases the 18,000 published pages of Twain that took Layne 10 years to read — Layne pulls from his memory Twain quotes and passages for any occasion like an encyclopedia.

What would Twain think about politics today?

“I don’t vote for politicians; it only encourages them,” Twain/Layne replies.

His thoughts on the Legislature?

“Nevada Legislature meets every two years for 60 days when they ought rightly meet every 60 years for two days,” he says. That was back in the early to mid-1900s, when the sessions were recorded as 60 days long.

“He lives and breathes Mark Twain,” said Steven Saylor, director of the Mark Twain Museum in Virginia City. McAvoy’s storytelling has encouraged people to read Twain and learn more about him, he said.

Carson Valley resident Kim Harris, a friend of Layne’s and fellow portrayer of historical figures, said she didn’t really “get” Twain until she saw Layne perform about 15 years ago. When someone performs well, your disbelief is suspended for a short while, Harris said.

“I’m an intelligent person, but I really thought I met Mark Twain, and I thought, ‘Man, that is magic,’ ” she said. “He is the embodiment of Mark Twain.”

Harris, who has portrayed a Pony Express rider, said Layne got people interested in Virginia City and Carson City through his portrayal of Twain, and he has made an impact on the community, both as Twain and as himself.

“He is just the most wonderful, gracious human being you could have ever met, and he loves to help people,” she said. “He’s traveled the world. He loves children, and he’s been instrumental in inspiring many, many people to take up this art form.”

Stuck with Twain in a cabin

Layne, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area community of Orinda, California, read “Tom Sawyer” as a kid thinking it was the best book he ever read, but it wasn’t until he was stuck with Twain’s work in a cabin during a winter storm that his love for him grew.

On a ski vacation in Lake Tahoe, Layne got snowed in at his cabin, and it took five days for plows to reach him. He played darts for two days, and after his arm gave out, he sat down to read the book that was on the coffee table, the “Complete Essays of Mark Twain,” he said.

“I had cabin fever,” he said. “By then my brain was soft, so that seed was planted in fertile ground.”

Layne was drawn to Clemens’ writing and his humor, which still makes him smile after reading it a thousand times.

“He speaks to us with an immediacy that transcends the ages,” Layne said.

Layne first performed as Twain during his father’s 75th birthday dinner at La Playa Hotel in Carmel, California, in October 1987. During dinner, he excused himself to put on a white suit hidden in a closet.

“I came back older than my father, and he didn’t know what to think,” Layne said.

Layne began speaking at schools and events as Twain while working on a radio show in Lake Tahoe. He gave ski reports and told kids if they had a snow day. Once the radio station moved to Reno, he was pushed out of the nest and was given the courage to do Twain full time, Layne said.

For some, a full-time Twain impersonator might seem like an odd career choice. But for Layne, he was used to working exciting jobs, which seemed to prepare him for Twain.

He worked as a radio show host in Hawaii, where he’d interview guests like actor Charlton Heston and play some Doobie Brothers. Layne’s father, a successful optometrist who wanted Layne to follow in his footsteps, thought that kind of job should have been illegal, Layne said.

Layne also was a “clown diver” in a traveling water circus originally formed by fellow University of Oregon students. He’d challenge a fake audience member to a swimming competition, and once the race began Layne would hold onto a hidden rope being pulled by a ’55 Chevy. He’d light a cigarette and then dunk in the water, coming up with it still lit. (He’s swallowed a few ashes in the process, but it was worth it, he said.)

‘Keep the torch burning’

Beginning in 1988, for four months out of the year, Layne performed two shows a day six days a week at Piper’s Opera House Performing Arts Center in Virginia City.

With a low supply of Mark Twain lookalikes who are also skilled orators, Layne’s career took him all over the world. He performed in Germany and toured around Russia, where he spoke at the then-Leningrad University in St. Petersburg. He’s portrayed Samuel Clemens in documentaries and spent time in Twain’s old Hartford, Connecticut, house.

Gifts from the community sit around his home, commemorating his time as Twain. A quilt a librarian made for him, with every fourth or fifth panel a chapter from “Tom Sawyer,” is draped over his armchair. An honorary high school diploma for Twain given to Layne after he gave a commencement speech at Incline High School sits on his bookshelf, alongside a letter from a student at Mark Twain Elementary in Carson City.

A 2023 proclamation from the Legislature thanking Layne for his decades of work as Twain also is framed on his wall.

Since retiring, he walks and brunches with friends, hangs out with Huckleberry — the bird who visits him regularly — and he occasionally goes fishing with a few of his Marine Corps buddies.

But Twain still takes up a lot of his time. He writes columns for local newspapers, giving modern takes from Twain’s perspective, and he produces his “What Would Mark Twain Say” podcast. He is also writing a book, with a working title of “One Hundred Characters I Have Known,” about his life, both before Twain and since.

Layne still has a letter he received from the late actor and longtime Twain impersonator Hal Holbrook, who wrote “McAvoy, keep the torch burning.” Layne mentors an up-and-coming Twain impersonator, and he repeated those words in a letter to his mentee, saying, “Keep the torch burning.”

“He keeps trying to retire, but we won’t let him,” Harris, his longtime friend, said.

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on X.