Hal Holbrook

When Hal Holbrook first donned the white wig and old-age makeup in 1954 for the one-man performance that would become Mark Twain Tonight!, he was closer in age to the 14-year-old Huck Finn than to the septuagenarian he portrayed. Now that Holbrook himself is 80, it is clear that the flinty truth-teller born Samuel Clemens has been very good to him. Holbrook's resume is spotted with everything from TV Designing Women, opposite his wife of 21 years, Dixie Carter to movies All the President's Men, in which he played the recently unveiled Watergate informer "Deep Throat" to other stage work I Never Sang for My Father on Broadway. But it's Twain who has sustained Holbrook through more than 2,000 performances around the world, an enormously popular 1967 TV-movie and three New York engagements. Make that four New York engagements: "Mark Twain Tonight!" began a three-week run at Broadway's Brooks Atkinson Theatre June 6, and if you're afraid that you've seen or heard it all before, you haven't. Holbrook has amassed more than 15 hours worth of material over the years, and he cobbles together each night's performance from whatever sequences suit him. He's also able to perform when he pleases: With only six shows a week instead of the usual eight, Holbrook has time to slip down to Washington, D.C., to see Carter star in a Shakespeare Theatre production of the Oscar Wilde play Lady Windermere's Fan. He also had time to talk to Broadway.com about life on the road, the benefits of having extra material and the role that has made him famous.

Welcome back to New York. I'm eager to talk about Mark Twain, but first I wanted to hear your thoughts on "Deep Throat." Were you as surprised as many seem to be?
You know, I've never been one of these people eager to find out who he was. To me it's almost irrelevant. The point is what he did and why he did it, not who he was.

But at the time, mightn't knowing have been useful to you, as someone playing a historical character?
I struck on the idea that this man had served several presidents. He was like an elder statesman, and what he was doing in that garage was utterly distasteful to him and beneath him. And now that it's come out that Mark Felt is the man and that he was second in command in the FBI, more complicated, more human, less grand motivations are beginning to come out. It's just like everything else in life. It's not a movie.

With more than 2,000 performances of Mark Twain Tonight! under your belt, what prompted you to bring it back to New York now?
My youngest daughter, Eve, saw the show at a college in Staten Island a few years ago and said, "Daddy, people should see this show!" I said, "People have been seeing it. I travel all over the country every year." She said, "I know, but I'm talking about New York." And I said, "I've been to New York three times. They don't wanna see this. They got other stuff. And I don't wanna do a performance every night anymore..." So she called Manny [producer Emmanuel] Azenberg, whom we've known for many years, and Manny came up to Rochester a year or so ago and saw the show and was taken with it again. He persuaded me that it could be done. I was skeptical that anybody would want to come and see it in the environment we got here today, but he said, "No, I think there's an audience for this."

You got your wish--you're not doing an eight-show week.
Manny said right away, "You'll do six shows." And that's a help, 'cause doing a matinee with this thing is a killer.

I can imagine.
The key to keeping the show up and enjoying it--which is very important--is not to exhaust yourself. So I go into training, take good care of myself. The key is what goes on between me and the audience. That's where the fun is. The show is filled with surprising, funny thoughts, but it's also filled with some very sobering and startling thoughts about what is going on in our lives today, now. This morning.

Does that help dictate what material you use? I know you have an enormous bank of information that you can pick and choose from. Do you make those decisions on a nightly basis?
I can go out there and just program the show as I go along. The only problem is that the watch I use on stage doesn't work. So I have to have some basic format and some basic slots to fill so I know I'm gonna hit about 46 to 50 minutes in the first act and not much over 50 minutes in the second act, which is packed with some great stuff. Out on the road, half my engagements, it seems, are return engagements. So I keep a record. Every night after a show, I write up the whole show so I know exactly what the theater was like, what the hotel was like, what numbers I did, what the lighting was in the theater, et cetera. I never get to bed before 4 in the morning. And that way I can avoid most of the stuff when I go back. Here I'm gonna have to do the same show in the preview and the first two performances because the critics are gonna come. And maybe opening night I'll do the same things the critics are writing about. But after that I'm gonna be really happy to break loose and get into other stuff because you don't wanna bore yourself.

You have linked various pieces of Twain's words together, correct? Some of your writing is interwoven throughout?
I have to take total responsibility for the editorial work and the arrangement. And as my dear wife, Dixie, likes to point out sometimes, very few people in the audience are aware of what she calls the "scholarship" involved, which I just call editorial work to arrange a dramatic structure. So that it keeps the audience guessing about what's coming next, which is the key thing in any entertainment, and at the same time makes them think this man is talking about what happened this morning.

So you've done essentially what a dramaturg would do.
I suppose you could say that, yeah. If you wanna give it a fine name. Why not?

Speaking of Dixie, I understand you're taking some time off to see her in Lady Windermere's Fan.
Yeah. I was just down there five days. I saw some run-throughs and rattled the director's brain a little for not letting Dixie loose enough. [laughs] You've got to let that woman loose. You don't know what the hell you're gonna get.

Do you think the director took your advice?
Yeah, I do. I won't go into it because I love the guy. He's an actor I work with. He's an Englishman. You know, these English guys like to box you in. You've got to watch them.

Do you find it harder or easier to play Twain now than when you were in your 30s? Does your ingrained knowledge of the part offset the stamina requirements?
It's almost easier. As you become older, the dust on your shoes informs the role. You bring more of your own self and your own life and your own thoughts and convictions and anger and rage into the role. And if you have a role like this or King Lear--I've played King Lear twice--these roles are perfect platforms for throwing everything about yourself into them. To getting out of your guts everything that you feel about being alive and having lived. You create it, but as you go on and on, you find that you have become more a part of the role than you were in the beginning.

It's in the bones.
Yeah. I'm thinking of what I'm thinking. I'm going out and thinking and listening, particularly to silences. The silence is a thing you hear as an actor. You listen for laughs, but the silence is where the gold is, you know? Unless they're not laughing. Then it's not gold at all! [laughs]

I suspect that's not often the case.
Let's hope not. You know, New Yorkers have been around. "Yeah, we've seen everything. Yeah, right. Yeah, sure. OK, go ahead, I'll watch." They're not like people out in the rest of the country, who come to the theater with a certain amount of eagerness. You have to go through the fire a bit here, you know what I mean?

But Mark Twain would certainly appreciate a little bit of skepticism, a little "Show me what you got."
Oh, sure. You know one of the toughest audiences in America? Missouri! [laughs]

The "Show-Me State!"
I swear to God!

Is there a corollary to Mark Twain today?
I can't find anybody. I must admit, I am very, very put off by comedians who constantly resort to the use of profanity, or what we used to call "dirty words" before psychiatry excused us for everything. To me, it's like children shocking their parents. And I don't want it in my home. That doesn't make me some religious conservative idiot or something. It makes me a human being who has respect and taste for what goes on in my home. I wanna hear some substance. Mort Sahl had some substance years ago. Will Rogers had some substance. Ring Lardner. What's the name of the young man who set himself on fire by mistake?

Richard Pryor.
Yeah. I knew Richard a little bit. He used a lot of profanity, which made it tough for me to appreciate him fully. But the man had some substance. He had a good mind, you know? And there's this other guy who has a television show in the middle of the night or something. People keep saying, "You should watch this guy." I can't think of his name.

Jon Stewart?
Yeah, that's him. Everybody says, "Oh, you should watch him." But I'm writing a book now, so I hardly turn the television on at all anymore.

Do you ever fear the whole Long Day's Journey into Night notion, the idea of James Tyrone spending his life as the Count of Monte Cristo while other opportunities pass him by? I mean, you've had chances to do other things along the way...
Yeah, but not enough. I think of that often. I remember when Walter Kerr reviewed my show at the Imperial, I think in 1977, he made a remark which really struck me to the heart. He said something like, " I can't help thinking that here's an actor who has all this talent lying around and no place to put it." I mean... it's very hard to evaluate this because you can't discount what the association with Twain has meant. It's become too much a part of my life. It's become too valuable to me--not just in the money I can earn with it but in the way I feel. I think I'd go into the nuthouse if I didn't have this release of this man's, you know, words to express things I'm feeling. One of the things I've learned in my life is that if you can find an outlet for the rage that sometimes builds up inside of you--and we all feel it--if you can find an outlet, it may be the greatest fuel you'll ever find.