Hal Holbrook

At 95 years old, Hal Holbrook has this physical status:

Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. (born February 17, 1925) is an American actor, television director, and author.

When studying at Denison University, Mark Twain Tomorrow! received critical recognition in 1954 for a one-man stage show he created, marking him as Mark Twain.

In 1966, he received the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his portrayal of Twain.

He has received five Primetime Emmy Awards during his career. Holbrook made his film debut in Sidney Lumet's The Group (1966).

He went on to international prominence after appearing in the 1976 film All the President's Men.

In the 1976 miniseries Lincoln, he played Abraham Lincoln.

He has appeared in films including Julia (1977), The Fog (1982), Creepshow (1982), and Men of Honor (2001).

Holbrook was the first actor to be nominated for an Academy Award in 2015.

Holbrook received critical acclaim in 2009 for his role as recently retired farmer Abner Meecham in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012), as Mayday in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln & Rescue (2014) and as Whizzer in Blackway (2015).

Later in his career, he has appeared in minor roles in Sons of Anarchy, The Event, and Rectify.

President George W. Bush has awarded Holbrook with the National Humanities Medal in 2003.

Early life

Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on February 17, 1925, the son of Aileen (née Davenport) Holbrook (1905–1987), a vaudeville dancer, and Harold Rowe Holbrook Sr. (1902-1902).

When he was two years old, Holbrook and his two older sisters were abandoned by their parents. The three children were raised by their paternal grandparents, first in Weymouth, Massachusetts, and later in Lakewood, Ohio. He graduated from Culver Military Academy (now part of the Culver Academies) and then from Denison University, where an honors project about Mark Twain led him to create the one-man show for which he was best known, a series of performances called Mark Twain Tonight! He also studied acting at HB Studio in New York City.

Holbrook appeared in the United States Army from 1942 to 1946, earning the rank of staff sergeant; he was stationed in Newfoundland, where he appeared in theater performances including the play Lady Precious Stream.

Personal life

Holbrook was married three times and had three children. Ruby Elaine Johnston, a Newfoundlander, was married in 1945 and they had two children. They divorced in 1965. Carol Eve Rossen married him in 1966. They had one child and divorced in 1983.

Dixie Carter married actress and singer Dixie Carter in 1984, and the pair remained married until Carter's death from endometrial cancer on April 10, 2010. On Carter's television show Designing Women, Holbrook appeared as a recurring character.

Holbrook said of his home in McLemoresville, Tennessee, that it had the "feel" of the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, and that there was no other place to which he was more suited. He also had a Beverly Hills, California, home. Holbrook appeared on his wife's hit sitcom Designing Women from 1986 to 1989, as Carter's on-screen significant other. Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain, Holbrook's memoir, in 2011.

Holbrook wrote a letter in October 2016 to The New York Times defending actor Nate Parker for suspected 1999 rape of a woman and Parker's controversial film The Birth of a Nation. Parker urged others to "move forward" from Parker's past and see the film, which was "an outstanding work of artistry and a crucial representation of our American experience," he told us.

Holbrook has occasionally criticized the politicization of faith. He was a registered independent, but he leaning toward the liberalism of the United States political spectrum. When Barack Obama was in office, he slammed the Republican Party.

In 2016, he chastised then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for not having "the wisdom to rule the country." Senator Bernie Sanders was praised by Holbrook as the only politician who does not "say what they think will get them elected" and praised his honesty.

Holbrook died in Beverly Hills on January 23, 2021, at the age of 95; no reason was given. His death was announced more than a week later, on February 2. He and his wife, Dixie Carter, were buried in McLemoresville, Tennessee, and their son, Dixie Carter, were buried there.

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Career

Twain's first solo appearance at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania in 1954. On February 12, 1956, Ed Sullivan saw him and gave 31-year-old Holbrook his first national exposure on The Ed Sullivan Show. Holbrook also worked with the Valley Players (1941-1992), a summer-stock theater group headquartered in Holyoke, Massachusetts, which performed at the Mountain Park Casino Playhouse in Mountain Park. He joined The Lambs Club in 1955, where he began constructing his one-man display. He appeared onstage for many years and appeared in Mark Twain Tonight! This was the 1957 season opener. On a European tour, the State Department took him on a historic tour that included pioneering appearances behind the Iron Curtain. Holbrook was first seen off-Broadway in 1959. Columbia Records released an LP of excerpts from the program.

Holbrook appeared in a special performance for the Bell Telephone Pavilion's Fair in 1964/1965 New York City. Jo Mielziner created an exciting audio-visual ride experience and used Holbrook's acting skills on 65 different action screens for "The Ride of Communication" (the film itself). From drumbeats to Telstar, Peter Mielziner created an innovative audio-visual ride experience and used Holbrook's acting skills on 65 different action screens for "The Ride of Communications" in 2006.

In 1967, Mark Twain Tonight!

Holbrook received an Emmy Award for his role on television by CBS and Xerox, and he was given an Emmy for his efforts. Twain first appeared on Broadway in 1966 and 2005; during his last Broadway run, Holbrook's Twain was older (for the first time) than the character he was portraying. Holbrook received a Tony Award for his 1966 debut. Mark Twain Tonight, 92, before Holbrook retired in 2017 at the age of 92. The country attracted more than 2,100 performances. This was one of his first performances in 1962 and one of his last in September, 2014, at his high-school alma mater in Indiana. Twain was longer in character than Samuel Langhorne Clemens'.

In 1964, Holbrook appeared as the Major in Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy. Although he was one of Richard Kiley's replacements in Man of La Mancha's initial Broadway production in 1968, he had limited singing ability. Holbrook appeared alongside Shirley Booth in The Glass Menagerie, an award-winning CBS Playhouse performance.

In the controversial and acclaimed 1972 television film That Certain Summer, Holbrook co-starred Martin Sheen. Lieutenant Neil Briggs, the master and rival of Detective "Dirty" Callahan (Clint Eastwood), a "obsessively neat and prim fanatic" who favors San Francisco's obliteration of criminals and who is the leader of a rogue group of vigilante cops, appeared in 1973.

In 1976, Holbrook was recognized for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in a series of television specials based on Carl Sandburg's celebrated biography. In a Drama Series based on the 1970 film The Bold Ones: The Senator received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. In 1979, he appeared alongside Katharine Ross, Barry Bostwick, and Richard Anderson in the made-for-TV film Murder by Natural Causes. During the whole run of Evening Shade, Holbrook appeared on the sitcom Evening Shade. Holbrook appeared onstage and in The Brighter Day, a television soap opera. In the film All the President's Men, he was also known for his character as the enigmatic Deep Throat (whose identity was still unknown at the time). In 1997, Holbrook narrated Ken Burns' documentary Lewis & Clark: The Discovery of the Corps of Discovery.

Holbrook appeared on Designing Women from 1986 to 1989, opposite his wife Dixie Carter. Holbrook produced four episodes of the series in a short time between 1988 and 1990.

In 1999, Holbrook was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Holbrook appeared in Men of Honor a year later, in which he played a racist and hypocritical cop who continues to depose an African-American diver trainee. In two episodes of The West Wing, Holbrook appeared as Albie Duncan.

He appeared in Sean Penn's critically acclaimed film Into the Wild (2007) and was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the 80th Academy Awards. This rendered Holbrook, the oldest nominee in Academy Award history in the Best Supporting Actor category, at age 82. Holbrook was nominated for a Screen Actor Guild Award for his role in the film. He appeared in the Hartford Stage production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town from late August to mid-September 2007, a role he had never played on television.

In That Evening Sun, Holbrook appeared alongside Dixie Carter in the summer of 2008. The film, produced by Dogwood Entertainment, is based on a William Gay short story. Evening Sun premiered in March 2009 at South By Southwest, where it received the Audience Award for Narrative Feature and a special Jury Prize for Ensemble Cast. Variety's Joe Leydon praised Hollbrook's role in the film as a "career-highlight actor" who plays an irascible farmer who will not go gentle into that good night. Evening Sun was also shown at the 2009 Nashville Film Festival, where Holbrook was named with a special Lifetime Achievement Award, and the film itself was awarded another Audience Award.

In a 2006 episode of HBO's The Sopranos and the NCIS episode "Escaped," Holbrook appeared as a featured guest star. Holbrook decided to play Katey Sagal's father on FX's Sons of Anarchy for a four-episode arc in their third season, as well as an additional fifth episode in the final season. In the 2010–2011 season, he had a multiple-episode arc on The Event, an American television series on NBC, which aired on NBC.

In 2011, Holbrook appeared in Water for Elephants. In 2012, Steven Spielberg cast Holbrook in Lincoln as Francis Preston Blair. His film appearances included appearances in Promised Land (2012), the animated film Planes: Fire & Rescue (2014), and in his minor role as Whizzer in the drama film Blackway (2016). Holbrook was the subject of Scott Teems' documentary Holbrook/Twain: An American Odyssey portraying Holbrook's long-serving career as Twain. That year, it was premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival for the first time.

Holbrook appeared in the final season of Bones on January 17, 2017. On March 23, 2017, he appeared on Grey's Anatomy as a veteran thoracic surgeon whose wife is a patient, and on Hawaii Five-0 later this year.

Holbrook resigned from Mark Twain Tonight in September 2017, after six decades of playing Mark Twain. Holbrook said that he wants to continue working on movies and television.

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