Hal Holbrook |
||
|
|
||
Hal Holbrook Relationships |
||
Who is Hal Holbrook dating?Click on the photos to find out Who's Dated Who...
|
||
Post Your Vote |
||
Vote Results |
||
Career Highlights |
||
Actor Credits
|
||
Hal Holbrook Biography |
||
|
Hal Holbrook is an Emmy- and Tony-Award winning actor who is one of the great craftsman of stage and screen. He is best known for his performance as Mark Twain, for which he won a Tony and the first of his ten Emmy Award nominations. Aside from the stage, Holbrook made his reputation primarily on television, and was memorable as Abraham Lincoln, as Senator Hays Stowe on "The Bold Ones" and as Capt. Lloyd Bucher on "Pueblo". All of these roles brought him Emmy Awards, with "Pueblo" bringing him two, as Best Lead Actor in a Drama and Actor of the Year - Special. On January 22, 2008, he became the oldest male performer ever nominated for a an Academy Award, for his supporting turn in "Into the Wild."
He was born Harold Rowe Holbrook, Jr. on February 17, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio. His mother was the former Eileen Davenport, a vaudeville dancer. Raised primarily in South Weymouth, Mass., Holbrook attended the Culver Academies. During World War II, Holbrook served in the Army in Newfoundland. After the war, he attended Dennison University, graduating in 1948. While at Dennison, Holbrook`s senior honors project concerned Mark Twain. He`d later develop "Mark Twain Tonight," the one-man show in which he impersonates the great American writer Mark Twain, a.k.a. Mark Twain. Holbrook learned his craft on the boards and by appearing in the TV soap opera "The Brighter Day." He first played Mark Twain as a solo act in 1954, at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania. The show was a success that created a buzz. After seeing the performance, Ed Sullivan, the host of TV`s premier variety show, featured him on "Toast of the Town," on February 12, 1956. This lead to an international tour sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, which included appearances in Iron Curtain countries. Holbrook brought the show to Off-Broadway in 1959. He even played Mark Twain for President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The 1966 "Mark Twain Tonight" Broadway production brought Holbrook even more acclaim, and the Tony Award. The show was taped and Holbrook won an Emmy nomination. He reprised the show on Broadway in 1977 and in 2005. By that time, he had played Samuel Clemens on stage over 2,000 times. Among Holbrook`s more famous roles was the Major in the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller`s "Incident at Vichy," as Martin Sheen`s significant other in the controversial and acclaimed 1972 TV movie "That Certain Summer," the first TV movie to sympathetically portray homosexuality, and as Abraham Lincoln in a TV special based on Carl Sandburg`s acclaimed biography of the 16th President. He also is known for his portrayal of the enigmatic Deep Throat in "All the President`s Men," one of the major cinema events of the mid-`70s. In the 1990s, he had a regular supporting role in the TV series "Evening Shade," playing `Burt Reynolds`` father-in-law. Biography Credit: www.imdb.com/name/nm0001358/bio |
||
Latest Hal Holbrook News |
||
Snapshot |
||
Photo Gallery |
||
|
|
||
Fans |
||
|
|
||
Trivia |
||
Quotes I don`t have a director. The audience directs me. Mark Twain cannot be defined. Man looks in the abyss, there`s nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss. I developed a resistance to authority. Not to discipline-I learned that. But to authority. I like to think for myself. And I like to cause trouble. I have a suicide impulse. To communicate with each other, we got to get mad at each other sometimes. I got a feeling about political correctness. I hate it. It causes us to lie silently instead of saying what we think. You can go into Mark Twain`s material and prove anything you want. He was against war. He was for war. He was against rich people and he was for them. He was a kaleidoscope. Man is the religious animal. He is the only one that`s got true religion, several of them. We don`t have truth delivered to us very often, especially in this very commercialized world. We live in a democracy. We have this extraordinary opportunity to use our mind and say what we think, speak as we think. Sometimes what we say is objectionable to other people. But that is part of a free society. One of the problems with putting Huck Finn into a movie or on the stage is, you always make the white people stupid and racist. The point is, they don`t know they`re racist. I like to be who I am. There`s no good guys and bad guys. "Most everybody today that`s young is operating under the insane idea that what we`ve got going on is the best that there is. But it`s not. Current entertainment is cheap, shoddy, infantile, adolescent, not grown-up. We`re fed imagery that`s really pornographic, by people with an infantile idea of sexuality. It`s a sad and depressing thing." "On stage your job as actor is to present and show the story by your behavior, body language, and vocal work. In film, you musn`t. You just have to be. You are...and it`s mostly intuitive. The amount of characterization you do is very minimal. In fact, you try not to act at all. It`s actually better that way, and it`s taken me years to learn that."Trivia Portrayed Abraham Lincoln in "Toast of the Town" (1948), "Lincoln" (1974), "North and South" (1985) (mini) and "North and South, Book II" (1986) (mini). Stepfather of Mary Dixie Carter and Ginna Carter. Fans consider his 1968 live stage performance of "I Never Sang for My Father" one of his best, seldom mentioned acts. Before the motion picture of the same name was released two years later, starring Gene Hackman. In 2008, at age 82, he became the oldest male actor to be nominated for an Academy Award. His nomination displaced Ralph Richardson, who previously held that distinction. Ex-brother-in-law of Ellen Rossen and Robert Rossen. Has starred in two projects based on John Grisham books with The Firm (1993) and The Street Lawyer (2003) (TV). He is a 1948 graduate of Denison University (Granville, Ohio) He was just 29 when he began touring his one-man show of the elderly Mark Twain, even performing for President `Dwight Eisenhower` at one point. In June 2005, he returned his "Mark Twain Tonight" to Broadway for a sold out, month-long run, receiving rave reviews from The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. In his guest appearance on "The West Wing" (1999), his character first describes the fate of the USS Pueblo, an intelligence gathering surface vessel, caught spying by North Korea in 1968, while referring to the fictional USS Portland. In 1973`s Pueblo (1973) (TV), Holbrook portrayed the lead character. One daughter, Eve, with Carol Eve Rossen. Two children, Victoria Holbrook and David Holbrook, with Ruby Holbrook. Spouse: Dixie Carter (27 May 1984 - present); Carol Eve Rossen (28 December 1966 - 1979) (divorced) 1 child; Ruby Holbrook (22 September 1945 - 1965) (divorced) 2 children
| ||
Top Contributors |
||
|
Top editors for this profile:
|
||
Related Links |
||
 Super Star Sites Gold Sites Silver Sites Star Sites
|
||
Related Profiles |
||
Profile
Married
Relationship
"Encounter"
Comments
Continue the Conversation