Hal Holbrook Returns to Bass Hall, 3/17

Performing Arts Fort Worth proudly welcomes HAl Holbrook in "Mark Twain Tonight" back to Bass Performance Hall on Thursday, March 17, 2011, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $33-$55 and are on sale NOW!

HAl Holbrook was born in Cleveland in 1925, but raised mostly in South Weymouth, Massachusetts. His mother disappeared when he was 2 and his father followed suit, leaving young Holbrook's grandfather to raise him and his two sisters. It was only later he found out that his mother had gone into show business.

After attending one of the finer New England schools, Holbrook was sent to Culver Military Academy, where he delved into acting. In the summer of 1942, he got his first paid professional engagement playing the son in The Man Who Came To Dinner at the Cain Park Theatre in Cleveland at $15.00 per week. That fall, he entered Denison University in Ohio, majoring in theater under the tutelage of his lifelong mentor, Edward A. Wright.

The Mark Twain characterization grew out of an honors project at Denison University, after Holbrook served in the military during World War II for three years. Holbrook and his first wife, Ruby, had constructed a two-person show, playing characters from Shakespeare to Twain. After graduation, they toured the school assembly circuit in the Southwest, doing 307 shows in 30 weeks and traveling 30,000 miles by station wagon.

Holbrook's first solo performance as Mark Twain was at the Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania in 1954. The show was his desperate alternative to selling hats or running elevators to keep his family afloat. By then he had a daughter, Victoria.

That same year, fortune struck by way of a steady engagement on a daytime television soap opera, The Brighter Day. The following year, Holbrook pursued the Twain character at night in a Greenwich Village nightclub. In seven months, he developed material and learned timing. Finally, Ed Sullivan saw him and gave his Twain national television exposure.

In 1959, after five years of researching Mark Twain and honing his material in front of countless audiences in small towns all over America, he opened at a tiny theatre off-Broadway in New York. Holbrook quit the soap opera. After a 22-week run in New York, he toured the country again, performed for President Eisenhower and at the Edinburgh Festival. The State Department sent him on a tour of Europe, during which he became the first American dramatic attraction to go behind the Iron Curtain following World War II. He was a star who had never appeared in a Broadway play, a nighttime television show or a movie. He was 35 years old.

When David Merrick offered him co-star billing with Robert Preston playing an 80-year old Mexican bandit in a new Broadway musical, Holbrook turned it down in favor of younger roles, concerned that he would be typecast as an old man. He played Hotspur in Henry IV, Pt. I at the Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut. In 1963, he joined the original Lincoln Center Repertory Company in New York, appearing in Marco Millions, After the Fall, Incident at Vichy and Tartuffe. Word got around that he could act his own age. Starring roles on Broadway came along: The Glass Menagerie, The Apple Tree, I Never Sang For My Father, Man of La Mancha, Does A Tiger Wear A Necktie?

Meanwhile, he continued to do Mark Twain and in 1966, his second New York engagement won him a Tony Award. That was followed, in 1967, by a 90-minute CBS television special of "Mark Twain Tonight!," which was nominated for an Emmy Award and was seen by an audience of 30 million.
In 1970, after a dozen plays in New York, he was brought to Hollywood to star in a controversial television series, The Senator, which won eight Emmy Awards but was canceled in one year. However, his new career had taken off. In the 39 years since then, Mr. Holbrook has done 50 television movies and mini-series, been nominated for 12 Emmys and won five. He has appeared in two sitcoms, Designing Women and Evening Shade, and has made guest appearances on West Wing, The Sopranos, NCIS, ER, Sons of Anarchy and The Event.

Holbrook's movie career began with The Group in 1966 when he was 41 years old. Since then, moviegoers have seen him in more than 40 films, including Magnum Force, Midway, All The President's Men, Capricorn One, The Fog, Creepshow, Wall Street, The Firm, Men of Honor, The Majestic and Into the Wild; the latter earned him an Academy Award nomination.

Throughout his long career, Holbrook has continued to appear on stage in productions such as The Country Girl, King Lear, An American Daughter, Our Town and Death of a Salesman.
But Holbrook has never quit Mark Twain. He has toured the show every year since 1954. Each year, he adds and edits material, changing it to fit the times. Much of it is serious; some is not.
"There's a lot of funny stuff in the show that doesn't have to do with serious matters," Holbrook said in an interview with The Maui News. "Because he was very funny. He was the first stand-up comic, you might say, in America."

To charge tickets by phone, call (817) 212-4280 in Fort Worth; 1-877-212-4280 (toll free) outside Fort Worth; or order online at www.basshall.com. Tickets are also available at the Bass Performance Hall ticket office at 525 Commerce Street. Ticket office hours: Monday through Friday 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. and Saturday 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

 

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