page_title: Hal Holbrook
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Hal Holbrook / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain by the University of Houston
context_page_description: Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. is an American actor, television director and writer. He first received critical acclaim in 1954 for a one-man stage show he developed, Mark Twain Tonight!, while studying at Denison University, performing as Mark Twain. He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1966 for his portrayal of Twain. Throughout his career, he won five Primetime Emmy Awards.
  Holbrook made his film debut in Sidney Lumet's The Group. He later gained international fame for his performance as Deep Throat in the 1976 film All the President's Men. He played Abraham Lincoln in the 1976 miniseries Lincoln and 1985 miniseries North and South. He has also appeared in such films as Julia, The Fog, Creepshow, Wall Street, The Firm, Hercules, and Men of Honor.
  Holbrook's role as Ron Franz in Sean Penn's Into the Wild earned him both Academy Award and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor. Until Robert Duvall was nominated for an Academy Award in 2015, Holbrook was the oldest actor to receive a Best Supporting Actor nomination.
context_section_description: Holbrook's first solo performance as Twain was at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania in 1954. Ed Sullivan saw him and gave Holbrook his first national exposure on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 12, 1956. Holbrook was also a member of the Valley Players (1941–1962), a summer-stock theater company based in Holyoke, Massachusetts, which performed at Mountain Park Casino Playhouse at Mountain Park. He joined The Lamns in 1955, where he began developing his one-man show. He was a member of the cast for several years and performed Mark Twain Tonight as the 1957 season opener. The State Department even sent him on a European tour, which included pioneering appearances behind the Iron Curtain.
  In 1959, Holbrook first played the role off-Broadway. Columbia Records recorded an LP of excerpts from the show.
  Holbrook performed in a special production for the New York World's Fair (1964, 1965) for the Bell Telephone Pavilion. Jo Mielziner created an innovative audio-visual ride experience and used Holbrook's acting talents on 65 different action screens for "The Ride Of Communications" with the movie itself known as From Drumbeats to Telstar.
  In 1967, Mark Twain Tonight was presented on television by CBS and Xerox, and Holbrook received an Emmy for his performance. Holbrook's Twain first played on Broadway in 1966, and again in 1977 and 2005; Holbrook was 80 years old during his most recent Broadway run, older (for the first time) than the character he was portraying. Holbrook won a Tony Award for the performance in 1966. Until Holbrook retired in 2017, aged 92, Mark Twain Tonight toured the country, which amounted to over about 2100 performances. He has portrayed Twain longer than Samuel Langhorne Clemens did.
  In 1964, Holbrook played the role of the Major in the original production of Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy. In 1968, he was one of the replacements for Richard Kiley in the original Broadway production of Man of La Mancha, although he had limited singing ability. In 1966, Holbrook starred opposite Shirley Booth in the acclaimed CBS Playhouse production of The Glass Menagerie.
  Holbrook co-starred with Martin Sheen in the controversial and acclaimed 1972 television film That Certain Summer. In 1973, Holbrook appeared as Lieutenant Neil Briggs, the boss and rival of Detective Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) in Magnum Force, an "obsessively neat and prim fanatic" who supports the obliteration of San Francisco's criminals and who is the leader of a rogue group of vigilante officers.
  In 1976, Holbrook won acclaim for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in a series of television specials based on Carl Sandburg's acclaimed biography. He won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for the 1970 series The Bold Ones: The Senator. In 1979, he starred with Katharine Ross, Barry Bostwick, and Richard Anderson in the made-for-TV movie Murder by Natural Causes. Holbrook also had a major role on the sitcom  Evening Shade throughout its entire run.
  Early in his career, Holbrook worked onstage and in a television soap opera, The Brighter Day. He is also famous for his role as the enigmatic Deep Throat (whose identity was unknown at the time) in the film All the President's Men. Holbrook was the narrator on the Ken Burns documentary Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery in 1997.
  From 1986-89, Holbrook had a recurring role as Reese Watson on Designing Women, opposite his wife Dixie Carter. For a short period between 1988 and 1990, Holbrook directed four episodes of the series.
  In 1999, Holbrook was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
  In 2000, Holbrook appeared in Men of Honor, where he portrayed a racist and hypocritical officer who endlessly tries to fail an African-American diver trainee.
  He appeared in Sean Penn's critically acclaimed film Into the Wild (2007) and received an Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role at the 80th Academy Awards. At the time, this rendered Holbrook, at age 82, the oldest nominee in Academy Award history in the B
caption: Holbrook performing as Twain at the University of Houston
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