With almost five decades of performance behind him, Hal Holbrook has a good impression down. In a one-man performance that delights and provokes, he brings a recreated Mark Twain to the stage. With a few hours of makeup and a continually evolving show, Holbrook invokes a father of American literature and wit every time he appears. The Daily Cardinal recently had the honor of speaking with this performer and Samuel Clemens troubadour.
When the show is done and the audience leaves, do you feel like you're still in Twain's character?
No, I'm just an actor, that's all. I'm just an actor playing a part. I don't try to be Mark Twain off the stage or anything. It's just my job to be Mark Twain on the stage. When I get off I do my best to find out who I am. That's a hard enough job to begin with. Or for anybody to figure out.
Do you remember the first book or passage that got you hooked on him?
In my first brush with Twain, I had to figure out who the man was, so I read \Tom Sawyer"" and I thought it was very charming and all. But it was when I read ""Huckleberry Finn"" that I realized there was a helluva lot more to this man than a lot of people thought. A lot more depth, dimension and eloquence in the man than I had any idea of at all. That opened it up. When I started working on the solo show, when I was in New York, I began to dig in deeper and I felt like I just discovered a gold mine. I was pawin' around there and pickin' up gold nuggets right and left. It was an extraordinary experience.
What was it like to be brought to the stage, almost half a century ago, by Ed Sullivan?
It scared the hell out of me. I had never done anything like that before, I was frightened to death. That's what it was like. I just went out there, frightened to death, and tried to do the show. I had worked so hard on it for quite a few years. I had to perform in front of all kinds of audiences, nice ones and tough ones, so it toughens you up. When you go out and haven't had a whole lot of experience, but you've had enough to toughen you up, you can sort of get through almost anything-even Ed Sullivan. In those days, it was the biggest show in television.
And yet you've maintained that popularity throughout the years. Is there any secret to that?
I don't have a press agent. I don't go out and seek publicity. All I do, as far as Mark Twain is concerned, is to do the best damn job I can, every time I do it. I keep developing new material all the time. I don't repeat myself over and over again. I don't have the same show every time. I can switch it around. That keeps me fired up and keeps me alive and keeps me interested and dedicated. On the other hand, I've kept Mark Twain under control so I haven't run him out or overdone him. I limit the number of dates I do every year. The rest of the time I do television and motion pictures and work on the stage, so I have a rounded career. I don't have a press agent and I don't publicize myself. I just let whatever work I do publicize me.
Do you have a time-appropriate quote that Twain would say if he was observing the world today?
There'd be a hell of a lot of them. I put on a new piece of material that starts out talking about how, if you read the newspaper, it looks like the world is going insane. [Twain said,] ""Insanity is catching. You can get it from the newspapers."" By the way, all this material that I perform is Mark Twain. It isn't what he wrote specifically. I take a line here and a line there and edit it together. In five minutes of material there could be 10 or 12 different sources-from a letter, from a book, from a speech-that I edit together, all of it Mark Twain's.
Twain says, ""I cannot prove to him that he is insane because you can never prove anything to a lunatic."" That is part of his insanity. In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
When I try to follow the cerebral pilgrimage of one of these opinion salesmen, I can't mention television, but I can edge the audience's mind that way. When I listen to one of these opinion makers as he guides us through the desert places of his mind, I know the bell in that man's belfry stopped ringing long ago.
[Twain said,] ""The press has scoffed at religion until it has made scoffing popular. It has defended official criminals on partisan grounds and has been morally blind in their defense. It has made light of dishonesty in high places until we have a population that smiles at dishonesty and sometimes applauds it. It is a free press.""
And this is the good line, ""But the public opinion that should keep it in bounds has been degraded down to its own level. There are laws to protect the freedom of the press, but none that are worth anything-to protect the people from the press.""
One of our problems with our society is that people don't stop and think. What we need are people who are willing to become educated about what they're going to talk about. It's a democracy. Democracy requires intelligence and judgment. Tom Friedman of the New York Times pointed out that Iraq-that isn't so much a country, but just put together by a bunch of marks on a map eighty years ago-has the level of education in Iraq that is the highest of any Arab country. For that reason, there is a possibility that some kind of democratic government can exist there. Because-and this is the point-it requires a reasonably educated populace to create a democracy.
What's happened in our country is that we're losing it. We are becoming less well-educated. And that's a big threat to our democracy in our country.
This is what happens when you get yourself hooked up with Mark Twain. He makes you think.
