Holbrook/Twain: An American Odyssey (2014) - full transcript

- [Hal] We did it, did it again.

That was a good show,
good audience, yeah.

They were really thinking.

You always hope

maybe you can make
peoplethink a little bit.

These crazy new bulbs,

they know what you're doing.

You can't let in any
air in these places.

This is my tour book.

For about three years.

I get about three years in here,



two or three.

Before I played this show,

I went back to when
I did the show here,

the last two times.

2009, 2006,

and 2000 and, 2000.

I figure everybody's
dead by then,

so it doesn't matter so

tonight when I did the show,

I had to avoid must of the stuff

that I did in these three shows.

Okay did, what did I do?

Whiskey Reform Tax,

morals,



very strange concept for
Congress to have morals.

Sherburn and Boggs,

from Huck.

That was my first
Huckleberry number,

58 years ago.

I tried the new
thing about drinks.

I screwed it up.

Two drinks and one deliriumtreatment,
I screwed it up.

Election madness, that's
my new piece I put on

this past year,
and I keepadding little bombs to it.

Once I started in to
patriotismon that thing tonight,

the audience went quiet as

frightened to death.

Once you start messing
around with ideas,

like patriotism,

it scares the audience.

They think, oh my.

He might say something

I don't agree with,
and they get scared.

But that's one way to
holdan audience's attention

is to scare them.

[light orchestral music]

Ladies and gentlemen,

I wish to present you
aman whose great learning,

and veneration for truth,

are only exceeded by his
high moral character,

and majestic presence.

I refer in these vague
general terms to myself.

[audience laughing]

I remember once
saying to our pastor

that I hoped to be cremated,

and he just looked
at me and said,

oh I wouldn't worry aboutthat,
if I had your chances.

[audience laughing]

I'm not lying to you.

I don't tell lies,
I differfrom George Washington.

I have a higher and
granderstandard of principle.

George could not tell a lie,

I can, but I won't.

[audience laughing]

I come in in 1835,
with Haley's Comet.

It's coming again pretty soon,

and I expect to go out with it.

It'll be the
greatestdisappointment of my life,

if I don't go out
with Haley's Comet.

The Almighty has said, no doubt,

now here are these two
unaccountable freaks.

They come in together,
they must go out together.

I'm looking forward to that,

well thank you and goodnight.

[audience applauding]

[exhaling]

- [Interviewer] How long
have you been doing this

morning routine?

- Oh, probably four
or five years now.

I was on the road all thetime,
heaving trunks around,

and I'd throw my back out.

Once in New Mexico,
theyhad to get a chiropractor

in backstage and put
me on a grand piano,

and grabbed me and,

jerked me into place,
and I almost fainted.

Oh, I love this.

When I get down here I
don't want to get up.

I can't just bound out
of a chair anymore,

it's very discouraging to me.

Sometimes I put my hand
on the side of a chair

and help myself up,
that's terrible.

It's awful.

I feel if you gave way to it,

you wouldn't be able to
getout of the chair at all.

- I don't know how many
ofthese boxes Hal has used.

He built the first one himself,

and it's self-contained.

Everything is in theseboxes
that makes Mark Twain.

Hal never uses a dressing room,

like a star dressing
room in a theater,

with fancy counters
and everything,

because one, he knows
where everything is.

Two, he needs to use acetone

for some of the makeup,

and that has a tendency
to screw up counters,

and melt them,
depending onwhat they made them out of.

So, everything he uses,

except the costume,
whichis the other half of this,

is in this box.

The wig,
which fortunatelywe don't use right now,

light bulb in his shoes.

And this is the onlylight
he uses to make up.

Because he is very much
a creature of habit,

everything is in
its right place.

- [Interviewer] What
happens when it's wrong?

- He screams.

I can't think of anybody else

that I know,

or know of,
that does theamount of performances

he does a year,

at that age.

I also think,

if Hal stopped
working, he would die.

It's his life.

- I met Ruby Johnston,
my first wife,

in Newfoundland.

We got married in a
littlechurch around the corner,

in New York, and then
we went to Denison.

I had already put
a year in there,

so I had three years to go,

and Ruby had never
been to college.

The beginning of my senior year,

our teacher, Ed Wright,

he was at a convention in Ohio,

and a school assemblybooker from Dallas,
Texas,

named Harry Bird Cline,

said to Ed, our teacher,

Ed you got some kids down there

at that school of
yours, can do drama?

And Ed said, well,

yes I do, I have a young couple

who's gonna be the
next Lunt and Fontanne.

He didn't know who that was.

Said, uh huh.

Well, what do they do?

Well, they have
a show, you know.

Well what's it like?

I mean, it has to
be educational.

He said, oh it's educational.

They do Shakespeare,
theydo a scene from Hamlet.

They do something with
Elizabeth in Essex,

and the Robert andElizabeth
Barrett Browning,

Mark Twain.

He made up this showright
there on the street.

How long is it?

Well it can be as
long as you want it.

Well we need 50 minutes.

I can be 50 minutes.

Well, do you think they
would be interested?

I think they might.

Well I can pay 'em
210 dollars a week,

and 15 dollars a
week for gas and oil.

And I can give them
30 weeks on the road,

next year when they
get out of school.

So Ed came back, and
gave us this offer,

and we took it.

So he gave me this piece,

An Encounter with
an Interviewer,

written by Mark Twain.

I thought it was
the corniest thing

I had ever read in my life.

I thought Ed must be crazy.

I mean I thought he had a
bettersense of values than this,

this is awful, how am
I gonna say to him.

So finally, I got my courage up,

I said, Ed I'm sorry,
I think this is,

it's kinda corny Ed.

He said,
why don't you workit up and show it to me.

So we did.

We did it for him,
in the classroom.

And he said, Hal I
understand why you

don't think this is funny.

You don't understand
what's going on.

This is a man with a
terrific sense of humor,

pulling the leg of somebodywith
no sense of humor at all.

That's the joke.

I said, oh, okay.

And so we traveled for 30 weeks.

We did 307 shows in 30 weeks.

No matter where we went,

the Mark Twain number,

of being interviewed
by this crazy lady,

even the kids,

we ended the show with it,

because we could get
off with our life.

And everybody liked
the Mark Twain show.

That, they could take.

Hamlet? Not so much.

Elizabeth in Essex,
I don't know,

but Mark Twain, okay.

Well I hope you won't
mind if I smoke.

I can't see any harm in it.

So long as there are
no children present.

I never began smoking
myselfuntil I was nine years old.

[audience laughing]

And even then, I
was not constant.

I was always ready to reform,

if I could see any profit in it.

About the only profit
I could ever see in it,

was the heavenly pleasureof
giving up the reform

and going back to smoking again.

[audience laughing]

I come into this world
asking for a light.

And I expect to go out
ofit blowing smoke rings.

- My father took me
to Memphis, Tennessee,

to see Mark Twain Tonight.

Out came this old man,

in a white coat,

with a cigar and big eyebrows,

and I remember my ear havingto
get accustomed to his voice,

because it was real craggly,

and as a child who would
grow up to be an actor,

the thing that I
rememberbeing most struck by,

and this is not me projecting

onto this child.

I remember thinking,

this man is acting,

and he is holding this room.

His presence and his
timing and his rhythm,

is orchestrating the
way we are breathing,

as an audience.

And he would take
three sentences,

and he would set up
the first sentence,

and he'd get a laugh,

and then he would say
the second sentence,

and in the pause between
the second sentence

and the third sentence,

he would get a second laugh,

and a third laugh,
and sometimesa fourth or fifth laugh,

before he said the
third sentence,

which was the end
of the thought,

and by the end of the
thoughtand that third sentence,

the audience would just bein hysterics,
and go wild.

But that slow, steady,

canny, rye rhythm that he had,

was mesmerizing,
and intoxicating,

and you could not
believewhat he was capable of,

with that humor.

- My wife is Dixie.

Dixie.

Now we gotta go to work.

Aw shucks.

Oh, this looks familiar,
Iremember pulling in here before.

- [Man] Hal, this isDebbie,
the stage manager,

- Nice to meet you.

A pleasure.

- Thank you.

- Roger, sound.

- I'm Roger, on sound.

Good to see you.

- Nate, electrician.

- How are you?

- Both of them did the
showwhen we were here in '07.

- I remember you.

[laughing]

- He hasn't changed much.

- It's surprising you know,

it's surprising,

surprisingly nice hall,

it's very colorful and
interesting design.

It's too bad in a way thatthe
balconies are so far back.

You know little
balconies like that,

but not too far.

- The acoustics are great.

- The acoustics are great here?

- Yeah.

- Wow, look at this.

- A little different...

- Really nice.

- ...than last week.

- Where were we last week?

Boulder.

Now I gotta unbind
all this stuff here.

Let's see, this is for show,

I'm intending to do.

And, I may just look
thatover while I'm making up,

I might try to do that.

I haven't been doing
that in a while.

Here's a new number
I'm putting in.

It's not new, but I
mean I haven't done it

for several years.

I love it.

These are my notes for
whenl was here the last time.

It was a very good show,

but a slightly strangeaudience,
not wholehearted.

They hung back sometimes.

They did not excite me,

nor I think did I
them, question mark.

It was a successful performance

but the people
seemed backed off,

who came backstage.

Maybe money,

the number about
money and Wall Street,

was too tough for them.

Because it was pretty rough,

and it came in 2007,

just in advance of
the big drop-off.

This is acetone,

and they say sniffing it

gives you a high,

but I've been sniffing
it now for 56 years,

and so far, I don't
feel anything.

I don't know whether it's true.

We finally had a child,
which we never planned for.

We knew we were
gonna have children,

but it was like over
there somewhere.

So we didn't plan this,
andsuddenly we had a child,

and everything changed.

Our whole life changed.

We hadn't planned for it,
we weren't prepared for it,

and it was too bad,
because it was hard.

So we'd moved to New York.

We had no money,
we had noparents taking care of us.

We were on our own.

And we had like 200
dollars in the bank

when we moved to New York City.

And I was desperate
to make a living,

and I'm walking the
pavementslooking for work as an actor,

getting turned down by agents

day after day after
day after day,

so I went to a
friend of mine who

edited a magazine
called, Programs.

He was the son of Mark
Twain's lecture manager,

and he had known Twain asa young boy,
quite well.

So I went to see him,

to ask him if he thought
I could get bookings

with somebody else doing
the show besides Ruby.

And he said, why
don't you do a solo

of Twain?

I said, a solo?

You mean go out alone
in front of an audience?

Yeah.

My God, I'd be scared
to death, I couldn't.

He said, I think you
could get bookings.

Okay.

And that was it.

That's all he said.

So I walked out of there,

and I walked around the
streets of New York,

thinking to myself,

how am I gonna do
this, holy mackerel.

So there was the
Argosy Bookstore,

was the second-handbookstore
on 59th Street,

over near Bloomingdale's
on the east side.

So I kept passing
it, passing it.

But one day I thought,
oh I gotta go in.

I went in,
and I said where'sthe Mark Twain section.

It was a dusty cornerupstairs,
and all these books,

old books, all used books.

So I started buying them,

and I started reading them,

and it was a revelation.

It was a revelation.

If we wanted to know
whatthe human race is truly like,

observe it at election time.

That's when the
parade of half truths,

goes marching by.

It's a monument to
the gospel that truth

is stranger than fiction.

The candidates rearrange
thefacts to suit themselves,

and keep the lies
and the half truths

spinning in the air,

while the great gullible
public cheers and shouts

and stomps its approval
the way they always do,

when a politician has
just said something

they don't understand.

[audience laughing]

[audience applauding]

We can discount 90% of
what the candidates say

at election time,

and assign it to
softening of the brain,

because the contents
of their skull

could change places with
the contents of a pie,

and nobody would be
theworse off for it but the pie.

[audience laughing]

There is not one brain amongthem,
superior to the rest.

And yet this sarcastic factdoes
not humble the arrogant,

or diminish theknow-it-all pronouncements

of a single
ignoramus among them.

They are the signs of
an ancestral procession

of ignoramuses,

stretching back to
the missing link.

[audience laughing]

The one true fact
that rises above

this circus of mendacity
and misrepresentation,

is that truth has no
place in Washington.

- You walk out and you think,

that could have been
written yesterday.

Those comments could
havebeen said three weeks ago.

The political
content, the humor,

it's remarkable,

but Samuel Clemens' life

touched every aspect of
thecentury in which he lived.

Things are different now,
but they're the same.

Technology, communication,
politics, finances,

life changes but there'sa
continuity that goes on

amidst all the change too,
and Clemens, Mark Twain,

he's got those things
sonailed that they resonate

no matter when you hear them.

- Hal Holbrook is probably

the greatest Twain
scholar in America,

because he not only has
to talk about Twain,

he has to express Twain,

and he knows an
awful lot of Twain.

And that's a lot differentfrom
memorizing a few jokes.

Slap your thigh,
wearinga white suit or whatever.

His knowledge allows him
todecide what Twain's gonna say,

because Twain
saidsomething about everything.

And you know,
you can gothrough Twain like the Bible,

and find a quote.

And Holbrook knows the quotes.

- [Woman] Nate, this is Debbie.

- [Nate] Go ahead.

- We are entering
the house right now,

if you could kill
the works on stage?

- [Nate] Done.

- Thank you.

And kill the house, thank you.

Bring up light cue
three, please Nick.

- You know you could
move that lectern

offstage another six inches.

Okay, that's better.

We could take the blue
washdown a little bit, okay?

- Nate, could you bring
the blue wash down?

Take it down 10% please.

- Take a little bit
more off it, maybe 5%.

- Take another 10 please.

- That's good there,

no, a little bit more up.

Up a little bit more.

- Bring it up
about five, please.

- When Mark Twain
gave his lectures,

which started about 1870,

he called them lectures.

It was lectures but
they were funny.

He was funny.

Other people were not
funny, Artemas Ward,

people like that,

but most was a sedate thing.

So his forum, just his
natural way of talking,

which was just to talk,

and not to stand behind
thelectern like Dickens did,

to move around,
that was considered
irreverent or different.

To us today, that
would seem ridiculous.

But in those days,
anything like that,

well it just wasn't
the accepted thing,

to leave the lectern
and go slouching around,

and mumbling and
all this, you know.

So that was his
style, just like,

stream of consciousness.

So in order to,

and he dressed black, you know.

But in order to

visually give the picture,

of some kind of eccentricity,

to a modern audience,

I knew that he was
famousfor wearing a white suit.

When he lived on 5th Avenue,
he'd put his white suit

on Sunday morning, and
walk by the parishioners

getting out of church,
andshock the hell out of them.

So I decided to
wear the white suit,

and to smoke on the stage,
which is also unusual,

which he would never
have done then,

because the cigar was

a trademark of Twain's
the same way it was

to Winston Churchill.

I believe there's
somecommandment against smoking

in the pulpit,
but I'mworking to get it removed.

Mind you I have no,

let me think for a minute.

I have no objection
to abstinence,

I practice it
myself on occasion.

I make it a rule never
to smoke when asleep,

not that I care for
moderation myself,

but I do it as an
example to others

and to prove that I'm
not afraid of habit.

I can give it up
whenever I want to.

I've done it a thousand times.

- One moment in it that
I will never forget

is that he feel asleep
during the performance,

and I thought, oh my God,
hehas actually fallen asleep.

And it went on and on and on.

He was snoring,

and just very peacefully,
sitting in a chair, fast asleep,

and the audience beganto
titter and then laugh,

and then get concerned.

And then he woke up
and pretended that
it never happened,

and then you realized
thatit was part of the show.

But it was so brilliant,

that he brought us
in, so completely,

that he took a nap in
themiddle of a performance,

and pulled it off.

It was a stroke of genius.

- I spent a year or
so constructing a show

of one hour length,

and I got booked into a collegein
Lock Haven, Pennsylvania,

on the Susquehanna
River up there.

And I went out on stagein
front of that audience,

it was a morning
assembly at 11 o'clock.

I was frightened out of my wits.

I had my makeup, I love makeup,

and I had all this makeup,

got myself together,

and walked out on that stage

and I had a lectern so
Icould hold onto something

in case I was gonna faint,

and a rug, and I had
a table over here.

If I ever dared walk
away from the lectern,

because it was like
holding on to an anchor.

And I started to speak.

I was hoping there might
bea laugh in the first line.

Not real funny, but
the first line is,

I wish to begin
at the beginning,

lest I forget it altogether.

I thought there
might be a chuckle.

They laughed on,
I wish tobegin this at the beginning.

Then they laughed again
at the end of the line.

I thought, my God.

Then I kept going and
they kept laughing,

and they laughed,
they laughed at stuff

I didn't even know was funny.

By the end of half anhour,
I was sailing along,

I thought,
this is wonderfulhearing an audience

laugh like this is so wonderful,

and people laughed,
and ohwhat a wonderful feeling.

And then I got into
a number called,

Captain Stormfield's
Visit to Heaven,

which I think is a reallywonderful,
satiric,

charming piece.

It's a satire on heaven.

Well the number
started out all right,

and then it started dying.

The response started dying.

It's a long number,

it's the one that I
was most worried about.

It was like 15 minutes long.

I thought if I go
down with this,

what am I gonna do?

Then I asked the guy in
charge of the assembly,

what happened with
CaptainStormfield's Visit to Heaven?

Well, they may have
foundit a little sacrilegious.

I thought, sacrilegious?

It never occurred to me

that anybody would takeexception to this,
sacrilegious?

That's what it is,
but it's funny.

But that was my first
big lesson with Twain,

because

there's an awful lot
of people out there

who don't want to hear
anything sacrilegious,

no matter how funny it
is, or how true it is.

They don't want to
hear that truth spoken.

And that was something
that I learned early on,

and it was a great
challenge to me,

because my whole
impulse was to speak it,

which I did.

Man has a Bible he is,

he's invented himself a heaven,

and entered into it
allthe nations of the Earth,

all in one common jumble,

and all of them on
an equality absolute.

[chuckling]

They have to be brothers.

They have to mix together,
and pray together,

and harp and hosanna together,

whites, Negros, Jews, everybody.

There are no distinctions.

Yet, down here on Earth
allthe nations hate each other,

and fight each other,

and every one of them
persecutes the Jew,

and yet every piousperson
adores that heaven,

and wants to get into it.

He really does now,
isn't that marvelous?

And when he's in a holy rapture,

he thinks that if he
could only get up there,

he would take that whole
populace to his heart,

and hug, and hug, and hug.

I wonder if God invented man

because he wasdisappointed in the monkey.

[audience laughing]

Is the human race a joke?

Do you suppose, is it a joke?

Was it patched together
in a dull time,

when there was nothing
important to do?

If we are the
noblest work of God,

where is the ignoblest?

In the last five or
six thousand years,

five or six high civilizationshave risen,
flourished,

commanded the
wonder of the world,

and then faded away
and disappeared,

and not one of them until ours

ever invented a sweeping
and adequate way

to kill masses of people.

They all did their best,

but only our civilizationhas
scored a triumph

to be proud of.

And before long it
will be recognized

that the only competent
killers, are Christians.

And then the pagan
world will go to school

to the Christian,

not to acquire its religion,

but its guns.

This is the toughest
thing of all,

putting on this nose.

If you get it wrong,

and the glue gets ahead
of you, you're finished.

I'll try once more
to do it with you,

the hard way, I'm gonna
do it the hard way.

I started working on
makeupwhen I was in college.

I loved makeup, I loved
disguising myself.

Disappearing.

I was not comfortablewith
myself in those days,

and that was one of the
things I had to learn,

both in life and as an actor,

I had to learn to

stop disguising myself

and just play myself,

and it was always
very difficult for me.

- His warmup is his makeup,

putting on his makeup,
putting on his eyebrows,

putting on his mustache
and his false nose,

his proboscis.

That's him getting
into character,

and there's nothing
mystical about it,

he can talk

while he's doing it, he's not,

it's not like you're
inchurch and you can't talk,

but it's just the routine

that enables to him
to be ready to go out

and face an audience
as Mark Twain.

- I do something now

called stiffling with
these two colors,

and Dick Smith, who
is a great makeup man,

he credits me with

inventing this,

but he came down
years ago, in 1962,

to watch me do the makeup,

I put a makeup on for AbeLincoln,
young Abe Lincoln,

and it was very difficult,

because I don't have
the face for it.

So I had to use
some pretty strong

highlights and
shadows and stuff.

And I was looking at a
portrait of Rembrandt,

and I noticed that
if you look close,

you see little tiny
yellow, red, and blue

dots and things, marked,

and you step back five feet,
and you don't see them,

but the effect is
a textured skin.

- I moved to Iowa
in August of '97,

so I had two years
here to do my PhD.

I was no sooner there that fall,

than somebody said,

well did you hear Hal
Holbrook'scoming to Burlington, Iowa?

I knew that to see Hal Holbrook,

would be the closest
I'd ever come to really

hearing Mark Twain,
and watchingMark Twain move and talk,

and I had to go somehow,

and then I found out
thattickets were 35 dollars.

That was a problem for me,

because I did not have
an extra five dollars,

but it was fall,

and I had just bought
my boots for the winter,

down at Walmart,
they were 35 dollars,

and that was gonna get
throughmy two winters at Iowa,

then I was going
back home to Florida

where I wouldn't need
boots anymore anyway.

And I realized I had not
yet taken the tag off.

I hadn't done
anything with them.

So I did the most
obviousthing anybody would do,

was I took the boots back,
got my 35 dollars back,

and I bought my Hal
Holbrook ticket,

and it was the best 35
dollars I ever spent.

- I had put the show
aside, Mark Twain,

I might never have
done it again,

because I had finallygotten
a job in New York.

I got a job on a soap opera,

on CBS, called A Brighter Day,

and I had a contract
for a whole year,

with options for
the other years,

and I was gonna make
maybe 200 bucks a week,

and I was in clover,
I was finally safe,

and the family was safe,
and the baby was safe,

but something in my mind said,

why don't you give it a try?

So I tried it out,

a place down in Grove
Street in the Village,

and I ran there
for eight months,

and I developed
the first two hours

of my Mark Twain material,

in the curve of a
baby grand piano.

One night I was
making up downstairs,

and Kerry our door man

came down and said, Ed
Sullivan's out there.

What? Ed Sullivan, he's
got a friend with him.

So I took the wig off,

and I came up and
sat down with him.

He said, sit down Hal.

He said,
have you got anyother piece you can do?

And I said, yeah, I know
that was a little raw,

yeah I have this thingabout
how you get to be 70,

you know, smoke a
lot, and all that.

Well look, he said, can
you come to my apartment

tomorrow and do it for me?

I said, sure, Mister Sullivan.

So I walk in,
and he asks mea few things about the show,

then he said, what have
you got for me, Hal?

I said, well I got this thing.

He said, why don't
you just do it for me?

So I did, he's sitting there.

Well he's not a big
smiler you know.

So there was no
smiles or nothin',

and I did this piece.

And he said,
can you cutthat to six minutes, Hal?

I said to myself, six
minutes, cut it down?

I don't know,
forget it, say yes.

I said, yeah, I think I can.

So he said, I think
we can use you.

Who's your agent?

I said, I don't have an
agent, Mister Sullivan.

He said, you don't
have an agent?

I said no sir.

How much do you want, Hal?

Until that moment,
I hadnever thought of being paid.

The thought of being paidhad
never entered my mind.

Just to get on his show.

Now I'm thinking, my
brain is in a whirl.

Let's see, the Beatles,

and what's the guy
fromMemphis that swivels his hips,

they get a thousand
dollars I'm sure.

No, that's too much Holbrook,
I'm saying in my brain.

Maybe 200, no that's toolow,
don't make it too low.

Meanwhile, Sullivan
is looking at me

and my brain is
whirling, and I'm doing,

well,

well sir,

would 500 dollars be all right?

He said, you got a deal Hal.

Then I thought, I
didn't ask enough.

- There's a youngsterdowntown,
I saw him down there,

and he did an
amazingimpression of Mark Twain,

he's a Mark Twain
scholar actually.

His name is Hal Holbrook,

and here he is as Mark Twain.

[bright orchestral music]

[audience applauding]

- Well thank you,
thank youvery much for that reception.

And the introduction,
thatwas beautifully phrased,

beautifully phrased,

and well deserved.

You know that's
one of the results

of a long and notorious career,

is that you do get a
great many compliments.

And I want to say
now these compliments

are really very
difficult to take.

I don't care whether
you deserve them or not,

it's just difficult
to take them.

Compliments always
embarrass a man.

They don't inspire
you with words,

they don't think
of anything to say.

I've been complimented
agreat many times in my life,

and they always embarrass me.

I always feel they've
not said enough.

[audience laughing]

But you know I'm always sorry

to have my name mentionedas
one of the great authors,

because they have such a
sad habit of dying off.

Chaucer's dead, Spenser's dead.

So is Milton and
so is Shakespeare,

and I'm not feeling
very well myself.

[audience laughing]

- [Man] 1960 only
state department tour.

- Yeah, see he put
these little tabs on it,

so you can easily remove that.

- [Man] That's pretty smart.

- [Joyce] There we go.

- [Man] So much stuff.

Every little,
it's amazinghow just the detail,

every little one sentence blurb,

from anywhere in the world.

The Everett Daily Herald, 1960.

Hopewell, Virginia,
Cleveland, Ohio,

Wilmington, Delaware,
Philadelphia.

Washington, DC,
Vernon, New Jersey,

Hartford, Connecticut,
Santa Barbara, California,

Houston, Texas,
Jacksonville, Florida,

Akron, Ohio.

President Eisenhower.

- [Joyce] Whoever youare,
my dearest relation,

or an objective researcher,
addict, whatever,

hello from the grave,

I'll probably be dead
when this is seen again.

Hal!

[laughing]

- [Man] What is the back?

It all gets so dusty with age.

Nothing matters much at
all once it's been done,

and the affect has
taken its little toll.

You have to move on, go
sailing or something.

- [Joyce] Wow.

- I got for Christmas thatyear,
the Twain album,

which I still have,

a treasured possession,

and I began because
I was so young,

I could learn it very easily,

so I learned about I
guess 45 minutes of it.

So by the time I was 13,
havinglearned 45 minutes of it,

I started needing a costume.

So I got a white suit,

and the loose lady in town,

you know, she was kind of loose,

she had a short white wig.

It was the early,
late 60's, early 70's,

and she gave me the wig,

and I got a cotton ball
mustache and eyebrows,

and a cigar,
and I starteddoing it at the Rotary Club,

and the Kiwanis Club,

and the TVA convention.

That was actually the
firstmoney I made as an actor,

was at the TVA convention,
I made 15 dollars,

doing Mark Twain Tonight.

And when I finally
met Mister Holbrook,

I mentioned to him that
I had taken 45 minutes

off his record and done
it at a TVA convention,

which I think was a
rathersore subject with Hal,

because a number of
people had done that,

had taken his material.

Obviously, it was Mark Twain's,

but he had spent
years crafting it

into a theatrical experience,

so when I told
him that, he said,

then young lady you
owe me some royalties,

and I wasn't sure at the time

whether he was serious or not,

but in looking back I
reallydo think he was serious,

because he's a man
of the theater,

and he believes in justice.

So I probably owe him
aboutseven dollars and 50 cents,

which I will hopefully beable
to give to him some day.

- We finally raised the money.

We needed 9000 dollars
to put this show on,

in a little
off-Broadway theater,

and I was scared to death,

because I had played all
these little tiny towns,

Wahoo, Nebraska, you name it,

all across this country,

and nobody's ever
raved about my show.

Two people had written
really nice reviews,

one in Springfield,
Massachusetts,

the other in Emporia, Kansas.

And I went out in front
ofthat opening night audience,

with all those critics outthere
from New York papers,

and my knees started shaking,

and I was scared out of my wits.

And I was angry at myself,

because I thought,
what'sthe matter with you?

After all the places you'veplayed,
and the experiences,

you've played everywhere

from the curve of
the baby grand piano,

to a high school gym.

You've done everything,

stop being nervous.

I couldn't help it.

I was helpless,
and I didn'tthink I was doing very well.

I picked up the
matches, you know,

and my hand shook so
badl dropped it on the floor.

I thought, oh I've
killed the laugh.

So after the show was over,

we took my makeup off,

it takes a long time,

and we went to the apartment

and one of the guys
who'd put money in it,

and Harvey Sabenson, a
wonderful press agent,

big-time press agent,
had takenour show on for some reason,

he came in with the reviews,

and he started
reading these reviews.

First, the New York Times,
in the opening paragraph

for the New York Times review,
we're all sitting there,

was, a one-man showcalled,
Mark Twain Tonight,

opened last night at
the 41st Street Theater.

It should have been
posted up all over town,

announcing its arrival.

Rave review,
and then heread Walter Kerr's review

on the New York Herald Tribune,

which was the other
big, big drama critic,

and he raved about the show.

Everybody in the whole
country raved about it.

Every paper in New York,

every, Newsweek, Time,
Life Magazine, everybody,

and I was,

I was,

I wasn't just surprised, I was,

thunderstruck, and
also I was frightened,

because I wanted this
thing to be good,

but I didn't want it
to take over my life.

I wanted to be an actor,

not a one-man show, an actor.

I wanted a career in
New York, on the stage,

and this was obliterating me,

because nobody knew who I was.

Mark Twain was the star.

They'd never heard of me.

They didn't know
what I looked like,

I had a three-hour makeup on.

I looked like Mark Twain.

Nobody knew who I was,
where I came from,

nothing about me, what Icould do,
except Mark Twain.

And I had to start
all over again.

- Young actors can do
Hamlet all day long,

not just because they're young,

but because they haven't
had the opportunity

to express themselves.

Once they're fulfilled,
they move on,

but when you've got
somethingto give other people,

and that's what drives you,

this is what's
particular to Hal.

It's really,

he's just fine alone.

So for him to be alone on stage

in front of a lot of people,

I know he's fulfilled by it,

and I know that
still does drive him,

but I think he's a giver,

and that's what becomes
so moving about him,

whether it's on a stage
in Twain, or in movies,

he's a special American actor.

- He was so effortless.

It was a kind of comfortthat
you can only sort of

earn by being on the
boards for 58 years.

That level of confidence is one.

But he also talked
about how he could just

pick certain sections
to do on each night,

like he knew the show so well,

that he could just pick
whichever monologues

he felt that he wanted to do.

And that is just

such a level of mastery.

Really, it's hard
to even fathom,

being that familiar
with that much material.

- And to think about Hal,
walking out on stage,

in these big auditoriums,

and it's all on his shoulders.

That takes some balls man,

and to do it over 2000 times.

- It's a very spiritual life,

that's a real razor's edge

to want to walk that,
to have to walk that,

to have to prove that,

over and over and over,

knowing that maybe

one in 800 is gonna go,

wow I just saw
something spectacular.

Because there's always
that hope for an actor,

that there's gonna be
that one connection,

and that's all you care about.

It's all you care
about, just that.

- I think that
actors are preachers.

I think we're preachers.

We're on a platform, a pulpit,

and I think we have
aresponsibility to use it well,

not to degrade it,

to elevate it,

to make it give an
audience something

to take home with them,

to keep with themselves
intheir heart and their mind.

I think that's very important.

I was taught by my teacher,
Ed Wright, at Denison,

to respect this profession.

I never wanted to
be a movie star,

I never made a movie
till I was 40 years old.

You talk to young kids
today at a college,

what do you want to
do with your acting?

I want to be in the movies.

They want to be a star.

They want to be a star.

That's not what this
profession is about.

This is a fine profession.

It has a great
history at its back,

stretching down the centuries,

great, great actors from
Garrick to Edmund Kean,

to Edwin Forrest
to Edwin Boothe.

John Barrymore,

all kinds of wonderful actors

who have created
a great tradition,

and most young kids
going into the theater,

or showbiz today,
they don'tknow anything about it.

They don't have a tradition.

And I don't,
I don't feelcomfortable with that.

I don't feel comfortablegoing
out just for myself.

I feel I have to be doingsomething,
that means something,

that means something,

to people, otherwise
what am I doing

sitting up in front
of people talking,

performing, what am I?

A freak?

No, I want to send
a message out there.

[mumbling]

In those days theyconverted you with an ax.

I always write to the
encyclopedia of sin.

[soft piano music]

The cost of having a career,

certainly in this profession,

the costs are great.

Being an actor is
not the kind of role

that a father is
designed to play.

A father is supposed
to come home at night,

be with the children,
be with the wife,

be with the children,

not get divorced and
marry two other women.

But actors work at night,

when everybody's having dinner

they rush away from
thedinner table and go to work,

and they don't come
home till midnight.

They go on the road,

for weeks and months,

away from home.

They're subjected to
all kinds of influences

and temptations,

that they don't even
want to deal with,

but they're there,

they're right in front of you.

There's a great
deal of attention

put on marriages I think,

especially if you
haven't really grown up.

I certainly wasn't
grown up at all.

I got myself involved in,

searching for love,

searching for kindness,

searching for the thing that

was never given to you whenyou were young,
perhaps,

something like that.

You search for it
andsearch for it all your life.

There's an awful lot of actors

that screw up a marriage,

and screw up their children,

because they're so
dedicated, as I was,

to the job of acting,
topursuing it and pursuing it,

that it took precedence
over everything else.

I myself didn't make
time for my children,

the way I should have.

I didn't really listen to them.

I put them second
or third in line,

and they suffered from it.

- He focused on his work,

as a way to survive,
and hewas desperate to survive,

and that was it,

so I very much had the feeling,

that I wasn't actually
important to him,

there's a period for years,

I was actually doing
what my grandfather did,

which was, my father's father,

which was hitchhiking
around the country,

living like a hobo basically.

I was like a homeless
person really,

and I was just kind of
out there on my own,

and that would never
happen to my son,

where if it did it
would be in spite of me

trying to connect to him,

and making sure he's okay.

- Well, there were
long periods where,

where I didn't see him.

There was a kind of feeling like

we're going out on a date now.

He's coming over to
take me to dinner,

that added with the fact that,

my parents were also divorced,

that added even more
of a sense of distance,

and maybe a little
more formality

to our relationship.

- I probably

maybe even give too much
to my kids in some ways.

It's not a conscious thing,

that like I'm gonna try
to outperform my dad

as a father, but it's
more just me needing

to heal that
relationship in fantasy

by being the best
dadthat I could possibly be,

and I feel like that,

to me that's the
measure of a man,

more than anything.

[bird calling]

- My old friend Joe Twitchell,

a preacher of the gospel,

cautioned me to adopt a more

forgiving view of
the human race,

but he was born calm,

I was born excited.

[audience laughing]

People call me a
pessimist in my old age,

but I am an optimist

who did not arrive.

When I was a boy

in Hannibal, on the river,

we were all poor,

and didn't know it,

and we were all happy,

and did know it.

- There's a neurosis thatyou
see in American people,

more and more.

And with him, there is none,
it's generationally sound.

I guess what they call
the great generation,

and what it really as to do with

is somebody who's
generositylives in their solitude,

and in the solitude is
aprivacy that's fascinating.

- He studied his own character,

like he would a
character in a play,

and he's so interested
in figuring it out.

That's one of the
things that struck me,

how unflinching he was,
in his review of himself.

He pulled no punches.

- All the things
that happened to you

come together as you get older,

and they affect,
very deeply affect

what you do with your acting,

and it becomes like this
deep well of experience

that you just, you don't
have to reach very far,

it's right there, you
just have to touch it.

And as the years went by,

became a source of
tremendousexpression for me, Mark Twain.

It became a source
of being able to get

my frustrations about
life out, get them out,

and get them out
in a healthy way.

- [Interviewer] Does
Twainallow you to say things

that you wouldn'totherwise be able to say?

- That's been very true,

especially when I
went into the South.

In the late 50's and the 60's,

I saw some pretty tough things,

and I had, I got beat
up once, real bad.

And I had to take chances,

but I just had the
feelingthat in the silence,

because the response was silent.

The response to the
material was silence,

and I just realized
that in the silence

there was a desire,

a knowledge thatsomething had to be done,

and a desire to listen
tosomebody who would say it.

And Twain could say it.

Joe Keating,
my stage managerand I came to Chicago,

and we're reading in the paper,

on the front page is all thisabout Oxford,
Mississippi,

and Ole Miss,

the college there,

and this huge riot going on,

and President
Kennedy had sent in

I think 5000 troops
from the 101st Airborne,

because this man namedMerideth,
James Merideth, a young black man,

had decided to try to
integrate the classes,

so I got to Chicago and
Icalled my agent and said,

Klaus what's going on?

We're supposed to go to
Oxfordafter playing Northwestern.

How can we go there?

And he said, well Hal,
theyhaven't said you shouldn't come.

So we got on a plane to Memphis,

rented a car and
drove to Oxford,

checked into the motel,

and it was filled with
the New York Times,

the Washington Post,
the Associated Press,

all the leading byline writers

for the Civil Rights Movement.

So we were invited to
thehome of the man who was

head of the English department,
on the night before,

so we go to his house,

and we sit in his den,
andwe're having a scotch and soda,

and we're drinking and talking,

we're talking about Faulkner,
this is his home town,

the whole bit.

And nobody's mentioning
what's going on.

I mean there's trucks
going by in the Army,

and nobody's mentioning a word,

being very nice and
so finally I said,

well maybe a little
humor will work.

So I finally said,

well look we brought oursheets,
we brought our sheets,

and we cut holes in
them for our eyes.

Should we wear them
tomorrow night?

My stage manager was shocked,

but the English
teacher and his wife,

it didn't phase them,
theyjust were very serious,

and then he said,

well we don't think
there'sgoing to be any trouble.

I thought,

he doesn't think, wait a minute.

There will be federal
men in the audience,

oh my heart started beating,

and we'll have some backstage.

They didn't have a realtheater,
it was in the chapel,

and it was about eight o'clock,

it wasn't entirely dark,

and they have the
big windows you know,

so there was a little
light coming in.

Just before I went on,

one of those

good old boy stage
hands, you know,

comes up to me and says, Hal,

watch out for the guys
withsquirrel rifles in the trees.

Oh thank you very much,

and I went out on stage,

and I'm eyeing these
windows on the side,

I'm thinking oh my heart isgoing,
my legs are going.

So I didn't know what to do.

I had all this
wonderful stuff about

the silent lie of slavery,

how you can lie aboutanything,
including slavery,

by remaining silent.

So I thought I would
go out on stage,

I had a full house,

and I would do the show
andlisten and listen and listen

to that audience,

and decide by the time
itcame to the second act,

whether I would go
for the big stuff,

or do something else
that was softer.

So I already did the first act

and the audience was wonderful

but there was
something held back,

and my sense told me that
theywere waiting for something,

that they knew about my show.

That's why they
brought me there,

so in the second act I
decided to go for it.

I decided to trust the people

down there in the South.

I heard, what I thought I heard,

was that they were takingit
in and thinking it over,

and that there was a
lotmore going on down there,

in the mind of the people,
thanpeople up north understood.

I don't mean to suggest

that the custom of lying
has suffered any decay.

It couldn't,

for the lie is eternal.

It is man's best
and surest friend,

and it cannot perish
from the Earth

while Congress
remains in session.

[audience laughing]

No, when I talk about the decay

in the art

of lying, I'm talking
about the silent lie.

It requires no art,
you simply keep still,

and conceal the truth.

For example, it
would not be possible

for a humane and
intelligent person,

to invent a rational
excuse for slavery,

and yet in those early daysof
the Emancipation agitation,

in the North those agitatorsgot
small help from anyone.

Argue and plead and
pray as they might,

they could not break
the universal stillness

that ran from pulpit and press,

all the way down to
the bottom of society,

the clammy stillness,

created and maintained
bythe lie of silent assertion,

the silent assertion thatthere
wasn't anything going on,

in which humane and
intelligent people

ought to be interested.

Well, when all nations of people

can aspire to propagate gigantic

mute lies like that one,

in the interest of
tyrannies and shams,

why should we care anything

about the trifling ones
told by individuals,

why make them undesirable?

Why not be honest and
honorableand lie every chance we get?

Why should we help the
nationlie the whole day long?

And then object to tellingone little,
insignificant,

private lie?

In our own interest,

just for the refreshment
of it I mean,

and to take the rancid
taste out of our mouths.

No, there's no art
to this silent lying.

It is timid,

and shabby.

And then I take a big pause,

and walked back acrossthe
stage to the lectern,

let that pause sit there,

so the audience has
tosit with this hot potato.

They can't get up and walk out.

They're stuck they
have to think about it.

Long pause, the audience
broke into applause.

They applauded.

Only three times,
in all thetimes I've done this show,

that I did that number,

only three times has the
audience ever applauded,

at that moment.

I don't ask for
applause, don't want it.

First time was in
Hamburg, Germany,

1961,

second time was inOxford,
Mississippi, 1962,

and the third time was inPrague,
Czechoslovakia,

behind the iron curtain in 1986.

At the end of the show,

the newspaper guys said,
how do you explain this?

How do you explain this Hal?

I was sitting on the
aislelooking at the window

that was a little open,

and wondered if I could
get out the window,

when you started
that silent lie.

How do you explain
this response?

And I said, how
do you explain it?

You were there, how
do you explain it?

What you saw tonight
was something good.

A lot of bad stuff has
been going on down here,

and you've been reportingabout it,
and it should be,

but now you saw something good,

why don't you write about it?

Well, they didn't
write about it.

They did not write about it.

- Hal as Twain is
embodying Twain,

as a critic of his nation,

at a time when we
really need him.

So at a time when most Americans

still tend to view
Twain as, oh yes,

that entertaining humorist,

someone I'd call the tame Twain.

How is giving them a
Twainwho isn't tame at all,

who's wild, who's subversive,

who's feeling critical
of his country?

This is a Twain that
we really, really need,

and Hal has done more
than anyone else,

including all the
scholars put together,

all the biographers
put together,

in helping Americans understand

Twain the critic, Twain
the subversive skeptic,

Twain who loved
his country so much

he couldn't help
but criticize it

when it was going
down the wrong path.

[crowd murmuring]

- [Usher] You're gonna
be in aisle four,

all the way down to your left.

- [Man] 15 minutes Hal.

- He has changed a lot.

He's much more able to listen,

and be a little
bit of a nurturer.

You know, he told me
there'snothing you can say to me,

that would make me angry
at you, or reject you.

I want the truth,
tell me the truth,

which was like, are you kidding?

I never thought
that would happen.

- It's possible to love someone,

and not be very
good at showing it,

but that's hard,

it's hard for the person
who's being loved,

because you need
someone to show it,

to really experience it,
andto really believe it I guess.

So I think that's what my mother

was able to do for Hal,

is that she loved him
and she showed it.

- It was so easy to love Dixie,

and she was so loving,
you know, of me,

and she was so wonderful
with my father,

and he was just
soembraced by Dixie's family.

He never had a family like that.

- My mother
disappeared, just left,

left us in the
playpen all untended,

and my father followed her,

and we were never told
why our parents left,

why our mother left.

I never had any comfort
when I was a kid,

like somebody to hug me.

It never occurred to me
untiljust a little while ago,

I didn't have a family,
I wasn't trained

to be a part of a family.

And they trained me.

They have trained
me over the years.

They've trained me,
andDixie trained me in her way.

She always put the
important thing first,

the important human thing first.

She renewed my respect

for what I was doing.

She kept telling me
how important it was,

what I was doing,

how important the show was,

and what it could give people.

That was wonderful to
havesomebody stand by your side,

and remind you of
that, you know,

because it lifted it up toa
better level in your head.

I have to be very
carefulwhen I think of Dixie,

and I have to be verycareful
when I'm doing Twain,

to get lost in
thinking about her.

If there's a certain point,
and there is a point,

it's very dangerous for me.

It's been happening
in the past year,

when I, oddly enough,

it's when in Huckleberry Finn,

when I talk about,

Jim and me we found a raft.

We were off down in
that river together.

We run nights, and lay
it up and hid daytime.

We just let that raft float

wherever the current
water took it.

It's lovely to live on a raft.

We'd lay on our backs
and smoke our pipes,

looking up at the sky.

So I think of Dixie
then sometimes,

and I have to really work at it,

not to give away, because,

now you see that's
afunny thing about acting.

Here I am talking
about this black slave,

and this ignorant young
juvenile delinquent,

and floating down
theMississippi river on a raft.

If I start thinking aboutmy wife,
I'm in trouble.

I'm in trouble,

because there's a
connection there.

It's strange, that's
what's so amazing about

people and acting,
there'sa connection there.

There's a very
profound connection,

it all has to with
a person's emotions,

how you feel deeply
about something.

You know the first
performance I had

after Dixie passed away,

oddly enough I had beenbooked into Elmira,
New York,

in 2010, April 21st,

the 100th anniversary
of Mark Twain's death,

to the day,

they booked me back there.

Dixie died on the 10th.

I had to cancel a few
showsbecause of her illness.

I wanted to do that show

in Elmira, where
Mark Twain is buried,

and his wife is buried,

because he adored his
wife, he loved his wife,

adored his wife.

And so I did, I did the show.

And it was quite
a wonderful night,

and at the end of the
show I put something in,

a little selection that
I occasionally did,

but I hadn't done
it for a long time,

but I thought, you'd
better be careful.

Do you think you
canreally get away with this?

And I thought, I'm gonna do it.

And when he talks
about his wife,

and how he got married and all,

and how he had to ask permission

of his future father-in-law,

his wife's father,

Mister Langdon.

I referred Mister Langdonto
six prominent gentlemen

out here, and we waited.

The letters finallycame,
and I was sent for.

Each one of those men hadbeen frank,
to a fault.

They not only spoke
of me in disapproval,

they were enthusiastic about it.

[audience laughing]

One of them said I
deserved to be hanged.

When Mister Langdon
finishedreading those letters,

there was a good
deal of a pause,

it was filled mostly
withsadness and solemnity.

I didn't know what to say and,

Libby's father was
apparentlyin the same condition.

Finally he said to me,
whatkind of people are these?

Haven't you got a
friend in the world?

I said, apparently not.

Then I'll be your friend.

Take the girl, I know
you better than they do.

And so in this dramatic way,

we became engaged,

and for 34 years,

wherever she was,

there was Eden.

Wherever she was,

there was Eden.

Oh Lord, our Father,

our young patriots,
idols of our hearts,

go forth to battle,

be Thou near them.

With them in spirit,
we also go forth,

from the sweet peace of
our beloved firesides

to smite the foe.

O Lord our God,

help us to tear their soldiers

to bloody shreds
with our shells;

help us to cover
their smiling fields

with the pale forms
of their patriot dead;

help us to drown the
thunder of the guns

with the shrieks of theirwounded,
writhing in pain;

help us to lay waste
their humble homes

with a hurricane of fire;

to turn them out roofless

with their little children

to wander unfriended
in the wastes

of their desolated land
inrags and hunger and thirst,

sports of the sun
flames of summer,

and the icy winds of winter,

broken in spirit,
worn with travail,

imploring Thee for the
refuge of the grave,

and denied it.

For our sakes who
adore Thee, Lord,

blast their hopes,
blight their lives,

protract their
bitter pilgrimage,

make heavy their steps,

stain the white snow

with the blood of
their wounded feet.

We ask it, in the
spirit of love,

[audience laughing]

of Him Who is the
Source of Love,

the ever-faithful
refuge and friend

of all that are sore beset

and seek His aid

with humble and contrite hearts.

Amen.

- He is frailer now,

he doesn't have the sameyouthful vigor,
obviously.

He is older than Mark Twain was,

so now in a way, it's an
even greater challenge,

than when he was a young man,

and to take on an
even greater challenge

in your mid and late 80's.

- I see the pauses
that he takes,

I see he takes a
lot of time now.

I'm sure that it has a
lotto do with getting older,

but also I think it's
that he really cares

about this material,

and he really wants people

to get it.

- To sense that
kind of commitment,

that kind of,
I'm going togive you everything I've got,

and in a country
that is so adept

at neglecting its geniuses,

Hal Holbrook kept Mark
Twainwith us in such a present way,

and Mark Twain is not
one of those geniuses

that we've neglected,

and we can only wonder
if he might have been,

had it not been for Halsaying,
no no no, not this guy,

you're not forgetting this guy.

- It's so much a
part of America,

and he's so much
a part of America,

I'm talking about Hal,

not Mark Twain,

he's driven it,
he'sperformed all over the place.

America is all over that guy,

you put a camera on
him, and it's America.

- Now has he become
more like Twain,

by performing Twain
all these years?

Probably, but was he
first attracted to Twain

because those
affinities were there?

Probably too.

So I think that part
of what enables him

to portray Twain
so convincingly,

is that he's portraying himself.

- I mean he was rough, you know.

He said some pretty
rough things,

but they were true things,
they were true things.

He spoke to truth.

He nailed the way
we lie to ourselves,

about who we are, how we behave,

and that we're all good people.

Well, we could be better,
let's put it that way.

We could be a lot better.

And if we had a lot of
characterwe would try to be better.

[soft orchestral music]

[audience applauding]

[gentle orchestral music]

[soft piano music]