Hal Holbrook, Actor Famous for His Portrayal of Mark Twain, Dead at 95

Beloved stage and screen actor Hal Holbrook has died at the age of 95. Holbrook’s personal assistant, Joyce Cohen, confirmed the actor’s death to The New York Times Monday, sharing that he passed on Jan. 23 in his home in Beverly Hills. No cause of death has been released. He is survived by three children and two stepdaughters, as well as four grandchildren.

Holbrook is best known for his portrayal of Mark Twain, whom he played for decades in a wildly successful one-man show he developed titled Mark Twain Tonight!, which he performed more than 2,000 times on Broadway and other venues nationwide between the 1950s and 2010, earning him critical praise and a Best Actor Tony Award in 1966.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on Feb. 17, 1925, Holbrook spent his high school years at the Culver Military Academy in Indiana before enrolling at Denison University to major in the dramatic arts. His education was interrupted during World War II, when he served as an Army engineer and was stationed in St. John’s, Newfoundland, for a time. It was there he joined an amateur theater group, and when he returned to Denison, he developed his show portraying Twain’s life.

While he initially adopted Twain’s persona for a show titled Great Personalities, the Times noted he initially called his depiction of the author “pretty corny” before really embracing the role, turning it into its own show and interviewing as many people who claimed to have seen and heard Twain speak before his death in 1910. Mark Twain Tonight! debuted in 1954, and would go on to be featured on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show before being adapted for TV itself. This would earn him his first of many Emmy nominations in 1967.

“After watching and listening to him for five minutes,” Arthur Gelb wrote of the show in The New York Times, “it is impossible to doubt that he is Mark Twain, or that Twain must have been one of the most enchanting men ever to go on a lecture tour.”

Holbrook’s decades-long career would include 130 credits and countless awards. He also appeared in films such as Lincoln, The Firm, Men of Honor, All the President’s Men and Into the Wild, which earned him an Oscar nomination and a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In total, he was nominated for 12 Emmys over his career and won five times, including those for Best Lead Actor in a Drama and Actor of the Year for his performance in Pueblo. He also had several TV credits, including Designing Women, North & South, Evening Shade, The West Wing, ER, The Event and Sons of Anarchy.