Tuesday, May 18, 2004 | 8:10 a.m.
For 50 years Hal Holbrook has had Mark Twain on his mind. Since Dwight Eisenhower was president, Holbrook has been crafting his one-man tribute to the author who wrote for less time than Holbrook has been portraying him.
Holbrook, 79, has taken Twain to Broadway (winning a Tony Award), the Ed Sullivan Theater, school assemblies, the Edinborough Festival, on CBS prime time and theaters throughout the United States. He has performed Twain at some point every year.
"It's fascinating all right," Holbrook said, via telephone from the Surrey hotel in New York, where he was visiting wife Dixie Carter, who is in Broadway's "Thoroughly Modern Millie." "I can hardly believe it. When I started this thing I had no idea. It was a success."
"Hal Holbrook in Mark Twain Tonight: 50th Anniversary Tour" will be held at 8 p.m. Saturday at Artemus Ham Concert Hall.
The show has remained a success, Holbrook said, because Twain's thoughts, words and opinions have been relevant for the past century.
"One of the reasons I can still do this, still get fired up, is that I have so many targets to shoot at: garbage, stupid thinking, lack of thought, duplicity ... deception, cheating, lying," Holbrook said.
"Everybody thinks, 'Oh. Gee whiz, we live in a totally different world.' But politics is not different. Wars are not different -- the details are different, but I don't have to get into details."
What Holbrook does do for two hours is a monologue of comedy, quotations and book passages assembled to reflect issues relevant today.
"I watch news, read news all the time so I can think about what I'm going to say in my shows."
To keep audiences interested, Holbrook removes some of the literary weight and edits Twain's texts, using excerpts from a personal library of publications.
"I do not modernize Mark Twain," Holbrook said. "I do not write his material, because it's far more powerful than when it was written 100 to 150 years ago. It tells me something about the world, about the character that it does not change."
"He's talking about politics: 'There are many kinds of lies. There are many kinds of liars. And then there are the lies politicians tell when running for election. These are called lies of omission. You leave out half the truth and let the other half stand as pure veracity. This is the lowest form of lying."
In character
Holbrook first performed solo as Twain in 1954 at the Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania. He had already grown familiar with the author. Portraying the character was part of an honors project that Holbrook took on at Denison University in Ohio with his first wife, Ruby.
Theirs was a two-person, interview-style show that Holbrook and his wife took on the road, traveling in a station wagon.
Holbrook wasn't living out a lifelong admiration for the author. In fact, had the roads been different, he would have missed him entirely.
"I didn't know anything about him," Holbrook said, referring to the early days. "I just had to make a living.
"I didn't even remember if I read Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. I was 22 years old. When I started dipping into Twain it was an amazing revelation to me, the depth and dimension to the man's work.
"He had his finger on the truth about us. He wasn't afraid to point it out. He had an extraordinary way to put words together in a deceptively colloquial manner so his stuff was easy to understand."
But portraying Twain was also a means of job security, something Holbrook held on to so that he could make a living in between his theater, movie and television roles.
Holbrook has performed in the Broadway productions "Man of La Mancha" and "The Apple Tree," among others. His more than 35 movies roles include "All the President's Men," "Capricorn One" and "Men of Honor." He's had 12 Emmy nominations and appeared on Carter's sitcom, "Designing Women," and more recently "The West Wing."
Holbrook is performing 38 Twain concerts this year, nearly double the performances of past years, because other acting parts aren't as plentiful. Part of that, he says, is the nature of the business.
"You look at TV and movies, you don't see a lot of roles for people my age," Holbrook said. "Everything is young people. They don't have the jobs around with the guys my age with gray hair."
Holbrook developed the first two hours of his show in a nightclub in New York. He took two years to raise the money ($9,000) for an off-Broadway show. He was in his 30s when he brought Twain to off-Broadway.
"I hoped I'd get the word 'excellent' out of a New York times review to put in my brochure, even if it meant the scenery," Holbrook said.
He did even better. The newcomer that nobody heard of was praised and soon to be featured on the front page of the New York Times Living section.
He ain't heavy
Though some of the topics are heavy, Holbrook tries to bring levity to the production using Twain's wit. In some parts, he says, the production resembles a stand-up comedy routine. When Holbrook initially created the show, he aimed for a laugh every 15 seconds.
"One solid laugh every 15 seconds," Holbrook said. "I'm not talking about a chuckle here. I'm talking about a laugh."
The show constantly changes, and Holbrook is often fueled by topics in the media. He reads USA Today as often as he reads the New York Times and listens to Bill O'Reilly as much as he does Tim Russert and Aaron Brown. In his show he remains bipartisan.
"Agitated is a very common word I use to describe things going on around me," Holbrook said. "I find it increasingly difficult to open the paper these days, but I feel it's my responsibility as a grown-up person and as a citizen."
But, Holbrook said, "I don't take a political position with Twain because it wouldn't be fair because he's not alive."
Of the campaign season: "It's an advertising campaign," Holbrook said. "People have no idea what the candidates really stand for and what they are really saying. We're living in a sales pitch now. People are so interested in their own little world, own little laptop ... that to sit down and figure out what kind of world we're living in. They'd rather sit down and watch a reality show.
"We're getting weaker and softer in the belly every month."
But this is also his fodder for Twainisms.
"It's exciting," Holbrook said. "Ideas have always been exciting. As actors we deal with the ideas behind the words.
"The one thing I do not want to do is get tired of my show."
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