Hal Holbrook: A Film Babble Blog Appreciation

Earlier this week, one of my all time favorite actors, Hal Holbrook, passed away at 95. The grand performer brought his brand of folksy gravitas to many movies including ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, CAPRICORN ONE, MAGNUM FORCE, THE FOG, WALL STREET, THE FIRM, and INTO THE WILD, which earned him an Academy Award nomination (he should’ve won).

Holbrook’s presence also stole many episodes of such television shows as Evening Shade, The West Wing, The Sopranos, Grey’s Anatomy, Sons of Anarchy, NCIS, ER, and Designing Women, where he acted alongside his wife Dixie Carter.

But his defining role, one that nearly every obit had in their headlines, has to be as the legendary author and orator Mark Twain, who he portrayed 2,200 times over 63 years. The one-man show entitled Mark Twain Tonight, which Holbrook devised and updated through its long run, won the actor a Tony and an Emmy nomination for the CBS broadcast of the play in 1967. There were also three record albums featuring different performances of the material, one of which I own and consider great stand-up comedy (I need to seek out the others).

Here’s a clip from the 1967 special, Mark Twain Tonight (much of the rest of the program can be found on YouTube):

Back to his film work, as that’s how I first came to know him. The first film I saw of his when I was a kid was Peter Hyam’s CAPRICORN ONE (1978). The conspiracy thriller involved NASA faking a mission to Mars, and Holbrook was the Mission Controller who had to convince the astronauts, portrayed by James Brolin, Sam Waterson, and O.J. Simpson (!), to go along with the scheme.

This gave the grand thespian to do what he did best, deliver a wickedly compelling speech which you can watch here (ignore the foreign subtitles; I couldn’t find it without them).

Holbrook played essentially the same role, a dignified yet corrupt authority figure, in Hyam’s THE STAR CHAMBER. The 1983 Michael Douglas legal thriller concerned a secret group of judges who carry out sentences of criminals who beat the rap because of technicalities. This gave Holbrook the chance to make another great speech, but I can’t find it on YouTube so we’ll move on.

It’s possible that the part that led to these dark thrillers was his shadowy (literally he was bathed in the shadows of a dark parking garage) portrayal of Deep Throat, the informant whose meetings with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) helped break the scandal surrounding the Watergate break-in. It’s a small but incredibly juicy role, one so mysterious that we didn’t know who the real man it was based on until 30 years later when his identity was revealed to be FBI agent Mark Felt.

Holbrook’s distinguished demeanor was used to great effect in many parts with political leanings. In one of his earliest films, WILD IN THE STREETS, a wonderfully campy ‘60s romp about teen rebellion, he played a Senator trying to coral the youth vote. This has a crazy scene in which Holbrook and other legislators in Congress are dosed with LSD – quite a different take on an insurrection.

In the short-lived TV series, The Bold Ones: The Senator (1970-71), Holbrook plays another lawmaker, Senator Hays Stowe. He won his first Emmy of five for his performance which I have not seen, but will correct that soon (it’s available on DVD thankfully). He won another Emmy for his portrayal of President Abraham Lincoln in the 1974 mini-series, Sandberg’s Lincoln. 

Holbrook also played Lincoln in the 1985 mini-series, North and South, and appeared in Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film LINCOLN, as Francis Preston Blair. In George Washington, a 1984 TV movie about the first President, he took on the role of John Adams, and played fictional Commander in Chiefs in The Kidnapping of the President, and UNDER SIEGE. So yeah, there was definitely something Presidential about the guy.

One of my favorite parts he played was in Oliver Stone’s 1987 financial thriller WALL STREET. As Charlie Sheen’s brokerage boss, it’s another small but juicy role, but every line Holbrook’s Lou Mannheim says packs a punch as you can see below:

This post just touches on Holbrook’s rich career as there is a lot of his work that I haven’t seen. I’m intrigued by a TV movie he made in the early ‘70s called That Certain Summer, in which Martin Sheen and he play a gay couple, but it looks like it’s hard to find. Incidentally he was in a few other projects with Sheen – WALL STREET, and The West Wing series.

Although he hasn’t acted since 2017, and he hung up his white suit as Twain a few years before that, I’m seriously going to miss this excellent actor. Luckily the bulk of his career is accessible, and will keep fans like me entertained for years to come.

R.I.P. Hal Holbrook (1925-2021)

More later...