Hal Holbrook | |
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Born | Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. February 17, 1925 |
Education | Culver Academies |
Alma mater | Denison University |
Occupation(s) | Actor, director |
Years active | 1954–present |
Spouse(s) |
Ruby Holbrook
(m. 1945; div. 1965)Carol Eve Rossen
(m. 1966; div. 1979) |
Children | 3 |
Awards | See Awards and nominations |
Harold Rowe "Hal" Holbrook Jr. (born February 17, 1925) is an American film and stage actor and television director. Holbrook first received critical acclaim in 1954 for a one-man stage show he developed while in college, performing as Mark Twain.[1]
He made his film debut in Sidney Lumet's The Group (1966). He later gained international fame for his performance as Deep Throat in the 1976 film All the President's Men. He was known for his role as Abraham Lincoln in the 1976 miniseries Lincoln. He has also appeared in such other films as Julia (1977), The Fog (1980), Creepshow (1982), The Firm (1993), Hercules (1997), and Men of Honor (2000).[2]
Holbrook's role as Ron Franz in Sean Penn's Into the Wild (2007) earned him both Screen Actors Guild Award and Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor.[3] Until Robert Duvall was nominated for an Academy Award in 2015, Holbrook was the oldest actor to receive an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination.[4] In 2009, Holbrook received critical acclaim for his performance as recently retired farmer, Abner Meecham, in the independent film That Evening Sun.[5]
In his later career, Holbrook appeared as Francis Preston Blair in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012), provided his voice as Mayday in the Disney animated film Planes: Fire & Rescue (2014) and as Whizzer in Blackway (2016).[6][7]
As a television actor, Holbrook is known for starring and directing four episodes in Designing Women as Reese Watson, opposite his wife, Dixie Carter.[1] Later in his career, he has starred in minor roles in Sons of Anarchy, The Event, and Rectify.[8] He has guest-starred in many critically acclaimed television series such as NCIS, The West Wing, The Sopranos, ER, Bones, Grey's Anatomy and on Hawaii Five-0.[9]
Holbrook has won five Primetime Emmy Awards and a Tony Award for his 1966 portrayal of Twain in Mark Twain Tonight.[3]
Holbrook was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Aileen (Davenport) Holbrook (1905–1987), a vaudeville dancer, and Harold Rowe Holbrook Sr. (1902–1982).[1] After being abandoned by his parents at age two, his two sisters and he were raised by his paternal grandparents first in Weymouth, Massachusetts, and then in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood.[2]
He graduated from the Culver Academies and Denison University, where an honors project about Mark Twain led him to develop the one-man show for which he is best known, a series of performances called Mark Twain Tonight.[10] From 1942 through 1946, Holbrook served in the United States Army in World War II and was stationed in Newfoundland.[11] While stationed in Newfoundland, he performed in theater productions such as the play Madam Precious.[2]
According to Playbill, Holbrook's first solo performance as Twain was at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania in 1954.[12] Ed Sullivan saw him and gave Holbrook his first national exposure on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 12, 1956.[12] Holbrook was also a member of the Valley Players (1941–1962), a summer-stock theater company based in Holyoke, Massachusetts, which performed at Mountain Park Casino Playhouse at Mountain Park.[13] He joined The Lamns in 1955, where he began developing his one-man show.[14] He was a member of the cast for several years and performed Mark Twain Tonight as the 1957 season opener.[13] The State Department even sent him on a European tour, which included pioneering appearances behind the Iron Curtain.[2] In 1959, Holbrook first played the role off-Broadway.[12] Columbia Records recorded an LP of excerpts from the show.[2]
Holbrook performed in a special production for the New York World's Fair (1964, 1965) for the Bell Telephone Pavilion.[15] Jo Mielziner created an innovative audio-visual ride experience and used Hal's acting talents on 65 different action screens for "The Ride Of Communications" with the movie itself known as From Drumbeats to Telstar.[15]
In 1967, Mark Twain Tonight was presented on television by CBS and Xerox, and Holbrook received an Emmy for his performance.[2] Holbrook's Twain first played on Broadway in 1966, and again in 1977 and 2005; Holbrook was 80 years old during his most recent Broadway run, older (for the first time) than the character he was portraying.[2] Holbrook won a Tony Award for the performance in 1966.[2] Mark Twain Tonight has repeatedly toured the country in what, as of 2005[update], has amounted to over 2000 performances. He has portrayed Twain longer than Samuel Langhorne Clemens did.[16]
In 1964, Holbrook played the role of the Major in the original production of Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy.[17] In 1968, he was one of the replacements for Richard Kiley in the original Broadway production of Man of La Mancha, although he had limited singing ability.[17] In 1966, Holbrook starred opposite Shirley Booth in the acclaimed CBS Playhouse production of The Glass Menagerie.
Holbrook co-starred with Martin Sheen in the controversial and acclaimed 1972 television film That Certain Summer.[2] In 1973, Holbrook appeared as Lieutenant Neil Briggs, the boss and rival of Detective Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) in Magnum Force, an "obsessively neat and prim fanatic" who supports the obliteration of San Francisco's criminals and who is the leader of a rogue group of vigilante officers.[18][19] In 1976, Holbrook won acclaim for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in a series of television specials based on Carl Sandburg's acclaimed biography.[2] He won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for the 1970 series The Bold Ones: The Senator.[2] In 1979, he starred with Katharine Ross, Barry Bostwick, and Richard Anderson in the made-for-TV movie Murder by Natural Causes.[1] Holbrook also had a major role on the sitcom Evening Shade throughout its entire run.[1]
Early in his career, Holbrook worked onstage and in a television soap opera, The Brighter Day.[2] He is also famous for his role as the enigmatic Deep Throat (whose identity was unknown at the time) in the film All the President's Men.[20] Holbrook was the narrator on the Ken Burns documentary Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery in 1997.[2]
From 1986 through 1989, Holbrook had a recurring role as Reese Watson on Designing Women, opposite his wife Dixie Carter. For a short period between 1988 and 1990, Holbrook would direct four episodes of the series.[2]
In 1999, Holbrook was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.[21]
In 2000, Holbrook appeared in Men of Honor, where he portrayed a racist and hypocritical officer who endlessly tries to fail an African-American diver trainee.[22]
He appeared in Sean Penn's critically acclaimed film Into the Wild (2007) and received an Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role at the 80th Academy Awards.[3] This renders Holbrook, at age 82, the oldest nominee in Academy Award history in the Best Supporting Actor category.[3] On December 20, 2007, Holbrook was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for his work in the film.[3] In late August through mid-September 2007, he starred as the narrator in the Hartford Stage production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, a role he had once played on television.[3]
In 2003, President George W. Bush honored Holbrook with a National Humanities Medal for "charming audiences with the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain as Twain's outlook never fails to give Holbrook a good show to put on".[23]
Holbrook appeared with wife Dixie Carter in That Evening Sun, filmed in East Tennessee in the summer of 2008.[5] The film, produced by Dogwood Entertainment,[5] is based on a short story by William Gay.[5] That Evening Sun premiered in March 2009 at South By Southwest, where it received the Audience Award for Narrative Feature and a special Jury Prize for Ensemble Cast.[5] Joe Leydon of Variety hailed Hollbrook's performance in the film as a "career-highlight star turn as an irascible octogenarian farmer who will not go gentle into that good night."[5] That Evening Sun also was screened at the 2009 Nashville Film Festival, where Holbrook was honored with a special Lifetime Achievement Award, and the film itself received another Audience Award.[24]
Holbrook appeared as a featured guest star in a 2006 episode of the HBO series The Sopranos and the NCIS episode "Escaped".[2] On April 22, 2010, Holbrook signed on to portray Katey Sagal's character's father on the FX original series Sons of Anarchy for a four-episode arc in their third season, as well as appearing in additional fifth episode in the final season.[25] He also had a multiple-episode arc on The Event, an American television series on NBC, appearing in the 2010–2011 season.[1]
In 2011, Holbrook appeared in Water for Elephants.[26] In 2012, Steven Spielberg cast Holbrook to play Francis Preston Blair in Lincoln.[6] His recent films are Gus Van Sant's Promised Land (2012),[27] the animated film Planes: Fire & Rescue (2014),[28] and in the minor role as Whizzer in the drama film Blackway (2016).[7] In 2016, Holbrook was cast as Red Hudmore and appeared in the final season of Bones on January 17, 2017.[29] In March 2017, it was reported that Holbrook would appear in an episode on Grey's Anatomy and on Hawaii Five-0 later in the year.[30][31]
Holbrook has been married three times and has three children. He married Ruby Holbrook on September 22, 1945, and they had two children, Victoria Holbrook and David Holbrook.[2] They divorced in 1965, and on December 28, 1966, he married Carol Eve Rossen. They had one child, Eve Holbrook, and they divorced on June 14, 1983.[2]
He married actress Dixie Carter on May 27, 1984.[2] Architect Hoyte Johnson of Atlanta redesigned Carter's family home and created an environment that the couple shared with family and friends.[32] Holbrook has said that the home has the "feel" of the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, and that there is no other place to which he feels so ideally suited.[32] Holbrook and Carter remained married until her death on April 10, 2010.[33] Holbrook had a recurring role on his wife's hit sitcom Designing Women, appearing in nine episodes between 1986 and 1989 as Carter's on-screen significant other.[2]
Holbrook resides in Beverly Hills, California.[34] Holbrook grew to love Carter's home in McLemoresville, Tennessee. The local community responded by building the Dixie Theatre for Performing Arts in nearby Huntington, Tennessee, which features the Hal Holbrook Auditorium.[32]
In 2011, Holbrook's memoir, Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.[35]
Holbrook is a converted Christian, though he tends to criticize the Bible at times.[36] He is a registered independent, but tends to lean more liberal.[37] Holbrook has criticized the Republican Party since Barack Obama took office.[37] In 2016, Holbrook criticized then-Republican candidate Donald Trump for not having "the maturity to run the country".[12]
In October 2016, Holbrook wrote a letter to The New York Times defending director and actor Nate Parker over his 1991 rape allegation and his film The Birth of a Nation.[34] He urged others to "move on" from Parker's past and to view the film which was "an exceptional piece of artistry and a vital portrait of our American experience".[34]
Year | Works | Role | Notes | Ref |
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1966 | The Group | Gus Leroy | [8] | |
1967 | Mark Twain Tonight[8] | Mark Twain | TV special | [8] |
1968 | Wild in the Streets | Senator Johnny Fergus | [8] | |
1970 | The Bold Ones: The Senator | Senator Hays Stowe | [8] | |
The Great White Hope | Al Cameron | [38] | ||
1972 | They Only Kill Their Masters | Watkins | [38] | |
That Certain Summer | Doug Salter | TV movie | [8] | |
1973 | Pueblo | Captain Lloyd Bucher | TV movie | [8] |
Magnum Force[8] | Lieutenant Briggs | [8] | ||
1974 | The Girl from Petrovka | Joe | [8] | |
Carl Sandburg's Lincoln | Abraham Lincoln | TV miniseries | [8] | |
1976 | All the President's Men | Deep Throat | [8] | |
Midway | Commander Joseph Rochefort | [8] | ||
1977 | Julia | Alan | [8] | |
Rituals | Harry | [8] | ||
1978 | Capricorn One | Dr. James Kelloway | [8] | |
The Awakening Land | Portius Wheeler | TV series | [8] | |
1979 | When Hell Was in Session | Commander Jeremiah Denton | TV movie | [8] |
Murder by Natural Causes | Arthur Sinclair | TV series | [8] | |
The Legend of the Golden Gun | J. R. Swackhammer | TV series | [8] | |
Natural Enemies | Paul Steward | [8] | ||
1980 | The Fog | Father Malone | [8] | |
The Kidnapping of the President | President Adam Scott | [8] | ||
1981 | The Killing of Randy Webster | John Webster | TV series | [38] |
1982 | Creepshow | Henry Northrup | Segment: "The Crate" | [38] |
Girls Nite Out | Jim MacVey | [9] | ||
1983 | The Star Chamber | Judge Benjamin Caulfield | [9] | |
1984 | George Washington | John Adams | TV miniseries | [9] |
1985 | North and South Part 1 | Abraham Lincoln | TV miniseries | [9] |
1986–1989 | Designing Women | Reese Watson | TV series | [9] |
Portrait of America | TV series | [9] | ||
Dress Gray | General Charles Hedges | TV series | [9] | |
North and South Part 2 | Abraham Lincoln | TV miniseries | [9] | |
1987 | Wall Street | Lou Mannheim | [38] | |
1988 | The Unholy | Archbishop Mosely | [38] | |
I'll Be Home for Christmas | Joseph Bundy | [9] | ||
The Fortunate Pilgrim[9] | Dr. Andrew McKay | [9] | ||
1989 | Day One | General George Marshall | TV movie | [9] |
Fletch Lives | Hamilton "Ham" Johnson | [9] | ||
1990–1994 | Evening Shade | Evan Evans | TV series | [38] |
1993 | The Firm | Oliver Lambert | [38] | |
1996 | Innocent Victims | Bob Hennis | [9] | |
1997 | Eye of God | Sheriff Rogers | [9] | |
Cats Don't Dance | Cranston | Voice | [9] | |
Hercules | Amphitryon | Voice | [38] | |
1998 | Beauty | Alexander Miller | TV movie | [9] |
Hush | Dr. Franklin Hill | [38] | ||
Walking to the Waterline | Man on the Beach | [38] | ||
1999 | The Bachelor | Roy O'Dell | [9] | |
2000 | Waking the Dead | Isaac Green | [9] | |
Men of Honor | Mr. Pappy | [38] | ||
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus | Ak – Master Woodsman of the World | Voice | [9] | |
2001 | The Majestic | Congressman Doyle | [38] | |
The Legend of the Three Trees | Narrator | Voice | [38] | |
2001–2002 | The West Wing | Assistant Secretary of State Albie Duncan | TV series | [9] |
2002 | Seventh Day | Himself | Documentary | [9] |
2003 | Country Music: The Spirit of America | Narrator | IMAX | [39] |
Shade | The Professor | [9] | ||
2006 | The Sopranos | John Schwinn | TV series | [9] |
NCIS | Mickey Stokes | TV series | [9] | |
2007 | Into the Wild | Ron Franz | [38] | |
2008 | ER | Walter Perkins | TV series | [9] |
Killshot | Papa | [9] | ||
2009 | That Evening Sun | Abner Meecham | [38] | |
2010; 2014 | Sons of Anarchy | Nate Madock | TV series | [9] |
2010–2011 | The Event | James Dempsey | TV series | [9] |
2011 | Water for Elephants | Old Jacob | [38] | |
Good Day for It | Hector | [9] | ||
2012 | Lincoln | Francis Preston Blair | [38] | |
2013 | Savannah | Judge Harden | [38] | |
Promised Land | Frank Yates | [38] | ||
Rectify | Rutherford Gaines | TV series | [9] | |
Monday Mornings | Dr. Arvin Wayne | TV series | [9] | |
2014 | Planes: Fire & Rescue | Mayday | Voice | [38] |
2016 | Blackway | Whizzer | [9] | |
2017 | Bones | Red Hudmore | TV series | [9] |
Grey's Anatomy | Lewis Clatch | TV series | [30] | |
Hawaii Five-0 | Elderly veteran | TV series | [31] |
Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards:
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards:
Online Film Critics Society Awards:
...has played Twain going on 57 years, longer than Samuel Langhorne Clemens did.
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