Emmy-winning actor Hal Holbrook dies at 95
Veteran actor Hal Holbrook, who achieved his widest acclaim onstage by portraying Mark Twain in a one-man show seen around the world passed away on January 23 at his home in Beverly Hills, California. He was 95.
His death was confirmed by his assistant, Joyce Cohen, on the night of February 1.
The late actor had a long and fruitful run as an actor. He was known for playing the shadowy patriot Deep Throat in 'All the President's Men' (1976); an achingly grandfatherly character in 'Into the Wild' (2007), for which he received an 'Oscar' nomination and the influential Republican Preston Blair in Steven Spielberg's 'Lincoln' (2012).
He had also essayed the 16th president himself, on television, in Carl Sandburg's 'Lincoln', a 1974 mini-series. The performance earned him an 'Emmy Award', one of five he won for his acting in television movies and mini-series; the others included 'The Bold Ones: The Senator' (1970), his protagonist resembling John F Kennedy and 'Pueblo' (1973), in which he played the commander of a Navy intelligence boat seized by North Korea in 1968.
Holbrook was a regular on the 1980s television series 'Designing Women'. He played Willy Loman in 'Death of a Salesman', Shakespeare's 'Hotspur' and 'King Lear' and the stage manager in Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town'. But above all he was Mark Twain, standing alone on stage in a rumpled white linen suit, spinning an omnisciently pungent, incisive and humane narration of the human comedy.
