Master storytelling from an American treasure
By Keith C. Burris
Robert Redford once said he wanted Hal Holbrook to play "Deep Throat" in "All the President's Men" because he needed an actor of stature to play that part. Now Holbrook, perhaps one of the last American actors of real stature, has published the first of a two-volume autobiography. It is entitled "Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain."
If you are interested in the American theater, or have followed Holbrook's career, you will want to buy this book. It is master storytelling from an American treasure.
The book ends in 1959 when the author is 34 years of age and he scores his great success in New York with "Mark Twain Tonight!," which he has been performing up and down this country for 50-odd years since. The joke is that Holbrook has now been doing Twain's standup-public lecture routine for many more years than Twain did. And he has also outlived his subject. Twain died at 74; Holbrook is 86.
Last year Holbrook did a raft of Twain performances on the road, appeared in continuing roles on two TV shows, made three movies, and published this book, in addition to promoting it and working on Volume 2. He says he is sorry he had to give up his motorcycle and his sailboat, but since age has forced those concessions, he might as well work.
But what makes Holbrook so singular is not just his stamina. It is his intellectual honesty, his truthfulness, and his bravery. This book is as unsparing and as real as his acting. If you have seen the recent film "Into the Wild," or the even more recent "That Evening Sun," you will realize what a large claim this is. A friend who saw those films said of Holbrook: "That's a soulful dude. No veneer." And that's how the book is too.
Here are the stunning opening lines of "Harold":
"I'm trying to remember being held by my mother. Those memories are all so dreamy now, as if none of them ever really happened. I could have dreamed my memories and they would be as real to me. I'm told she was just a young girl and that she left when I was two. I have a picture of her, a little brown-tinted photograph in a gold frame, and she is, indeed, a young girl with a shy smile. But there is some other message in her eyes. Something tired, the eyes of a girl who has had enough and wants it to be over."
Holbrook has spent his life telling stories -- playing roles that were windows to life's hardships and mysteries. He has played, to name a few, not only Twain, but King Lear, Shylock, Willy Loman, the stage manager in "Our Town," Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher of the USS Pueblo, Abraham Lincoln, and "The Senator" on the groundbreaking TV show by the same name. (The title character, played by Holbrook, was a sort of cross of Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy, and the show took on subjects like political compromise, pollution, and the Kent State shootings.)
A literary, text-based character actor, Holbrook has learned from the masters how to spin a tale. On the page, as on the screen, he delivers the blows directly, with power in the punches, and with a clear eye that meets yours.
For though this book chronicles an actor's life, it is not about acting, and certainly not about Twain (the subtitle not withstanding). It is a book about work and struggle; family tragedy and dysfunction; marital promise, partnership, and collapse; and the occasional, seemingly random acts of compassion and grace that are the lifelines in any human story. It's a book about overcoming and keeping on.
Holbrook and his two sisters were abandoned by his parents when they were toddlers. Their mother simply vanished. Their father was a hobo, more than a little crazy. He makes cameo appearances in their lives, sometimes on his way to the open road and sometimes on his way to the asylum. Harold and his sisters were first raised by their grandfather (their "champion") in South Weymouth, Mass. But then he died. Harold was sent to a boarding school where he was abused by a sadistic headmaster, and later to a military school, because he promised his dying grandfather he would go there. At Culver Military Academy, Holbrook discovered that he did not much like authority but he did like acting and artistic, off-the-grid people.
Acutely aware that he was alone, and lonely, in the world, the boy made a conscious decision: He would survive, no matter what.
Holbrook learned the craft of theater under the tutelage of a wise and gifted teacher at Denison University in Ohio (Ed Wright), and in summer stock, and on a soap opera. And while doing so, he discovered the writings of Twain, which at first seemed to provide raw material for a one-man traveling show -- and bread on the table for a struggling actor -- but later provided intellectual and spiritual sustenance to a young man trying to make it through.
When Holbrook's life was especially difficult he took refuge in the depth of Twain's work-- his richness of language and imagination, his love of America, and above all his rigorous honesty about the human condition.
For me, the stories in this book that are most riveting are about Holbrook's family (his father wore a hat with a bullet hole in it and his sisters had some of their father's wildness, as did Harold); about military school and finding his courage and his interests there; about the brutality and absurdity of the Army (Holbrook served during World War II but never left the continent and barely avoided a court-martial when he went after a sergeant who called him unpatriotic); and about his climbing Mount Shasta alone in a snowstorm, with no experience in climbing.
Holbrook writes of what he calls his "suicide impulse." (He would later sail 2,400 miles solo on his 40-foot boat, the "Yankee Tar.") But he is really talking about physical, moral, and artistic courage -- a rare combination. It required courage for the frightened orphan Harold to become Hal. And that is what the book is really about -- the boy who became Hal Holbrook.
Here is Holbrook writing about being on Mount Shasta:
"There were limits. And there was loneliness, the terrible loneliness that could crush me and was going to be stalking me until I found a safe place to lay it down someday, in trust. Maybe with someone. I looked up at the summit and thought maybe I could make it today. But I didn't have the heart for it. Snow was in the wind and the mists were gathering around that lonely peak."
I read that as a glimpse of Volume 2: Holbrook says the second book will be about how he learned to love, for the drive to survive and succeed left little room for affection in the early years. In later life, as an established star, he would meet the late Dixie Carter, the great actress and human being who believed in him unconditionally. That too is likely to be a highly personal and unvarnished story.
Hal Holbrook has two literary heroes: Twain and Shakespeare. And, like his heroes, Holbrook doesn't flinch. That's what makes him a great storyteller and an actor, and man, of stature.
Keith C. Burris is editorial page editor of the Journal Inquirer. "Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain" is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
