Hal Holbrook, actor acclaimed for his portrayal of Mark Twain, dies at 95 - NBC News

Hal Holbrook, an award-winning actor acclaimed for his one-man portrayal of American literary legend Mark Twain and whose film work included portraying the mysterious "Deep Throat" in "All the President's Men," has died at 95, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Holbrook died on Jan. 23 at his home in Beverly Hills, California, the New York Times reported. It said his death was confirmed late on Monday by his assistant, Joyce Cohen.

In 2008, at age 82, Holbrook became the oldest male performer ever nominated for an Academy Award for his supporting role in "Into the Wild."

But it was his recreation of the revered American novelist, humorist and social critic in "Mark Twain Tonight" that brought Holbrook his greatest fame. It earned him a Tony award for his Broadway performance in 1966 and the first of his 10 Emmy nominations in 1967.

Hal Holbrook arrives to the premiere of "Planes: Fire & Rescue" at the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles, Calif., on July 15, 2014.David McNew / Reuters file

Holbrook was still a young man in the mid-1950s when he crafted the role of Twain, who died in 1910 at age 75, and his first big exposure came when he took the act to the popular "The Ed Sullivan Show."

He performed it for former President Dwight Eisenhower and in an international tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department. He continued with his Twain act well into his 90s.

"Mark Twain is something precious to me. It's my side arm through life," Holbrook told NPR in 2007.

Holbrook said he took on the Twain persona after trying to find a figure to portray in a one-man play. He read a few pages of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and said he felt a connection.

He developed the act in New York City nightclubs and first took it to Broadway in 1959.

With makeup, wig, bushy white mustache, white suit and a cigar, Holbrook bore a striking resemblance to the author at age 70 as he delivered a monologue drawn from Twain's writings and speeches on subjects ranging from religion to politics to human frailties. He said he had performed the show every year since and in every state, as well as around the world.

Tall, with an air of dignified reserve, Holbrook also gave distinguished portrayals of Abraham Lincoln, winning an Emmy for lead actor in a limited series in 1976 for specials based on Carl Sandburg's biography of the president.

He also won Emmys for a television special playing Captain Lloyd Bucher in 1973's "Pueblo" and as lead actor in a dramatic series in 1970 for the series "The Bold Ones: The Senator."

Other significant roles were as "the major" in the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller's "Incident at Vichy," as Martin Sheen's partner in "That Certain Summer," the first TV movie to give a sympathetic portrayal of homosexuality, and as "Deep Throat," the key source in the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon's presidency, in the 1976 movie "All the President's Men."

Holbrook was born in Cleveland on Feb. 17, 1925, and his mother was a vaudeville dancer. After serving in the Army in Newfoundland during World War Two, Holbrook attended Denison University in Granville, Ohio, where his senior honors project was on Twain.

He toured small towns as Twain, then took the show off-Broadway where it was a hit that launched his career. Holbrook made some 2,000 appearances as Twain.

His other films included "The Group" in 1966, "Wild in the Streets" in 1968, "Magnum Force" in 1973, "The Star Chamber" and "Wall Street" in 1987, "The Firm" in 1993, "That Evening Sun" in 2009 with wife Dixie Carter, and Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" in 2012.

Holbrook had a recurring role with Carter, a star of the sitcom "Designing Women," ring role, who died in April 2010 at age 70.

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‘Whip/Nae Nae’ rapper Silento charged in murder of his cousin - WGHP FOX 8 Greensboro

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1. ‘Whip/Nae Nae’ rapper Silento charged in murder of his cousin  WGHP FOX 8 Greensboro
2. Silento Charged With Murdering Cousin in Georgia  TMZ
3. Atlanta rapper Silento charged with murdering his cousin in DeKalb  Atlanta Journal Constitution
4. Rapper Silento Charged with Murdering His Cousin  Yahoo Entertainment
5. Celeste, Olivia Rodrigo On Track For U.K. Chart Crowns  Billboard
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Hal Holbrook, Actor Who Channeled Mark Twain, Is Dead at 95 - The New York Times

He carved out a substantial career in television and film but achieved the widest acclaim with his one-man stage show, playing Twain for more than six decades.

Hal Holbrook, who carved out a substantial acting career in television and film but who achieved his widest acclaim onstage, embodying Mark Twain in all his craggy splendor and vinegary wit in a one-man show seen around the world, died on Jan. 23 at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 95.

His death was confirmed by his assistant, Joyce Cohen, on Monday night.

Mr. Holbrook had a long and fruitful run as an actor. He was 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 played 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.

Mr. 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 onstage in a rumpled white linen suit, spinning an omnisciently pungent, incisive and humane narration of the human comedy.

Mr. Holbrook in 1973, when he played the commander of a Navy intelligence boat seized by North Korea in the TV movie “Pueblo.”Jerry Mosey/Associated Press

Mr. Holbrook never claimed to be a Twain scholar; indeed, he said, he had read only a little of Twain’s work as a young man. He said the idea of doing a staged reading of Twain’s work came from Edward A. Wright, his mentor at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. And Mr. Wright would have been the first to acknowledge that the idea had actually originated with Twain himself — or rather Samuel Clemens, who had adopted Mark Twain as something of a stage name and who did readings of his work for years.

Mr. Holbrook was finishing his senior year as a drama major in 1947 when Mr. Wright talked him into adding Twain to a production that Mr. Holbrook and his wife, Ruby, were planning called “Great Personalities,” in which they would portray, among others, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Mr. Holbrook had doubts at first. “Ed, I think this Mark Twain thing is pretty corny,” he recalled telling Mr. Wright after the first rehearsals. “I don’t think it’s funny.”

But Mr. Wright prevailed upon him to stay with it, and in 1948 the character came along when the Holbrooks took to the road with a “Great Personalities” touring production.

They first tried the Twain sketch before an audience of psychiatric patients at the veterans hospital in Chillicothe, Ohio — a circumstance Mr. Holbrook explains only vaguely in his 2011 memoir, “Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain.” In the sketch, Mr. Holbrook’s cantankerous Twain was interviewed by Ruby Holbrook:

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen in June.”

“Whom do you consider the most remarkable man you ever met?”

“George Washington.”

“But how could you have ever met George Washington if you’re only nineteen years old?”

“If you know more about me than I do, what do you ask me for?”

The patients stared straight ahead — “No one was looking at us,” Mr. Holbrook wrote — and guffawed at the laugh lines, proving that “the guys in the ward were saner than they looked” and that the material had legs.

The Twain piece became their most popular sketch over the next four years, as the couple crisscrossed the country performing for schoolchildren, ladies’ clubs, college students and Rotarians.

Meeting President Dwight D. Eisenhower as Mark Twain at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 1959.Bob Schutz/Associated Press

Mr. Holbrook began developing his one-man show in 1952, the year Ms. Holbrook gave birth to their first child, Victoria. He soon looked the part, with a wig to match Twain’s unruly mop, a walrus mustache and a rumpled white linen suit, the kind Twain himself wore onstage. From his grandfather, Mr. Holbrook got an old penknife, which he used to cut the ends off the three cigars he smoked during a performance (though he was not sure whether Twain ever smoked onstage). He sought out people who claimed to have seen and heard Twain, who died in 1910, and listened to their recollections.

He had more or less perfected the role by 1954, the year he began a one-man show titled “Mark Twain Tonight!” at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania.

Two years later he took his Twain to television, performing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The Tonight Show.” In the meantime he had landed a steady job in 1954 on the TV soap opera “The Brighter Day,” on which he played a recovering alcoholic. The stint lasted until 1959, when, tiring of roles he no longer cared about, he opened in “Mark Twain Tonight!” at the Off Broadway 41st Street Theater.

By then the metamorphosis was complete. With his shambling gait, Missouri drawl, sly glances and exquisite timing, Hal Holbrook had, for all intents and purposes, become Mark Twain.

“After watching and listening to him for five minutes,” Arthur Gelb wrote in The New York Times, “it is impossible to doubt that he is Mark Twain, or that Twain must have been one of the most enchanting men ever to go on a lecture tour.”

Mr. Holbrook preparing his makeup. With his shambling gait, Missouri drawl, sly glances and exquisite timing, his metamorphosis became complete.Michael Stravato for The New York Times

But for Mr. Holbrook, the Mark Twain guise he put on every night was a mask; behind it, he wrote in his memoir, was a lonesomeness that had plagued his early life, beginning when his parents abandoned him as a small child. As an adult he found his marriage, his fatherhood and even his stage life caught in an existential deadlock, with “survival and suicide impulses working in tandem.” His escape, he said, was punishing amounts of work, not to mention the company of friends like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

In his memoir, Mr. Holbrook described an emotional low point in the early 1950s. He was sitting in a hotel room at the end of a long day, still undecided about doing an all-Mark Twain show and feeling lost, when he began rereading “Tom Sawyer” for the first time since high school.

“You heard the voices coming right off the page,” he wrote. “This was a surprise, and after a while I began to feel pleasant with myself and that was a surprise, too. Bitterness receded and in its place a boy came crowding in, his friends came in and his family, and it wasn’t very long before I did not feel so lonely anymore. Mark Twain had cheered me up.”

Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. was born on Feb. 17, 1925, in Cleveland. He was 2 years old when his parents left him. His mother, the former Aileen Davenport, ran off to join the chorus of the revue “Earl Carroll’s Vanities.” Harold Sr. went to California after leaving young Hal in the care of grandparents in South Weymouth, Mass.

The young Mr. Holbrook spent his high school years at the Culver Military Academy in Indiana and then enrolled at Denison to major in the dramatic arts, but his education was interrupted by service as an Army engineer during World War II. He was stationed for a while in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where he joined an amateur theater group and met Ruby Elaine Johnston, who became his first wife. The couple returned to Denison after the war, and Mr. Holbrook soon became Mr. Wright’s prize student.

After he became an established attraction in the United States, Mr. Holbrook took “Mark Twain Tonight!” to Europe, performing in Britain, Germany and elsewhere. German audiences roared when he presented Twain’s view of Wagnerian opera: “I went to Bayreuth and took in ‘Parsifal.’ I shall never forget it. The first act occupied two hours and I enjoyed it, in spite of the singing.”

Mr. Holbrook and Emile Hirsch in the 2007 film “Into the Wild.”Paramount

Mr. Holbrook toured the country with the show several times a year, racking up well over 2,000 performances. He compiled an estimated 15 hours of Twain’s writings, which he dipped into whenever his routine needed refreshing. He won a Tony Award in 1966 for his first Broadway run in “Mark Twain Tonight!”

Mr. Holbrook was 29 when he started playing Twain at 70; as he grew older, he found he needed less and less makeup to look elderly. He continued the act well past his own 70th birthday, returning to Broadway in 2005, when he was 80.

After playing Twain for more than six decades, he abruptly retired the role in 2017. “I know it must end, this long effort to do a good job,” he wrote in a letter to the Oklahoma theater where he had been scheduled to perform. “I have served my trade, gave it my all, heart and soul, as a dedicated actor can.”

Mr. Holbrook made his Broadway debut in 1961 in the short-lived “Do You Know the Milky Way?” He returned there in the musical “Man of La Mancha,” in Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall” and other plays.

His scores of television appearances included “That Certain Summer” (1972), a groundbreaking film in which he starred as a divorced man who must ultimately admit to his son that he has a gay lover (Martin Sheen). In the early 1990s he had a recurring role on the sitcom “Evening Shade.”

Mr. Holbrook’s many film roles tended to be small ones, although there were exceptions. One was as the mysterious informant Deep Throat in “All the President’s Men,” the 1976 film adaptation of the book by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the Watergate cover-up. Another was in “The Firm” (1993), based on John Grisham’s corporate whodunit, in which Mr. Holbrook played the stop-at-nothing head of a Memphis law firm.

Mr. Holbrook and his wife, Dixie Carter, at the 2008 Screen Actors Guild Awards, where he was nominated for his role in “Into the Wild.”Chris Pizzello/Associated Press

His Oscar-nominated performance, in “Into the Wild,” directed by Sean Penn, was as a retired military man who has a desert encounter with a young man on a quest for self-knowledge that would ultimately take him to the Alaskan wilderness. His final screen roles were in 2017, when, at 92, he guest-starred in episodes of the television series “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Hawaii Five-0.”

Mr. Holbrook’s first marriage ended in divorce in 1965. In addition to their daughter, Victoria, they had a son, David. His second marriage, to the actress Carol Eve Rossen, ended in divorce in 1979. They had a daughter, Eve. In 1984 he married the actress Dixie Carter, who died in 2010.

He is survived by his children as well as two stepdaughters, Ginna Carter and Mary Dixie Carter; two grandchildren; and two step-grandchildren.

In adapting Mark Twain’s writing for the stage, Mr. Holbrook said he had the best possible guide: Twain himself.

“He had a real understanding of the difference between the word on the page and delivering it on a platform,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2011. “You have to leave out a lot of adjectives. The performer is an adjective.”

Richard Severo, Paul Vitello and William McDonald contributed reporting.

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Canton native Marilyn Manson dropped from record label following abuse allegations - WJW FOX 8 News Cleveland

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1. Canton native Marilyn Manson dropped from record label following abuse allegations  WJW FOX 8 News Cleveland
2. Evan Rachel Wood Accuses Ex Marilyn Manson of Abuse | E! News  E! News
3. Evan Rachel Wood names Marilyn Manson as alleged abuser: 'I am done living in fear'  Yahoo Entertainment
4. Marilyn Manson bragged about abusing Evan Rachel Wood. No one listened.  NBCNews.com
5. Evan Rachel Wood and Others Make Allegations of Abuse Against Marilyn Manson  Vanity Fair
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“Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” Rapper Silento Charged With Murder Of Cousin In Georgia - Deadline

Rapper Silento, known for his viral song “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” was arrested in Georgia on Monday and charged with murder.

Silento, born Richard Hawk, was arrested for the murder of his 34-year-old cousin Fredrick Rooks, the DeKalb County Police Department shared on Twitter. On Jan. 21, police officials investigated Rooks’ death after finding him dead with mutliple gunshot wounds on Deep Shoals Circle.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the rapper is being held without bond.

Silento rose to fame when his number “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” debuted on May 5, 2015. The catchy number also featured an accompanying dance that soon became viral on social media platforms including Instagram and Twitter. The rapper even performed a version for Nickelodeon to promote their Labor Day weekend lineup.

“Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2015.

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Marilyn Manson Denies Evan Rachel Wood's Abuse Allegations - Snopes.com

This article is republished here with permission from The Associated Press. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rocker Marilyn Manson was dropped by his record label on Monday after actor Evan Rachel Wood accused her ex-fiancé of sexual and other physical abuse, alleging she was “manipulated into submission” during their relationship.

Manson called the allegations “horrible distortions of reality.”

Wood, who stars on HBO’s “Westworld,” had spoken frequently in recent years about being abused in a relationship but did not name the person until she posted Monday on Instagram.

“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” Wood said. “He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years.”

Manson’s label, Loma Vista Recordings, said in a statement that after the “disturbing allegations,” it will “cease to further promote his current album” and has “also decided not to work with Marilyn Manson on any future projects.”

Wood and Manson’s relationship became public in 2007 when he was 38 and she was 19, and they were briefly engaged in 2010 before breaking up.

Wood, now 33, said in her post that Manson left her “brainwashed and manipulated into submission.”

“I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives,” the post added.

She concluded, “I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.”

Manson responded with his own Instagram post Monday night.

“Obviously my art and life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality,” his post said. “My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how — and why — others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth.”

It was not immediately clear whether Wood has gone to authorities with any of her allegations, and a representative did not immediately respond when asked via email whether she had.

In 2018, Los Angeles County prosecutors declined to file charges against Manson over allegations of assault, battery and sexual assault dating to 2011, saying they were limited by statutes of limitations and a lack of corroboration. The accuser in that case was identified only as a social acquaintance of Manson.

He denied the allegations through his attorney at the time.

In 2017, Wood was one of thousands of women who identified themselves as victims of sexual harassment or assault amid the #MeToo movement.

“Being raped once made it easier to be raped again. I instinctually shut down. My body remembered, so it protected me. I disappeared. #metoo,” Wood wrote at the time as part of a series of tweets on her experience.

In 2018, she testified about her abuse to a House Judiciary subcommittee as she sought to have a Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights passed in all 50 states.

“My experience with domestic violence was this: Toxic mental, physical and sexual abuse which started slow but escalated over time,” she told the committee.

Wood began acting as a child, gaining fame and a Golden Globe nomination for playing a troubled adolescent in 2003’s “Thirteen.”

For three seasons she has played Dolores Abernathy, a sentient android, on HBO’s “Westworld” and has been nominated for a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award for the role.

Manson, 52, became a household name in the mid-1990s with a series of hit rock albums and used a stage persona designed to shock and stoke controversy.

The Associated Press does not normally name people who say they were victims of sexual assault but is naming Wood because of her decision to speak out publicly.

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Super awkward exit on 'The Bachelor' after Matt James cleans house due to bullying - Yahoo Entertainment

On The Bachelor Monday night, Matt James made it clear that he does not stand for bullying.

Following last week's episode, in which fan-favorite Katie Thurston brought to Matt's attention the “mob mentality” and toxicity within the house, Matt immediately took action. The Bachelor first took contestant Anna Redman aside to confront her about spreading the rumor that Brittany Galvin is an escort.

"Anna said something that was out of character, but the damage has been done. I've seen how words can affect people, and I owe it to these women to create a safe space for them, and that's what I'm gonna do," stated Matt after sending Anna home before the rose ceremony.

However, the biggest bully in the house has been this season's "villain," Victoria Larson. The self-proclaimed "Queen" has been behind almost all of the drama thus far, and has been dragged by viewers since day one for her delusion and for completely lacking self awareness.

"I hope I don't get sent home for this," said Victoria to an off-camera producer. "Literally, there's no one in here he can marry besides me. Like, I'm literally the best option for him, and, like, I'm the only one with a working brain in this room, and I'm not even being rude. I'm being serious. If he's gonna believe some idiot over me, he's not my person, and, like, if that does happen, that'll really suck, because that's not the way I wanted to leave this situation, and, like, you know I'll be so heartbroken, and I'm, like, trying to be positive, but, like, if that happens, I'll literally die."

During the rose ceremony, Victoria stated, "I'm not malicious. I have a good heart. Does Matt really want a wife that's constantly creating drama? Or does he want a wife like me?"

Bachelor Nation was absolutely thrilled when Matt did not give Victoria a rose during the ceremony and instead sent her home.

This is the best episode so far. So happy that Matt is taking care of this house. That was exactly what I needed to see #TheBachelor #bachelorabc

— Jordan Orosco-Keenan (@justjordan1323) February 2, 2021

"I honestly feel so sorry for you that you would listen to hearsay and not all of the facts behind a situation. So goodbye," Victoria told Matt as the two awkwardly stared at each other for an uncomfortable amount of time.

Later, Victoria shared in her exit interview, "You think I'm gonna go hug him goodbye? No. And he just stared at me. Like, how dare you? He is not my king, and I am still a queen. Matt is a jester. The fact that, like, he chose Katie over me, ugh. Yeah, Matt, I feel sorry for you with your choices. I would be very surprised if the girls are, like, okay that I left. The whole house is gonna feel like s*** that I'm gone. Like, I brought so many people joy. Whatever. Matt's not the guy for me. I'm never dating another Matt as long as I live. Ever. I hate that name now."

The eliminations didn't stop there. On top of Matt cleaning house with Anna and Victoria, MJ Snyder's fate also remains in question after Matt found out she had coined the term "Varsity" vs. "J.V." in reference to the original contestants and the new girls. But we'll have to wait until next week's episode to find out if she fesses up to it.

The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC.

Watch Katie Thurston being praised for standing up to bullying from other women on ‘The Bachelor’:

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Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. And check out our host, Kylie Mar, on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

Originally published February 2, 2021, 9:11 AM

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