Skelekate: I saw Hal Holbrook do Mark Twain to an audience of moneyed Virginians shortly after the 2017 inauguration. He obliged them with 10 minutes of the usual stuff, then spent the rest doing Mark’s material in this vein. Played to near silence except me and the librarian next to me, hooting with approval.

Mark Twain hated the Fourth of July. He was often invited to speak at Independence Day festivities. His audiences assumed that his reliably unpatriotic remarks were tongue-in-cheek jests. But he meant that shit. 1/9

I saw Hal Holbrook do Mark Twain to an audience of moneyed Virginians shortly after the 2017 inauguration. He obliged them with 10 minutes of the usual stuff, then spent the rest doing Mark’s material in this vein. Played to near silence except me and the librarian next to me, hooting with approval.

Hal Holbrook aka The Best of Us. (Also holy hell my iPhone 6 takes a way better picture than my 13 ever has.)

Yeah, that photo is gorgeous.

Holbrook’s one of my heroes. Produced the podcast which features his last appearance as Twain. After performing “United States of Lyncherdom” at Ole Miss during integration with National Guardsman in the trees, he was never again afraid to go hard.

Disney based the animatronic Mark Twain who hosts EPCOT's American Adventure on what the CIA had hoped Hal Holbrook would become before he was "radicalized" by the Civil Rights Movement. Isn’t automation grand??? Happy Fourth of July!

Downloading now!

What’s the podcast called? Can’t find it.

First episode we ever made, so it's a little LoFi, but I stand by the narrative.

“The Gospel of Revolt: Mark Twain in Elmira,” An Episode of The C19: America In The Nineteenth-Century Podcast, Featuring Hal Holbrookmarktwainstudies.com A podcast tour of Elmira, listeners are introduced to the legacies of the Park Church, Woodlawn Cemetery, and Quarry Farm, as well as a cast of characters from the Underground Railroad, Women&#8217…

As I recall, in the 1967 broadcast of Holbrook’s Mark Twain Tonight! You can hear the audience go dead silent as they realize he’s talking about Vietnam.

That’s our guy!

Unfortunately, there's not many recordings of Holbrook's thousands of performances, but you can listen to his 1959 audio recording (based on the original Off-Broadway run that made him famous) & watch the 1967 TV version. He had to negotiate with CBS, but the '67 show is still way edgier.

If y'all wanna go really deep:

The Twain Doctrine: Citizen Holbrook & The Geopolitics of Colloquial Humormarktwainstudies.com Hal Holbrook was, briefly, an agent of the US government in the Cultural Cold War with the Soviet Union.

And:

You Could Get Bookings: A Review of Holbrook/Twainmarktwainstudies.com A new documentary paints an intimate portrait of the actor who spent 63 years playing one of America’s most iconic historical figures.

I would have LOVED to see this.

Barked like seals we did in a theater of geriatrics quietly fuming in their furs and good suits. (If memory serves, there were some other approvals in the nosebleeds. I’d splurged on orchestra.)

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