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.
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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.
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.
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.
