Perspective From Twain to Deep Throat Hal Holbrook left an indelible

Back in the olden days when people sent handwritten letters through the mail, Hal Holbrook wrote a beautiful one to me. Actually, it wasn’t all that long ago — Feb. 23, 2004, to be exact. But Holbrook, who died late last month at age 95, was in every sense a gentleman of the old school, in manners, in love of performance, in devotion to his craft. My favorable review of “Mark Twain Tonight! ” at the Warner Theatre — a solo show he had been performing for 50 years — had run in The Post that day. He’d immediately put pen to “Hal Holbrook”-embossed note paper to tell me how delighted he was that I “got it. ” (Tip for artists communicating with critics: Tell them that they thoroughly understood what you wanted to convey, and you’ll melt their jaded, overstimulated hearts. )“I remember the first intelligent and insightful review I got as Twain 47 years ago, ” Holbrook wrote, in elegant cursive. “It was in Emporia, Kansas (was it the Gazette? Mr. White’s paper? ), ” he asked, referring to William Allen White, the influential Emporia newspaper editor of the mid-20th century. “It was the first time someone wrote down what I was trying to do and it meant the world to me because I knew then that I had something.“It encouraged me to keep going and keep digging. I’ve done that. ”Holbrook was 79 when he wrote that, and he would keep going and digging as Twain for 13 more years, finally retiring the performance in September 2017. It was announced Tuesday that he had died in Beverly Hills on Jan. 23 — when at last, he could put up his feet and share a cigar somewhere in the firmament with the great American novelist and raconteur who had been so good to him for almost his entire acting life. There were, of course, other peak moments in Holbook’s professional career, most vividly and belovedly — especially at The Washington Post — his portrayal of Watergate informant Deep Throat in the 1976 film “All the President’s Men. ” Holbrook raised lurking in shadowy corners of underground garages to a cinematic art: Remember the trace of gravel-voiced contempt he exuded as he spooned out morsels of damning info to Robert Redford’s Bob Woodward? I’ve watched the scene dozens of times, in which Redford’s reporter loses patience with his arrogant, ambivalent source — and imagined an entire play based on that flammable moment. That was the lightning-bolt excitement a great actor could apply to a supporting role, or what is sometimes attributed wrongly to the work of a “character actor. ” (Any part an actor plays is a character! ) Holbrook was revered by others of his craft, his touch so finely wrought on a stage or on film that you’d hear his colleagues cite him as an exemplar of the understatement they also sought to embody. Holbrook’s patrician bearing and seamless technique allowed him, at earlier inflection points in the evolution of American entertainment, not only a distinguished career in the classics but also a certain utility-man quality. All data is taken from the source: http://washingtonpost.com Article Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert... #holbrook #newsus #newstoday #newsworldabc #bbcworldnewstoday #newstodaybbc #