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He was 95 years old.
Holbrook played iconic author Mark Twain in one-man shows for more than six decades, winning a Tony Award for Best Actor in 1966 for his role in “Mark Twain Tonight!” which he also realized.
He performed the show across the country and in Europe, becoming synonymous with the famous comedian.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a vaudeville mother and a shoe seller father, Holbrook and his siblings were raised by his grandparents in South Weymouth, Massachusetts.
Sent to boarding school in his youth, then to military school, he found solace in the costumes and characters he portrayed in a theater club.
Holbrook first came up with the idea of doing the Twain show after portraying the author as part of a project with honors as a major in theater at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.
While serving in the military during World War II, he performed in amateur theatrical productions, including “Madame Precious”, while stationed in Newfoundland.
It was there that he met his first wife, actress Ruby Johnston, whom he married in 1945.
Back home, Holbrook landed a regular acting gig on the daytime soap opera “The Brighter Day” and continued to perform his show Twain.
Ed Sullivan then attended a performance of it and invited Holbrook to appear on his variety show in 1956.
Holbrook’s career on stage and on screen has been staggering.
He made his Broadway debut in 1961 in “Do you know the Milky Way?” and the Great White Way would become a familiar home for him as he has appeared in numerous productions over the years, including “Man of La Mancha”, “An American Daughter” and – of course – “Mark Twain Tonight.”
He broke new ground on the small screen with the 1972 TV movie “That Certain Summer” in which he played a divorced father who poses as a gay man.
Holbrook has appeared in various other television productions such as the NBC miniseries “Lincoln”, which won him an Emmy in 1976, and the 1980s sitcom “Designing Women”, which starred his then-wife Dixie Carter. .
His marriage to his first wife ended in divorce in 1965. The following year he married actress Carol Eve Rossen.
They divorced in 1983 and in 1984 he married Carter and remained married to her until his death due to complications from endometrial cancer in 2010.
He has also found success in films.
Holbrook’s role as “Deep Throat” in the 1976 political film “All the President’s Men” gave audiences something to hang their hats on as an actual source who advised Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward (played by Robert Redford in the film) in what would become the Watergate scandal.
In 2008, his Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a retired widower in “Into the Wild” made Holbrook, then 82, the oldest performer to be nominated in that category at the time.
But it’s Twain that Holbrook has come back to time and time again.
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