Hal Holbrook

The through-line of Hal Holbrook's ninety-five years, from his birth in Cleveland in 1925 to his death in 2021, was a role he wrote for himself. Mark Twain Tonight!, developed while he was studying at Denison University, brought him critical attention in 1954 and a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1966. He kept performing it for more than sixty years and only retired the show in 2017, when his health made it impossible. He won five Primetime Emmy Awards for television work and was nominated for an Academy Award for his film acting.

On screen he was the institutional man, and directors used him because the trust he projected could be turned. He is Deep Throat in All the President's Men, half-lit in a parking garage, warning two reporters in a voice that suggests the information is costing him something. He is Lou Mannheim in Wall Street, the old broker dispensing decency nobody wants. He is Oliver Lambert, the courtly senior partner in The Firm, and Lieutenant Briggs in Magnum Force, and Dr Kelloway running the mission in Capricorn One. The tone barely changes across those parts; what changes is whether you should believe him.

He kept working into his eighties in a warmer key. Ron Franz in Into the Wild is a lonely old man offering to adopt a stranger, and he plays it without a shred of sentiment. Old Jacob in Water for Elephants, Preston Blair in Lincoln, Frank Yates in Promised Land. He also enjoyed himself in horror, as the priest in The Fog and as the henpecked professor in the Creepshow segment The Crate, which is the funniest he ever was on film.