Hal Holbrook ending 63-year run as Mark Twain

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cleveland native Hal Holbrook is hanging up the white suit, for good. The 92-year-old actor confirmed Wednesday that he was retiring his landmark one-man show, "Mark Twain Tonight!"

Holbrook, who began regularly performing as Twain in 1954, cited the grind of traveling as a primary reason for ending a show he has performed more than 2,200 times. But the actor emphasized he is not retiring. He will continue to seek work in film and television.

Last season, he appeared in episodes of "Grey's Anatomy" and "Bones." The white suit he has worn for 63 years is being packed away, however, so even a special farewell performance is being termed unlikely.

Holbrook, who made his stage debut in a 1942 Cain Park Theatre production of "The Man Who Came to Dinner," was 29 when he began touring "Mark Twain Tonight!" in 1954. He was 34 when his Twain show became one of the most lauded events of the 1959 New York theater season. "Mr. Holbrook's material is uproarious, his ability to hold an audience by acting is brilliant," raved the New York Times.

In 1966, the actor won a Tony Award for a Broadway run of "Mark Twain Tonight!" In 1967, he took "Mark Twain Tonight!" to CBS for a prime-time special that received high ratings and an Emmy nomination.

In 1985, Holbrook and Twain embarked on a round-the-world tour. And in June 2004, he began a three-week Broadway run of "Mark Twain Tonight!" at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

He brought "Mark Twain Tonight!" to Akron's E.J. Thomas Hall in 1980, 1988, 1995 and 1999. He appeared as Twain in Cleveland at the Palace Theatre in 2001, 2004, 2009 and 2015 (four days after his 90th birthday).

"The truth is that he's been wonderful company," Holbrook told The Plain Dealer during one of his appearances in Cleveland. "It would be an understatement to say I like him. He never ceases to amaze me. Even after all these years, I'm still stunned by his insight into the human character. So much of what he had to say more than 100 years ago is right on the money for today."

Yet Holbrook never gave the same performance twice as the author of "Tom Sawyer," "Huckleberry Finn" and "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." Throughout his 63-year run as Twain, he constantly changed the show to reflect the times, ultimately going through about 18 hours of material.

Although best known for playing Twain in this acclaimed one-man show, Holbrook is a versatile actor who has starred on Broadway, in movies and on television. Indeed, his remarkable run of celebrated TV work has earned him five Emmy awards, not one of them for playing Twain.

In 2008, at the age of 82, he received his first Oscar nomination, which he called " miracle." It was for his moving portrayal of retiree Ron Franz, the lonely widower who befriends young wanderer Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) in director Sean Penn's "Into the Wild."

The first Emmy was in 1971 for his portrayal of idealistic politician Hayes Stowe on the "The Senator," one of three rotating segments of NBC's "The Bold Ones." Playing Commander Lloyd Mark Bucher in "Pueblo" (1973) won him two more Emmys. Others followed for portraying another iconic American, Abraham Lincoln. in the miniseries "Sandburg's Lincoln" (1975) and for narrating the "Portrait of America" documentary series in the late '80s.

In addition to playing newspaper editor Evan Evans on the CBS series "Evening Shade" (1990-94), Holbrook has starred in such powerful TV movies as "The Whole World is Watching" (1969), "That Certain Summer" (1972), "When Hell was in Session" (1979), "Murder by Natural Causes" (1979) and "Day One" (1988).

On the big screen, Holbrook has appeared in such films as "The Great White Hope" (1970), "Magnum Force" (1973), "All the President's Men" (as Deep Throat in 1976), "Julia" (1977), "Creepshow" (1982), "Wall Street" (1987), "The Firm" (1993), "The Majestic" (2001), "That Evening Son" (2009), "Water for Elephants" (as the Older Jacob in 2011), "Promised Land" (2012) and Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" (as Francis Preston Blair in 2012).

And non-Twain theater engagements also brought him back to Cleveland,. During the '90s, he starred in the Great Lakes Theater Festival productions of Shakespeare's "King Lear," Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" and Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman."