Mark Twain Tonight! (DVD)

Product DescriptionHal Holbrook's classic performance captures the flamboyant humor and irreverence of Mark Twain, in this remarkable 90 minute, one man show.ReviewBy the time Hal Holbrook made his big-screen debut in 1966's The Group, a lot of people were curious to see what he really looked like. This is because the now-veteran actor had spent more than a dozen years under white hair and latex touring as Mark Twain in a one-man show that remains an institution.Always a busy big-screen actor in subordinate roles, Holbrook is probably best known as Twain (an Emmy and a Tony all but cemented that status), but he also played Abraham Lincoln in a series of TV specials and in the miniseries North and South, John Adams in the miniseries George Washington and World War II Gen. George C. Marshall in the Emmy-winning Los Alamos drama Day One.His other work on the small screen has been ubiquitous across the decades, from The Ed Sullivan Show in the '50s to Disneyland in the early '70s to The West Wing and The Sopranos. A Holbrook character can align with the forces of good (the kindly mentor type in Wall Street) or evil (he headed the conglomerate of shady lawyers in The Firm). But in terms of career benchmarks,? the must-sees include Mark Twain Tonight! (1967, Kultur, unrated, $30): An American classic preserved. --Mike Clark, USA Today