He was 95.
Holbrook played iconic author Mark Twain for more than six decades in one-man shows and in 1966 won a Tony Award for Best Actor for his role in ‘Mark Twain Tonight!’ which he also led.
He performed the show across the country and in Europe and became synonymous with the famous humorist.
Holbrook and his siblings were born in Cleveland, Ohio, as the father and father of a vaudeville artist, and they were raised by his grandparents in South Weymouth, Massachusetts.
As a child and later sent military school to boarding school, he found solace in the costumes and characters he portrayed in the drama club.
Holbrook first got the idea to do the Twain show after portraying the author as part of an honors project as a drama major at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.
While serving in the Army during World War II, he performed in amateur theater productions, including ‘Madam Precious’ while stationed in Newfoundland.
There he met his first wife, actress Ruby Johnston, whom he married in 1945.
Back home, Holbrook delivered a steady acting on the soap opera “The Brighter Day” during the day and continued his Twain performance.
Ed Sullivan later captured a performance of it and invited Holbrook to appear on his variety show in 1956.
Holbrook’s career on stage and screen was amazing.
He made his Broadway debut in 1961 in “Do You Know the Milky Way?” and the Great White Way would become a household name 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 ground on the small screen with the 1972 television movie “That Certain Summer” in which he played a divorced father who comes out as a gay man.
Holbrook appeared in several other TV productions, such as the NBC miniseries “Lincoln”, which won him an Emmy in 1976, and the sitcom “Designing Women” in the 1980s, starring his then-wife, Dixie Carter appear.
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 her death due to complications of endometrial cancer in 2010.
He also had success in movies.
Holbrook’s role as ‘Deep Throat’ in the 1976 political film ‘All the President’s Men’ gave the audience something to hang their hat on as the actual source that Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward (played by Robert Redford in the film) advised 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 the then 82-year-old Holbrook the oldest artist nominated in that category at the time.
But it was Twain who returned Holbrook time and time again.