Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Meryl Streep and Viola Davis in a scene from the film version of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable, directed by the author:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“I think there is in the heroic courage with which man confronts the irrationality of the world a beauty greater than the beauty of art.”
Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook
In today’s Wall Street Journal I pay tribute to Hal Holbrook. Here’s an excerpt.
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Hal Holbrook, who died on Jan. 23 at age 95—his death was announced this week—spent most of his long career working in television, first as a soap-opera lead, then in series, miniseries and made-for-TV movies that are almost entirely forgotten today (who now remembers “The Bold Ones: The Senator”?) save by wizened couch potatoes. He was rarely seen on Broadway, and on the big screen he generally appeared in choice but small character roles…
Yet Mr. Holbrook is remembered to this day for his two greatest stage roles, both of which he also had the uncommon good luck to perform in very fine TV versions that remain in circulation. (They can be viewed on YouTube.)
Not surprisingly, they were character roles, but of a kind that most actors would kill to play, and one of them was in a show of his own meticulous and imaginative devising. In 1948, Mr. Holbrook began performing a monologue in which he portrayed Mark Twain, eventually doing it in New York nightclubs, on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and on Broadway, where it had three separate runs, in 1966, 1977 and 2005. In addition, “Mark Twain Tonight!”(as the full-evening version was called) was telecast in prime time on CBS in 1967, and that oft-repeated TV version made him a star.
Ten years later, Mr. Holbrook played the Stage Manager in a made-for-TV version of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” directed in the studio by George Schaefer. Though he never appeared in the role in New York, he played it more than once in regional-theater productions, most recently at Hartford Stage in a 2007 revival directed by Gregory Boyd that I called “the finest ‘Our Town’ I have ever seen or hope to see.”
What was it about Mr. Holbrook that made it possible for him to give unforgettable performances of two such different roles?…
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“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”
Mark Twain, notebook entry, January or February 1894,
A scene from the film version of Somerset Maugham’s “The Alien Corn,” directed by Harold French, adapted for the screen by R.C. Sherriff, introduced by Maugham. The film is one of four sections of Quartet, a Maugham anthology film released in 1948. The aspiring young pianist is played by Dirk Bogarde:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“’If I thought you had in you the makings of an artist I shouldn’t hesitate to beseech you to give up everything for art’s sake. Art is the only thing that matters. In comparison with art, wealth and rank and power are not worth a row of pins.’ She gave us a look so sincere that it was void of insolence. ‘We are the only people who count. We give the world significance. You are only our raw material.’”
Somerset Maugham, “The Alien Corn”
“Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.”
Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale
