He was 95 years old.
Holbrook played iconic author Mark Twain in solo shows for more than six decades, winning a Tony Award for Best Actor in 1966 for his role in “Mark Twain Tonight!” which he also directed.
He supported the show throughout the country and in Europe, becoming synonymous with the famous comedian.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a vaudeville mother and shoe salesman, Holbrook and his siblings were raised by his grandparents in South Weymouth, Massachusetts.
Sent to a boarding school as a young man and later to military school, he found solace in the costumes and characters he played in the theater club.
Holbrook first came up with the idea to do the show Twain after playing the author as part of an honors project as a playwright at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.
While serving in the military during World War II, she starred 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.
Returning home, Holbrook won a regular concert on the day soap opera “The Brighter Day” and continued to support his show Twain.
Ed Sullivan later caught a show and invited Holbrook to appear in his 1956 variety show.
Holbrook’s career on stage and screen has been prodigious.
He made his Broadway debut in 1961 in “Do You Know the Milky Way?” and the Great White Way would become a familiar home to him, as he appeared in numerous productions over the years, including “Man of La Mancha”, “An American Daughter” and – of course – “Mark Twain Tonight”.
He started 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 has appeared in various other TV productions, such as the NBC miniseries “Lincoln”, which won him an Emmy in 1976, and the sitcom “Designing Women” in the 1980s, which played his then-wife, Dixie Carter. .
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 she married Carter and remained married to her until her death due to complications from endometrial cancer in 2010.
He also found success in movies.
Holbrook’s role as “Deep Throat” in the 1976 political film “All the President’s Men” gave the audience something to support their hats as a real source that advised Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward (played by Robert Redford in the film) in what became the Watergate scandal.
In 2008, an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a retired widower in “Into the Wild” made Holbrook, 82, the oldest actor ever nominated in that category at the time.
But it was Twain who returned Holbrook countless times.