Pop quiz! What is my very favorite TV movie ever made? I have one suggestion in figuring out this conundrum: you can check out my postings on Barry Bostwick or Richard Anderson to find the answer. Another suggestion might be: “Why don’t you read my mind?” Or figure out which TV movie my Columbo writers Richard Levinson and William Link employs that very same phrase as the final line in its serpentine murder mystery plot. Or I could just tell you…it’s a 1979 telefilm called Murder by Natural Causes that my Dad recorded on our own 1979-model VCR for our family, our extended family, and our friends to watch during visits to our house.
Meeting cast members of this film has always been high on my priority list, but I had never held out any real hope of meeting the film’s top-billed star Hal Holbrook, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2007 for Into the Wild. His other credits are many – starring in such diverse films as All the President’s Men, Magnum Force, Creepshow, Fletch Lives, Disney’s Hercules, and Men of Honor, and TV shows such as Evening Shade, The West Wing, ER, Designing Women, and North and South.
But perhaps his most notable role is that of Mark Twain, in a live one-man show that Hal Holbrook has been performing since 1966 – in well over 2000 performances. It was ultimately this role that would lead to our meeting.
I had seen a flyer announcing that the Mark Twain Tonight! show would be coming to the Aronoff Center in Cincinnati on May 18, 2013. I ran it by Carolyn and then bought tickets posthaste. I didn’t necessarily know for sure that seeing the play would get me anywhere near Holbrook, but I decided that it was worth the chance, and I purchased a pair of promo photos from Murder by Natural Causes off of eBay to try and get signed. Carolyn and I scoped out the stage door before the show, and waited around for a bit just on the off-chance that we might catch him on the way in.
The show itself was of course enjoyable, with Holbrook reciting random selections – mostly humorous and often political – as well as a section of Twain’s beloved book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The show was presented in two acts and ran about two and a half hours with the intermission included. I sat between Carolyn and a very talkative lady who had been a high school teacher – so we tried to stay on best academic behavior. There was ample people-watching to do in the theater as well.
We filed out of the theater at around 10pm and headed back to the stage door, located on the side of the building. There were about fifteen people who were looking to meet Mr. Holbrook. We saw a few VIP’s go in and out, and then after about an hour, one of his manager’s came out and said that he still had to remove his make-up and that he’d be out in about another hour. Those who wished to wait would get one autograph per person.
Obviously it was not an inordinately enjoyable wait, but thankfully even though it started to rain, we were under an awning. Carolyn was quite the trooper. He did in fact come out at midnight. There were about seven or eight fans remaining by that time and we formed a circle around him and he signed for each of us.
He got to Carolyn first and she asked him to write “Why don’t you read my mind?” on her photo. He didn’t quite hear her request, but he did recognize the line and the photo and then chuckled and concurred with his two former co-stars Barry Bostwick and Richard Anderson, “hey, that was a great script!” He just signed the photo – as seen at the top of the posting.
When he got to me, I spoke very loudly and clearly (bearing in mind that he was 88 years old) and repeated Carolyn’s request that he inscribe the photo with the line from the film. I was a bit surprised that he so willingly obliged. But when I tried to tell him about my meetings with Bostwick and Anderson and how they agreed about the film, he just nodded in vague interest. He either didn’t hear me, or was too tired to discuss it.
He did however hang out for another five minutes or so talking about his career in acting, and Carolyn and I stuck around, before heading back to the parking garage in the rain. It was after 1:30am by the time we had gotten home. It had been a pretty exhausting venture, but of course I couldn’t be more pleased that I finally got meet the man who had played Arthur Sinclair, mind reader.
Return to May 2013…
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