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Epicurus.com - Mark Twain Tonight
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List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $11.99
Your Save: $ 12.96 ( 52% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Kultur Video
Starring: Hal Holbrook
Directed By: Paul Bogart
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9781561278916
Format: Color
ISBN: 1561278912
Label: Kultur Video
Manufacturer: Kultur Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Kultur Video
Release Date: 1999-04-27
Running Time: 90
Studio: Kultur Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1967-03-06
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Editorial Reviews:
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Come meet Mark Twain. OK, true, the humorist has been dead for more years than we care to remember, and not many of us around today were alive to hear what he sounded like. But Hal Holbrook is so spectacular in his one-man performance that you could swear you were listening to Twain himself. The gravelly voice, the lined face, the slow shuffle, and cigar-induced throat clearings seem so natural that you'll have difficulty recognizing Holbrook beneath the white suit, the gray hair, and the handlebar mustache. Mark Twain Tonight! began as a Broadway show in the 1960s and was filmed as a CBS special in 1967. Yet you'd never know it, because the humor, which is more than a century old, is still laugh-out-loud funny today. Twain--I mean, Holbrook--gives a monologue that is rambling, intelligent, and humorous as he culls together commentary from a variety of Twain sources. From dachshund hounds, politics, and patriotism to cigar smoking, memory loss, and religion, this 90-minute video leaps from subject to subject as we're entertained by material that's as fresh today as it was when it was written in the 1800s. --Jenny Brown
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Mark Twain Tonight.
Comment: Long before Spalding Gray brought one-man performance monologues into the mainstream, 40-year-old actor Hal Holbrook perfected this wonderful stage persona as an homage to the elderly author of "Huckleberry Finn" and many other treasures of American literature. His resemblance to Twain is uncanny, his diction impeccable, and the commentary--all folksy wisdom and homespun anecdotes about politics and religion, women, aging, cannibals, and more --came from his long-running Broadway show. This program was a landmark in TV history, and minted Holbrook's reputation. Today it is as enlightening and entertaining as ever.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "Pure" Twain !!
Comment: If you love a good laugh and thought provoking ideas mixed together, then buy this DVD....It is "pure" Twain !! Also, Mr. Holbrook is great as Mark Twain...
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Not his best material, but still a great performance...
Comment: Those of us old enough to have seen Holbrook do his one-man Twain show in the 1960's, and to have owned the original cast recordings "Mark Twain Tonight" and "Encore: More Mark Twain Tonight" know that this 1967 television version featured second-rate material. Yet second-rate Twain is still better than most comic/philosophical writing. (There was also an original cast recording of this show released.) Now there is a CD on Columbia Legacy called "Mark Twain Tonight" which combines some producer's idea of the best of each of the three older records. I would have picked some different bits if I had the task, but overall that is pretty good and well worth the money. Since this DVD is the only thing available showing Holbrook as Twain when Hal was still young, playing Mark at the age of 70, it will have to do. If you are a real Twain fan, or a real fan of one-person stage offerings, this should be in your collection...but get that CD also, before it goes out of print, for some even better material. In the TV show, the one mistake was spending too many of the 90 minutes on the more "serious" side of Twain---the anti-war social criticism aspect of his works. Don't sit down to watch this and expect it to be all laughs, all the time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hal Holbrook mesmerizes as Mark Twain
Comment: Much as Mark Twain had to do in his life, Hal Holbrook mesmerizes audiences with his portrayal of Mark Twain, the first stand-up comic this nation has ever known.
Hal Halbrook has performed his ever changing Mark Twain stage act before he became a household name in the movies. It took a made for TV special about Mark Twain by Hal Holbrook to rekindle this nation's curiosity about him.
A lot of the things Mark Twain commented on then are just as true today. If it weren't for his having to do a stage routine to work off his owed debts, we would never have been introduced to his wit by other than the written word.
Customer Rating:
Summary: He channels Mark Twain
Comment: Outstanding theatre perfectly translated to the small screen. I first heard Holbroook's Twain in the early 60s, and have re-visited it many many times with increasing pleasure. Don't miss this one if Tom and Huck intersected with your childhood. COme to think of it, don't miss this even if they didn't! A life altering experience!
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