| Mark Twain Tonight | 
 enlarge | Director: Paul Bogart
Actor: Hal Holbrook
Studio: KULTUR VIDEO
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.99
Buy New: $16.39
You Save: $13.60 (45%)
Buy New/Used from $15.99
Avg. Customer Rating:   (22 reviews)
Sales Rank: 8655
Format: Color, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 90 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Academy Ratio
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5 x 0.6
MPN: 1891
ISBN: 0769718914
UPC: 032031189195
EAN: 9780769718910
ASIN: B00003M5G9
Release Date: November 30, 1999
Theatrical Release Date: March 6, 1967
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
Mark Twain Tonight - a classic for my collection November 11, 2008
Mark Twain Tonight is now a valued item in my personal library of classics. One of my professors at college was inspired to impersonate Mark Twain based on this performance. I would highly recommend this educational & entertaining dvd for anyone who wants more than Hollywood mindless entertainment.
Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain October 9, 2008
Saw this presentation years ago as a kid and watched it again now and its still great. Our kid enjoys it, too, so, Mark Twain (and Halbrook) hasn't lost his charm.
Mark Twain Tonight. June 28, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
"Pure" Twain !! May 7, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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...
 Not his best material, but still a great performance... September 22, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
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.
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