Valentine’s Day Special: Hal Holbrook Remembers Dixie Carter
Hal Holbrook recently spoke with Paste about Mark Twain when we named the great American author our 2010 Man of the Year in Nonfiction. Holbrook, of course, has portayed Twain in the one man show Mark Twain Tonight! for over half a century, and currently, That Evening Sun director Scott Teems is in production on a documentary, Holbrook/Twain, that explores the cultural touchstone. At one point, the conversation turned to Holbrook’s late wife, actress Dixie Carter. His reminiscences were so sweet that we pulled them out for a short Valentine’s Day special.
Paste: I understand the Twain documentary was a longtime dream of Dixie’s, right?
Hal Holbrook: Yeah, Dixie very much wanted to see that done, and it was her idea to do it. It’s a wonderful idea, to do a documentary about a show that has really been a part of the American scene for all these decades. I don’t know if Scott [Teems, the Holbrook/Twain director] told you, but she had this idea to open it with a map of the United States. And you could have a different colored ribbon for each decade I’ve done Twain—blue for the first decade, red for the second, and so on. And you could take the first decade and trace the blue line through all the towns I played, and then go the the next decade in red, and so on. And by the end of five decades you would have covered up the entire United States!
Paste: Sounds like she should have been a director.
Holbrook: She could have made a wonderful director. She was so tremendously intelligent, so well informed. You know, my wife, my beautiful, beautiful, sexy-looking wife, you know what she read in bed every night before she’d go to sleep?
Paste: What?
Holbrook: Proust!
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