Jerry O'Brien wrote:
>
> I believe I heard somewhere, perhaps from the Chamberlain, Willi, and
> Ouchterloney lawfirm that handled the estate or from Holbrook's agent that
he
> met with Clara Clemens  and asked her about the voice after working on it.
I
> don't know the sequence of events but as I understand it, she told him it
was
> the closest thing to her father's voice that she had heard.

That is consistent with Caroline Thomas Harnsberger who, in her 1982 _Mark
Twain's Clara_ on p. 197, states:

     "... due to his remarkable memory, his excellent impersonation and
skill in make-up, he became almost as famous as Twain himself.
     "Hal had often expressed his desire to meet Clara Clemens, but at
the same he was a little fearful she might not approve of his
interpretation, though he made a sparkling, lovable person of her father.
... He was not able to call on her until a year-and-a-half before her
death ... . ... Clara wrote that he had taken them 'by storm,' and that
she had found him to be all that I had said."

larry marshburne               [log in to unmask]