In the interest of adding to the historical record, perhaps it is time I
narrate my first sighting of Holbrook’s Mark Twain performance--which, I
believe, is the earliest of those posted so far.

This was at the National Theatre in Oslo, Norway, in the autumn of 1960,
when Holbrook was on a USIS tour to win “hearts and minds” and I was in
Norway as a visiting Fulbright professor. As guests of the American cultural
affairs officer, my wife and I had front-row seats for Holbrook’s
performance. We were enthralled by the material he presented and impressed
by the realism of his makeup. He truly looked the way we imagined Clemens
must have looked, except for one detail our advantageous seating made
evident. He had a young man’s hands--a flaw I am sure the passage of time
has corrected.

After this pleasure, how could I refuse the cultural affairs officer’s
request that I give a public lecture on the occasion of Lincoln’s birthday?
Unfortunately, the night of February 12 proved to be the coldest, snowiest,
most miserable we had experienced up to that time in Norway. Although the
venue for my talk was an embassy auditorium more modest than the National
Theatre, when I looked out across a sea of seats vacant except for a handful
of embassy shills ordered to attend, toward the back a single, bearded man
appeared to be the only auditor who had chosen on his own to brave the
weather.

Well, if he was willing to make the effort, so was I. Looking him steadily
in the eyes, I talked directly to this man, pouring out all the secondhand
erudition I had been able to gather in the USIS library in preparation for
my speech. He seemed pleased, and from time to time nodded agreement with my
more telling observations.

At the conclusion of the lecture, the shills roused themselves enough to
clap politely and my real audience, the bearded man--who, I later learned,
was a notable Oslo eccentric--walked out into the snow, barefoot, munching a
raw carrot.


Charles Boewe