One-Man Shows Featuring Historic Figures Continue to be Popular

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Historic figures have proven to be popular subjects for one- person shows for decades and still engage audiences. Mark Twain, Paul Robeson, Harry Truman, Golda Meir, Clarence Darrow and Vince Lombardi all leap to mind. In fact, each of these historic figures was  played on stage by an extremely well known actor.

Few can match the record of Hal Holbrook, (b.1925) who has performed his "Mark Twain Tonight!" show for over fifty years. It Is a one-man play devised by Holbrook, in which he depicts Mark Twain giving a dramatic recitation selected from several of his (Twain's) writings, with an emphasis on the comic ones. However, a lengthy excerpt from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is always included.

Holbrook turned the concept into a one-man show in the 1950s and premiered it on Broadway in 1966.. He won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play a and an Emmy Award nomination for the 1967 television broadcast on CBS.

Holbrook continues to tour in the play and alternates the material that he performs. The original program from the 1959 Off-Broadway engagement included the note, “While Mr. Twain’s sections will come from the list below, we have been unable to pin him down as to which of them he will do. He claims this would cripple his inspiration. However, he has generously conceded to a printed program for those who are in distress and wish to fan themselves.”

Remarkably, 2012 marks the 58th consecutive year that Holbrook has performed "Mark Twain Tonight."

The great actor Henry Fonda has been remembered for  his one-man show about Clarence Darrow. After Fonda played several demanding roles in Broadway plays, he returned to Broadway in 1974 for the biographical drama, "Clarence Darrow," for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. He toured the show in several cities. Laurence Luckinbill is one several actors who have taken the Darrow show on the road after Fonda. Luckenbill  has crafted solo plays about Lyndon Johnson, Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway.

"Give 'em Hell, Harry!" is a biographical play and 1975 film, written by playwright Samuel Gallu. Both the play and film are a one-man show about former President of the United States, Harry S. Truman. "Give 'em Hell, Harry!" starred .James Whitmore. Many others continue to tour with it.

The title comes from an incident that took place during the 1948 Presidential election campaign. While in Harrisburg, Illinois, Truman delivered a speech attacking the Republicans. During the speech a supporter yelled out "Give 'em Hell, Harry!". Truman replied, "I don't give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it's Hell." Subsequently, "Give 'em Hell, Harry!" became a lifetime slogan for Truman supporters.

James Whitmore was nominated for Best Actor by both the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes.

Paul Robeson, a gifted singer, actor and political activist, who suffered for his progressive political opinions, was first played on the stage by James Earl Jones. Avery Brooks, left,  a well known television and stage actor, has played Robeson many times on stage in the past decades. Robeson said, "The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."

Brooks has performed the role many times since 1982. He has appeared at the Westwood Playhouse in Los Angeles,  the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and the Longacre Theater on Broadway.

In 2011, he played the title role of Paul Robeson at the Shakespeare Theater. He has also performed one-man shows about Martin Luther King Jr. and poet Langston Hughes.

Anne Bancroft played Golda Meir, the fourth Prime Minister of Israel, in 1977 in William Gibson’s “Golda’s Balcony.” The play was reworked into a one-woman show and Tovah Feldshuh continues to tour the world in it.

Recently, I attended a performance of a one-man show about Leonard Bernstein (1918-90). Hershey Felder, a talented performer who writes his scripts, also performs shows about George Gershwin and Frederic Chopin throughout  the world. He captivated a large crowd at Chicago Royal George Theater on Chicago’s North Side recently.

He told journalist John Olson, about the creative process when preparing to his one-man show about Chopin

"I did a preliminary workshop where I used three people (to play the characters of Chopin, his female lover novelist George Sand, and Chopin's friend, the painter Eugène Delacroix). It was quite clear that fundamentally the concept was wrong…. We did it for a couple of weeks in Boston a few years ago and it was very clear that we were working with a huge problem, which is that Chopin in that situation can't talk because he's angry at everybody all the time. He can't say anything, so he's constantly running to the piano. And the fact is that the audience wants to know what he has to say. And they want to hear him play. So, this is not for lack of trying, or for wanting to do another one-man show. You try all kinds of things and eventually you realize you have to give the audience what they're prepared to come and see. And then you figure out artistically what to do."

"In the case of Gershwin, it was a way to communicate a man who wanted the world and died before he had a chance. In the case of Chopin, it's a very different kettle of fish; this is a man who had the world, and he didn't have himself. It's sad to think he's so gifted and so magical, such a wizard and yet could be so ill at ease in a conversation, in a relationship. Sand first fell in love with him because he was this magical, prince-like wizard and then she had to get out of the relationship because he basically drove her mad. A person knows what it's like to be with somebody who doesn't see the world, not necessarily the way you do, but doesn't see the world in some form of reality. Ghosts and conflict and haunting, which is what his problem was.

"So there's a story to tell here, and yet he produces some of the most beautiful music ever written. Absolute, absolute beauty! How is this possible? Where does this come from? Did emotional things drive him? So that's part of the study of this character and I think people relate to it in some way or other."

"I think today a lot of people want to be 'allowed in' to the music world. In the old days, you didn't have records. Someone in the house played piano. That was how you made music. People made music. Everybody played. It was really a remarkable time. A couple hundred years ago for sure, everybody studied music, had music books. Think about what a time that must have been."

"With Gershwin I have to manufacture it because he's a non-emotional man playing a non-emotional piece. With Chopin I get to be the other actor and just to allow it to happen. The secret of Chopin is allowing it complete freedom and if you allow it complete freedom it explodes. Somehow it just comes and you get to the end and tears are just rolling down my face, and I'm going 'this poor man.'"

Since a few Gershwin contemporaries are still around, Felder says it easier to research him. That was not the case with Chopin. " You see, when you grow up in the classical world, it's not alien. When you're exposed to your first Chopin piece at whatever age you want to devour everything about this man, and I did, as a kid. (In developing Monsieur Chopin) I had associations with every Chopin society; and with Jeffrey Kallberg, who's chairman of the department of music at U. Penn. He is the number one specialist on Chopin in America, so he acted as a consultant and we became friends. If I wanted to take a scene in this way, he made sure it was believable, if I wanted to take a scene that way, that kind of thing. Things like I would say this or that or the other thing, he would say, 'it actually happened exactly like this.' None of these stories are made up. All of what you see has reference."

Visit your local library to obtain resources on this topic:

Mark Twain Tonight! An Actor's Portrait
Hal Holbrook, (1959).

Mark Twain Tonight! (DVD)
Paul Bogart; Hal Holbrook, (2005).

Acting Solo: The Art of One-Person Shows
Young, Jordan R. (1989).

Clarence Darrow (DVD)
John Houseman; Henry Fonda; David W Rintels, (2006).

Golda's Balcony: A Play
William Gibson , (2007).

Give 'em hell, Harry!
James Whitmore; Samuel Gallu; Thomas J McErlane; Peter Hunt; Steve Binder, (2008).