On View : ‘Mason’ Star

Hal Holbrook has given some memorable performances on the silver screen since his film debut in 1966’s “The Group.” Viewers of 1976’s “All the President’s Men” are sure to have Holbrook’s voice etched in their minds as the mysterious Deep Throat.

He’s received even more acclaim on television, where his work has earned him four Emmy Awards, including best actor and a then-designated “actor of the year” award for his role as Commander Bucher in 1974’s “Pueblo.”

But talk to Holbrook and the stage-trained actor acknowledges he’s “just beginning to get the hang of this film acting after all of these years. I am just relaxing now and playing whatever the hell comes out.”

The friendly, articulate Holbrook has had a great time playing the wily attorney Wild Bill McKenzie in three “Perry Mason Mystery” movies for NBC. Holbrook’s latest “Mason” venture, “The Case of the Jealous Jokester,” airs Monday.

Holbrook, 70, made his first appearance last year as McKenzie, the flamboyant Utah rancher and criminal lawyer who takes on cases while his good pal Perry Mason is away on another case. (Raymond Burr, who played Perry Mason, died two years ago).

“I wasn’t a ‘Perry Mason’ watcher,” acknowledges Holbrook over lunch in his small trailer on the Culver City location. “There’s hardly any show on TV I could say I watch. ’60 Minutes’ is the only thing I am consistent about. My wife, Dixie Carter, and I like to sit and watch it on Sunday nights. So I really didn’t have any idea I was going to enjoy this job as much as I am.”

McKenzie is one of the biggest film roles that Holbrook, who describes himself as a character actor, has been offered of late. “Naturally, that appealed to me,” he says with a smile. “My wife and my father-in-law, who lives with us, are great fans of Perry Mason so they said, ‘You have to do this.’ That’s how I got into it. The thing I find really exciting about it is that we are trying to attract really good actors. There are some really good actors around and boy, does it make a difference.”

Dyan Cannon, Tony Roberts, David Rasche, Tina Yothers, Victoria Jackson and Khrystyne Haji are featured in “The Jealous Jokester.”

Holbrook has been developing McKenzie “more in terms of how I react to different people I have to deal with, usually with different suspects. I don’t plan anything, but I play with the actor and come up with an attitude toward the actor.”

When he rehearses a scene he may have an idea in his head about what should happen, “but I don’t try to make it go anywhere. I try to listen to the actor and look at the actor and really see what’s going on with them and just work off of that. It’s like improvising. Things happen.”

The first rehearsal, Holbrook explains, is very crucial for him. “Very often that’s when things happen or don’t happen between actors. If you are connected with an actor who is free and is listening, then you can do anything. It doesn’t matter what you do.”

Holbrook’s blue eyes twinkle. “I remember Laurence Olivier was asked what the difference was between acting on stage and acting in films. He said something that seems very simple. He said, ‘Film is always a rehearsal.’ I started thinking about that. In practical terms, film has always been a rehearsal because you don’t get enough time to develop a scene. You have to be free. The whole essence of film is that you give the impression of doing it for the first time.”

Holbrook also lives by that credo in his Tony Award-winning show “Mark Twain Tonight!” Holbrook began playing the author of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” in 1954 and now performs the one-man show about 18 or 20 times a year.

Improvisation, he says, has kept “Twain” alive for him over four decades. “Doing the show became a search for a way to keep this thing fresh,” he explains. “I developed a lot of different ways to create situations out there on stage which would require me to be almost improvisational.”

For example, Holbrook doesn’t have any set program. “I deal with the audience,” says Holbrook, who has four hours of “Twain” material in his head. “I listen (to them) and then at a certain point I can go this way or that way. I can choose between three or four different selections. Sometimes I do things out there when I don’t think I am really loose. I will suddenly take an enormously long pause to the point that it scares the hell out of the audience and me. Sometimes I change the movements. Sometimes instead of going to the right, I will go to the left and see what happens.”

The theater will always be Holbrook’s first love. “It’s much more challenging because the material is much more meaningful,” says Holbrook, who received rave reviews in 1993 as “King Lear” at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre. “Good literature in theater is literature. This (Perry Mason) is not literature. Good literature has some great, usually powerful universal message to deliver.”

Unlike film actors, stage thespians are virtually in charge of their performances. “You don’t have an editor helping you or ruining you. It’s your responsibility. You take off, you fly it, you aim it, you arc it and you land it. If it fails, it’s your problem.”

The rewards of doing theater, Holbrook says, are great. “You get back in self-esteem and self-worth. It isn’t monetary. They don’t pay you much money for doing these roles. That immediately separates it from the Hollywood scene because in the Hollywood scene, money and power are the two most important things. Quality comes later, if it comes at all. So the theater is a clean, fine, almost kind of noble place, you might say.”

“A Perry Mason Mystery: The Case of the Jealous Jokester” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC.