Humor Awards Season Continues: Hal Holbrook wins Mark Twain Lifetime Achievement Award

By : on May 17, 2012

Tracy Wuster

Yesterday, we posted on Ellen Degeneres winning the Mark Twain Award for American Humor. Today comes news that Hal Holbrook has been awarded the first ever “Mark Twain Lifetime Achievement Award” by the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum. The press release reads, in part:

Hannibal, Mo. – The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum celebrated its centennial May 15 in part by announcing the establishment of the Mark Twain Lifetime Achievement Award to recognize someone whose life’s work has furthered the legacy of Mark Twain in a significant way.

Hal Holbrook was selected as the first recipient of the award.

The Museum will present the award to Holbrook this fall when he returns to Hannibal. Holbrook will appear in “Mark Twain Tonight!” at 8 p.m. Nov. 17 at Hannibal High School.

“After 100 years of preserving Twain’s legacy by caring for his boyhood home and related properties, we felt it was an appropriate time to establish this award and recognize others who also preserve Twain’s legacy, but in different ways,” museum executive director Cindy Lovell said.

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The performance is sponsored by the museum. Tickets will go on sale June 1 to museum associate members and June 15 to the general public.

Many kudos to Hal Holbrook. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Holbrook at the 6th International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies (i.e. Mark Twain Summer Camp) in Elmira, NY. I told the story of our meeting and posted clips of Mr. Holbrook telling stories awhile back.

Click below for a discussion of our own award…

All this talk about awards for humor, following so closely on the excellent Comedy Awards that I discussed last week, has me thinking that maybe this website needs to award an award of its own: “The Humor in American Award for Humor in America.” Maybe more than one… any ideas on award categories that we could figure out an award for? Post your comments below.

Harold