On centenary of Mark Twain’s death, Hal Holbrook performs 1-man show in his beloved Elmira, NY

Holbrook performs in Mark Twain’s beloved NY town

ELMIRA, N.Y. — Hal Holbrook has performed on stage as Mark Twain far longer than Twain himself did.

His 56 years of one-man shows called “Mark Twain Tonight!” reached a milestone in Elmira, N.Y., on Wednesday, the centenary of the author’s death.

The upstate city is where Twain wrote most of his best-known works, from his “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” masterpiece to “Life on the Mississippi,” a memoir of his days as a steamboat pilot.

The Emmy Award-winning Holbrook has been gluing on a bushy mustache and pontificating in a gravelly twang since his first full-fledged Twain impersonation in 1954. The 85-year-old actor didn’t need to pencil in wrinkles before the curtain went up Wednesday at a renovated vaudeville theater bearing the humorist’s real name, Samuel L. Clemens.