- Hello, I'm Beth MacMillan and welcome to "Arteffects".

In our featured segment, we head to Incline Village to meet McAvoy Layne who impersonated Mark Twain throughout northern Nevada for more than 35 years.

Before he retired in September of 2023, Layne performed for thousands of schools and special events, dressing the part perfectly and speaking the celebrated words of Mark Twain in true Nevada style.

(old timey piano music) - Becoming Mark Twain is fun for me.

You know, you just mess up your hair and slip into a white suit that's kind of rumpled.

Pick up a pipe.

I can't talk without it after all these years.

My name is McAvoy Layne but I'm more recognized as Mark Twain.

Mark Twain was the father of America's literature.

He left us about 28 volumes but the ones you might remember most from your childhood were the boy books, "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn", and maybe as you got a little older, "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court".

My favorite is "Roughing It" because there's a lot in there about Nevada.

I arrived riding a small yellow donkey so small my feet touched the ground on both sides and he was able to bend around and bite me on the legs.

(audience laughing) Before Mark Twain tapped me on the shoulder, I was in radio and in a perfect place, the Hawaiian Islands.

(upbeat music) I was off the air at 10 o'clock and on a wave at 10 after.

I had everything a boy could want except skiing.

So I rented a cabin here at Tahoe for five days.

(bright music) I was so excited I could hardly sleep the first night but it snowed five feet overnight.

It took them five days to plow up to where I was.

I thought it was the worst stroke of luck but it turned out to be the best.

I threw darts for two days, then my elbow gave out and I sat down and on the coffee table was, "The Complete Essays of Mark Twain".

And I had cabin fever by then.

My brain was soft, so that seed was planted in fertile ground.

(folk music) It took me 10 years to read everything he gave us before I had the courage to go out and have a white suit made and started visiting classrooms in our schools.

I would see 10 schools a week and I'd go see secondary schools Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then on Thursday I'd go see a couple elementary schools and then Friday, I'd always schedule a middle school to keep from getting soft and I'd come home on a gurney.

(folk music) When I first started portraying Mark Twain I was 45 years old, so I wanted to sound older.

I wanted to sound 70 so I would affect my voice.

"Well, now, old Jim Blaine would get comfortably and sociably charged and tell the story of his grandfather's old ram."

Now I'm older than Twain would be.

I'll be 80 this summer so I'm older than he was when he died.

Now I'm trying to sound younger.

But you still throw in that little Missouri accent.

I must confess to you, I have no formal education.

In truth, I am as unlettered as the backside of a tombstone, but I've gained worlds of knowledge and secondhand, none of it, correct (crowd chuckling) No, all you need for success in this life is ignorance and confidence.

And then success is sure.

My very favorite part about being Mark Twain is the way people react to being near him and asking questions or perhaps sharing a story of their own.

It always brings out the best in people.

- [Everyone] Mark Twain days!

(upbeat music) - Piper's Opera House rests up there on B Street in Virginia City, and it is the shrine for me.

The luckiest break I ever got was when I was first starting out, I got a call from Carol Piper Marshall, the great-granddaughter of John Piper.

She said, "McAvoy, I hear you're portraying Mark Twain in the schools."

I said, "Yes, I'm loving it.

I'm seeing 10 schools a week."

She said, "How'd you like to do two shows a day, six days a week for four months at Piper's?"

Over 200 shows.

And I got to try out new material on a live audience every day because some of Twain's writing is wonderful literature but does not recite, and you find out what works with a live audience.

So by the end of that summer of '88, 35 years ago, thanks to Carol Piper Marshall, I wasn't ready for prime time but I was ready to go out on the road.

On the 30th of September this year, I'll be standing on that stage in my last program as Mark Twain.

(folk music) When I laid down my pen at the territorial enterprise I had four horse whippings and two duals owing to me.

And yet, when I said goodbye to Virginia City, Carson City, Lake Tahoe, I knew I was saying goodbye to the most vigorous enjoyment of life I would ever be afforded.

Those days were full to the brim with a wine of life and there have been no others like that.

(audience applauding) Mark Twain liked to look at the good side of human nature.

Toward the end, after his wife Olivia died he got a little bit sour and went off in the dark side of Mark Twain.

But before Livy left this earthly realm, she taught him to use his humor like the wheel on an opera glass, to focus our attentions on more serious matters at hand so he could comment on our society and human nature with his humor in such a way that it would stick with us, like, "Always do right.

This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

That's wonderful wisdom.

When I first started out being Mark Twain, I made myself a promise.

One, have fun.

Two, don't play loosely with his material and make Twain scholars happy.

And I've stuck to that all 35 years and I'm proud of that.

(folk music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Arteffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Meg and Dillard Myers, in memory of Sue McDowell, the Carol Franc Buck Foundation and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(upbeat music)