Shelly Duvall RIP
Noted genre actress Shelly Duvall has passed today at the age of seventy five due to complications resulting from diabetes.
One of acting’s little secrets is that it is mostly genetics more than anything else. What bag of tricks did fate leave in your cradle as an infant? Was it the emotional vampirism so necessary in driving a practitioner of the craft forward? Was it the ability to lift one eyebrow? Was it that indefinable quality called, ‘the magic’? Was it looks? Nah, it wasn’t looks. If you have the magic producers will cough up the money to provide looks.
In Shelly Duvall’s case it was being able to open her eye’s wide enough to show the whites both above and below the pupil. You have no idea how useful that one is. Astonishment, comical shock, insanity, or stark raving terror. It makes all the extremes of human emotions ridiculously easy to express.
And having written all of that, I can’t find a single picture where she was doing that.
Saucer-eyed to be sure but her gift was the magic.
Director Robert Altman first discovered her in Texas in 1970 and cast her in Brewster McCloud. Shelly wasn’t wild about taking up like on the boards but her talent was undeniable. If you had a part that was perfect her, you knew it and you’d offer her the part. She continued working for Altman through the seventies in title like Macabe and Mrs Miller, Thieves like us and her breakthrough film Nashville.
Her best remembered work is in genre films. The best known is of course Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Kubrick was infamous for beating his actors to jelly in his films and The Shining was no different for Duvall. She threw herself into the over the top role of Olive Oyl in Altman’s Popeye and that same year was one of the star crossed eternal lovers in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits.*
She retired from acting in 2002 due to health issues and returned to her native Texas.
“In a 2016 interview on Dr. Phil, she appeared confused, rambling, agitated and disoriented. Promos for the controversial and widely condemned interview showed Duvall saying to the camera: “I am very sick. I need help.””
“The interview was held for that year’s November sweeps, and many in Hollywood were outraged and accused host Phil McGraw of exploiting the troubled star. Days later, the Actors Fund reached out to try and help any assistance she might have needed — from social services to direct financial aid. According to McGraw, Duvall declined his show’s offer of follow-up assistance.”
“But she returned after two decades with last year’s indie horror film The Forest Hills. It starred Chiko Mendez as Rico, a disturbed man who is tormented by nightmarish visions after suffering head trauma while camping in the Catskill Mountains. Duvall played Rico’s mother, who serves as his inner voice.
“Her death was announced by her longtime partner Dan Gilroy.”
“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us,” Gilroy said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley.”
She was 75.
*My RE:View of Time Bandits is starting to get a little depressing. This is the second bit of bad news I’ve had since posting it on Monday.
