SHELLEY DUVALL
(7 July 1949 - 11 July 2024)
Shelley Duvall, who has died aged 75 from complications with diabetes, had an outstanding talent. She was a gifted actress sought after by many Hollywood directors but especially by Robert Altman who cast her in seven films. She got on well with Altman and he knew Shelley could come up with the goods, even though he was not typical Hollywood and Shelley was not your average film star. Still, she and Altman were on the same wavelength, and the combination of the two was unbreakable.
Shelley Alexis Duvall was born in Fort Worth, Texas, to the cattle auctioneer-cum-lawyer Robert ‘Bobby’ Duvall and his wife Bobbie Ruth Crawford, a real estate broker. They also had three sons and because of their father’s work the family moved around the state, eventually settling in Houston. She joined a choir and enjoyed playing acting games until she had a yen as a teenager to become a scientist. But following her graduation in 1967, she worked in a department store, then went to South Texas Junior College to study nutrition. By chance she met Robert Altman at a party in Houston where he was on location for Brewster McCloud. She stood out in a crowd and he invited her to join the cast. She flew to Hollywood, having never been outside of Texas before, and the rest is movie history.
Her part in Brewster McCloud (1970) was that of Suzanne, the girlfriend of Bud Cort’s weirdo who lived under the Houston Astrodome, hoping one day he will be able to fly. Duvall made an immediate impression in the film and on Altman who cast her as a mail order bride in McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971), with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. Altman called his film an ‘anti-Western’ as it subverted the usual cowboy conventions. Next came Thieves Like Us, also for Altman, in which Duvall was Keechie, daughter of a convict and the girlfriend of a teenage murderer (Keith Carradine) who goes on the run robbing banks. In Nashville (1975), Altman’s comedy of stories about Country and gospel singers who gather for a music festival, saw Duvall as a stoned groupie, alongside a starry hit-list cast. The film was a great success.
Altman’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson found Duvall as Mrs Frances Cleveland, the wife of President Cleveland. Paul Newman had the title role with Geraldine Chaplin as Annie Oakley and Burt Lancaster as the writer Ned Buntline. Duvall worked for Altman again on 3 Women (1977), a psychological drama about three women in a Californian desert town. Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule were the other two. For Duvall it meant winning the best actress award at Cannes. She also played Olive Oyl in Altman’s Popeye, with Robin Williams in the title role, perhaps a part she was born to play as her appearance was not unlike the cartoon character itself.
While Duvall enjoyed working for Altman, she had a miserable time on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining where the director was so difficult that the principal photography took over a year to complete. Take after take was demanded of the cast, to the extent that Duvall became ill and extremely stressed out. She fared better on Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits and Fred Schepisi’s Roxanne.
Apart from acting in films, Duvall appeared in television series including L.A. Law and The Twilight Zone. She then created her own production company, Think Entertainment, for programmes on TV and cable channels. With another company she did a series of Nightmare Classics of horror stories by Edgar Allan Poe etc. She made more minor films up to 2002. Then twenty years later she returned to the cinema in 2023 for The Forest Hills to play the mother of a man going mad. It was her last film role.
She married the artist Bernard Sampson in 1970 (they divorced in 1974), and she was with the singer-songwriter Paul Simon for two years until they split when she introduced him to Carrie Fisher. Later on, Duvall dated Ringo Starr, but her long relationship with the singer Dan Gilroy lasted from 1989 until her death.
MICHAEL DARVELL