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By – Craig Ceravolo
We lost Shelley Duvall this month. She was only 75 years old, which seems rather too soon in 2024. I would click on recent videos of interviews before she left us with captions like “You will be shocked to see Shelley Duvall now…sad” and she was just…older. She was missing some teeth, and her hair was a wild bird’s nest, but her big brown eyes were still wide and bright. She seemed as lovely as ever. I don’t think she was sad at all; she seemed to be happy to have another shot at acting, a career she didn’t really want to begin with. She had moved back to Texas, where she was born. This seemed odd to me – Shelley Duvall felt like a being from another dimension, a cosmic bird who was excited and anxious to be in the world. I couldn’t fathom her being from a recognizable location on planet Earth.
“Welcome to the Astrodome, the eighth wonder of the world”
She wanted to be a scientist. Studying microbes. She was helping her artist boyfriend sell his paintings and she pitched a few to Robert Altman by chance. He asked her to be in his next film, Brewster McCloud. He didn’t buy any paintings. She didn’t become a microbiologist. She was Houston Astrodome tour guide Suzanne to Bud Cort’s Brewster, his literal downfall. She was a magic bird. It’s about as good as any acting debut can get and you fall for her along with Brewster. Altman was lucky to know her, and he knew it. She shows up again and again in his films: McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Thieves Like Us (1974), Nashville (1975), Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976), 3 Women (1977) and Popeye (1980).
LA Joan in Nashville. Look her up, watch the movie. That’s all you need to know about Shelley Duvall. But there is so much more.
“He needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs me…”
Kubrick’s abuse of Shelley for the sake of art has been split open and dissected enough. She gives a subtle performance that is a welcomed respite from Jack Nicholson’s over-the-top mania. The most tension I get from The Shining is early on when Wendy manages to make excuses for her abusive, alcoholic spouse while keeping that cigarette ash intact for the entire scene (it never drops). She smokes a lot in those early films. She is lighting up in one of her last interviews. I wonder if movies made her smoke, or she brought her habit to the screen.
The Shining and Popeye in the same year (1980). Now that’s acting range.
But she is perfect in Altman’s Popeye as Olive Oyl. The studio didn’t want to give it to her, if you can believe that. She made a demo of “He Needs Me”, one of the songs Harry Nilsson wrote for the movie. The wife of an executive saw her sing it and said “Well…there’s Olive Oyl right there.” That was the end of that search. Lots of songs were written for the ill-received experiment, but that one has a new life thanks to Tik Tok and PTA’s Punch Drunk Love. It’s hopefully delicate, a little bashful and all Shelley Duvall.
“Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall”
She never stopped working. My co-host Gareth could probably write a book on her performance in Time Bandits. I’ll let him work on that. She’s also in Annie Hall, but that’s a whole other story.
Many people I talk to remember her fondly from Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre. She was the creator and producer and had so much goodwill stored up in Hollywood that she brought on film actors to play Fairy Tale characters. Robin Williams was the Frog Prince in the first episode. Coppola directed one. So did Tim Burton. She acted in a few but mainly introduced each story with a cheery “Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall.” Someone edited together a 10-minute cut of these on YouTube. If I practiced meditation, I would pick this as my mantra.
I have left off so much. Watch her films and TV work of course. But watch her 80s talk show interviews…she is impervious to David Letterman’s snark and genuinely gracious for Arsenio Hall’s awkward praise.
She was really into recombinant DNA and cloning during an interview with Letterman in 1984. It’s charming and guileless and perfect Shelley, ahead of her time always and forever.
Written by: Craig Ceravolo
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