Guiness Book of World Records once called Robert Duvall the most versatile actor currently working. That was about 40 years ago. I’m sure a lot of other actors (Samuel L. Jackson maybe) have claimed that title since.
But even given his body of work up to that time, it was impressive. It was the type of work that an actor would borrow, steal or kill to have. It was just luck that Duvall rose to prominence when he did as movies and TV were changing in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Let’s face it with his male pattern baldness that made him look a lot older and his country drawl, he probably would’ve just been a character actor if things hadn’t changed. Cary Grant and Rock Hudson may have been eye candy for the women, but a lot of men didn’t have the GQ looks. More importantly, Duvall, Gene Hackman and Jack Nicholson who all got their feet wet in the 1960s before making more serious movies, looked more like they could be the characters they played. It’s hard to imagine Timothee Chalamet and Tom Holland playing hardened cowboys or police detectives.
But when you saw Duvall in his first role as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, he looked like what Harper Lee had envisioned. He was already getting the receding hair and glazed/chiseled looks of an introverted unsocialable man. The same can be said for Maj. Frank Burns in Robert Altman’s iconic MASH where he played a hypocritical arrogant medical doctor who blamed poor Bud Cort (who also recently passed away) for a soldier’s death when the man was beyond saving. But he lets his lust and anger get the best of him.
In 1980, he became one of the rare actors to find themselves competing at the Oscars in both the Best Lead Actor and Best Supporting Actor roles for The Great Santini and Apocalypse Now respectively. I remember as a kid seeing him as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore as a bare-chested madman with an M-16 in his hands as bombs and bullets go off on a beach as he doesn’t see any immediate danger. It would be one of his iconic roles as he said some memorable dialogue such as “Charlie don’t surf!” and “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
Kilgore was both the same but very different from Lt. Col. Bill Meechum, a Marine jet pilot, who commands his household in a certain way similar to basic training. Kilgore took care of his soldiers while still demanding they fight. During one scene in Apocalypse, he shows some sympathy for a young soldier still a little horrified by the battle that just happened. Meechum, on the other hand, taunts his own son, Ben (Michael O’Keefe), to cry when he cheats at a basketball game and says his son didn’t win.
Kilgore was the type of commanding officer you hope to get if you enlist. Meechum is the type of father you lose a lot of contact with once you grow up. They both wanted the best for the people but Meechum is the type that views his children as an extension of himself. When Ben isn’t performing well at a real game, he sees it as a reflection of himself.
Sadly, Duvall didn’t go home with an Oscar for either performance. Nor did he win one for his other famous roe as Tom Hagen, the adopted son of Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) in The Godfather. Tom obviously was the brains of the operation and if he was a real Sicilian like his brothers, he would’ve eventually been the next in line. When Vito is gunned down, Tom tries to convince his brother, Sonny (James Caan), who’s more of a hothead that it’s business not personal. Tom knows you just don’t fly off the handle. You choose your battles. Tom was kidnapped and threatened himself and he cares for Vito as well as his biological sons, but he knows that organized crime comes with a lot of collateral damage.
And because he can casually look at the violence around him, it makes him just as sadistic. When Jack Woltz (John Marley), a famous movie producer, intimidates Tom, he just casually finishes his dessert and excuses himself. He knows where this is headed. Anyone doubt it wasn’t Tom who suggested they kill Woltz’ prize male horse?
Also, the scene between him and Sal Tessio (Abe Vigoda) as it’s been revealed that Sal has betrayed Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is perfect. Tessio was Vito’s caporegime and Tom grew up around him. To just non-chalantly say “Can’t do that, Sally” when the older man pleads for mercy shows you can’t let your emotions get the best of you. Tom was now Michael’s consigliere. He couldn’t look weak in front of the soldiers. In the second movie as Tom has been treated badly by Michael, he still does the evil bidding. He arranges for a prostitute to be murdered to blackmail a corrupt Senator (G.D. Spradlin).
It’s a shame that Paramount Pictures didn’t pay Duvall what he was worth to appear in the third movie as both Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo had a totally different story intended. As it goes, Paramount only wanted to pay Duvall $1 million in 1990 dollars as opposed to the $5 million they would pay Pacino. Duvall knew his worth and he wasn’t going to be paid chump change especially after finally getting an Oscar for Tender Mercies.
But a lot of people would say that was really a sympathy/consolation prize for his previous works that went unrewarded. Some have argued his role as corporate stooge Frank Hackett in Network is not as good as the roles by William Holden or Peter Finch (who won the Best Lead Actor Oscar). But I think people like Hackett were a warning as the rise of media conglomerates that care more and more about the bottom line and whether it was up or down. Hackett barks like a bulldog to everyone around him refusing to listen to those who he see is beneath him even telling a TV executive he can turn his resignation rather than hear him out. At the same time, he behaves timid to the company CEO Jensen (Ned Beatty) wanting a nice compliment like a kid wanting a gold star for the day.
In many ways, Hackett was the type of person Duvall would later say no to when they wanted to underpay him play Tom Hagen a third time. He would continue his don’t give a fuck attitude in the 1990s as he publicly criticized Steven Spielberg for what he considered was hypocrisy on political views. When he didn’t win an Oscar for his role as Euliss F. “Sonny” Dewey, a flawed but committed Pentecostal preacher in The Apostle, he refused to show up the next year when he received another Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in A Civil Action.
For what it’s worth, his role is a lot better than Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets. Nicholson plays a crochety novelist who suffers from OCD. It was a safe role. Duvall got so much into the role one would think he was a real-life pastor. He would deliver sermons with a cadence and fanfare that makes the movie worth watching. At the same time, he’s not a good man as he’s running from the law for an assault charge. He only realizes at the end there’s some sins you can’t get absolved from by faith.
The movie features Walton Goggins and Billy Bob Thornton in some of their earlier roles. Duvall would appear in Thornton’s Oscar-winning Sling Blade as the deranged senile father of Thornton’s main character. He also showed his comic chops earlier that year in A Family Thing, which Thornton had co-wrote in which Duvall plays a man who learns he has a half-brother played by James Earl Jones in Chicago.
Duvall had a nice role as the old-fashioned country rancher patriarch in Something to Talk About as he played the father to Julia Roberts and Kyra Sedgwick who wants Roberts’ character to more or less take back her philandering husband (Dennis Quaid) as an important business deal is looming. One of the best moments is when he and Gena Rowland have it out and she comments how much his character is always letting out flatulence. He also had a nice supporting role as an abusive and erratic Southern country man in The Gingerbread Man, a neo-noir legal thriller set in the Savannah area. Duvall reteamed with director Robert Altman for this movie which had a lot of controversy behind the scenes.
And a new decade and new century saw Duvall appearing alongside Kevin Costner in the underrated Open Range. The role is similar to his iconic role as Augustus “Gus” McRae in Lonesome Dove. He played Boss Spearman, a Civil War vet turned seasoned open range cowboy, who ends up starting a war with corrupted Irish immigrants who kill one of their cowboys.
This was released the same year he played Gen. Robert E. Lee in Gods and Generals. The role should’ve been the type an actor who film critic Vincet Canby once called “the American Olivier” would’ve shined in. Yet, the movie that was funded mostly by Ted Turner took on a more Lost Cause of the Confederacy view of the American Civil War and was heavily panned. Written and directed by Robert F. Maxwell based on the novel of the same name by Jeff Shaara, it’s a prequel to Gettysburg. Yet over three and a half hours long, it also bombed at the box office.
Sadly, Duvall’s performance as Lee comes off as parody of antebellum stereotypes. It also didn’t help the movie was released a year and a half after 9/11 in the middle of winter as the Iraq War was brewing.
But Duvall was used to the lows with the highs. He probably wanted to forget it but as his involvement in The Scarlet Letter was also heavily criticized as the movie is one of the worst of the 1990s. Duvall was able to bounce back in his Golden Years with an Oscar nominated role in the 2014 legal drama The Judge alongside Robert Downey Jr. By this time, he was already in his mid-80s and knew he was aging. He began to appear mostly in lesser roles before officially retiring in 2022.
Yet, some actors work best in the roles with less screen time. Remember that one short scene of him as a priest on a swing in the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers? As he stares off at people not saying a word as he is on the swing, it becomes apparent he’s one of the alien clones. And despite he was almost 60 while playing Commander Fred Waterford in the horrible adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, I think the “ick factor” of him with Natasha Richardson’s Kate/Offred robs the sex scenes of any intimacy as it’s supposed to. It’s obvious she is raped being forced to bare his children in a dystopia where a lot of women can’t have children.
For Duvall himself, he commented he must’ve been shooting blanks as he was married four times and never able to have children. That’s why I think his role as Gus in Lonesome Dove is his best, because it’s the one that seems the closest to him.
Gus is a former Texas Ranger who is living in retirement in a border town in Texas when he and his long-time friend, Woodrow Call (Tommy Lee Jones), decide to drive cattle north to Montana. At the time, both Westerns and miniseries weren’t too popular. But with the help of Motown Records producing it, there was an all-star cast of people in the four-part series that was a ratings and critical hit. Other cast members included Diane Lane, Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Chris Cooper, Barry Corbin, Glenne Headley, Steve Buscemi, Robert Urich and Federic Forrest.
Both Duvall and Jones were nominated for Emmys in the Lead Actor role. But neither won. Instead James Woods won for the forgettable My Name is Bill W. Originally, Duvall was approached to play Call but he liked Gus better. It’s hard to imagine anyone else as the fiesty but ornery old cus who loves whiskey, biscuits and whores. Despite being an expert marksman, he has a laissez-faire attitude that irritates the more stoic grumpy Call who knows Gus is the only one he can’t order around. Both Duvall and Jones are so perfect together as two people who can bicker at one minute yet they can read each other knowing what the other is thinking and about to do. It’s a wonderful bromance of two aging cowboys in a world where the real old-school cowboys are dying off.
Duvall was 15 years older than Jones who had to dye his hair grey-white and wear make-up. But I’d like to think that Gus, himself, is a few years older than Call and Call still believes in respect for his elders. They’re brothers and Gus is the older brother. Ergo, he still has a little bit of authority over Call.
He did win the Golden Globe for his role as Gus. Later, he would win the Best Lead Actor Emmy for Broken Trail but I feel it was another sympathy/consolation prize. Lonesome Dove is still remembered while Broken Trail has gone into the ether of past TV shows. Not to say it wasn’t bad, Duvall seemed to be gravitate so well to the roles of cowboys.
That’s why I would have to say he was Hollywood’s last true cowboy and outlaw. I’d like to think he’d sit at home watching all the Taylor Sheridan MAGA cowboy fan fiction and laugh. I wouldn’t even doubt if he was called a few times to appear on something like Yellowstone only to tell them to “piss off.”
But Guinness was right. He was very versatile. He could put on a Stetson, a combat helmet or a police badge and you’d believe he was the real deal. I hate that character actors don’t get a lot of praise, but Duvall himself had the ability to play just about any role. Unfortunately, many stars nowadays are just playing themselves. (Side eye to Dwayne Johnson and Mark Wahlberg.)
But many actors would refuse to do roles such as the somewhat gullible burglary cop Pendergrast in Falling Down who doesn’t believe police officers should swear in the office. Or there’s his role alongside Robert Redford as Max Mercy in The Natural. He’s a reporter and he’s not a bad guy. He just seems to look for a problem that doesn’t really exist as he tries to dig up Roy Hobbs’ past for sensational journalism.
At 95, it’s hard to isolate his career in a few roles as you can with other actors. And we may never have another actor like him.
What was your favorite role of his? Please comment.
Zane Says 