When the Legends Die: Robert Duvall
There are very few screen legends left. Last year deprived us of three of them: Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, and Diane Keaton. They were from the last generation of stars who succeeded those from the studio age. Marlon Brando was the bridge. There was pre-Brando — Gable, Wayne, Fonda, Stewart, Astaire, Hayworth — and post-Brando — Newman, McQueen, Eastwood, Hoffman, Loren — and no more will follow them. Because the artform they all elevated has shrunk to a comic book level. But for the seven decades preceding that drop, there was the incomparable work of Robert Duvall, who died Monday at the age of 95. (RELATED: When the Movie Legends Die)
How great an actor was Duvall? I found out in my youth as a Sherlock Holmes devotee. Having enjoyed Nicholas Meyer’s bestselling twist on the Canon, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, which depicted the arch-villainy of Professor Moriarty as a fabrication of Holmes’s cocaine addiction, I looked forward to the film version. I balked at the casting of all-American actor Duvall — at the time best known from the two Godfather pictures — as the very English Dr. Watson. Duvall’s sensitive, heartfelt performance, even when called a “useless cripple” by his eminent detective friend, stole the film and made him one of the best screen Watsons of all time.
But then Duvall made every film better, if not special.
But then Duvall made every film better, if not special. Some people and critics, for instance, still insist that The Godfather, Part II is equal or superior to The Godfather. They’re very wrong.
The first film is a flawless masterpiece, and much of the credit goes to Duvall. His low-key portrayal of Corleone family consiglieri (counselor) Tom Hagen gives the audience an almost participatory perspective. Duvall stands out in every scene, even with powerhouse actors at their finest — Brando’s Don Corleone, James Caan’s Sonny Corleone, John Marley’s movie producer Jack Woltz, Al Lettieri’s Virgil (“the Turk”) Sollozzo, Alex Rocco’s Moe Green, and John Cazale’s Fredo Corleone. Probably his most unforgettable scene is near the end, when Hagen sends family lieutenant and old friend Tessio, wonderfully played by Abe Vigoda, to his death. (“Tom, can you let me off the hook — for old times’ sake?” “Can’t do it, Sali.”)
The Godfather, Part II has many rich scenes, but it’s a mess. One of its most blatant flaws was marginalizing Duvall’s Hagen. He’s absent for most of the movie — yet still makes a mark whenever onscreen — in the erratic non-flashback main story. Hagen does get a great bit of business, also near the end, with imprisoned Corleone lieutenant Frank Pentangeli. But the actor playing Pentangeli, Michael V. Gazzo, is so over the top — the opposite of his natural predecessor Richard Castellano as Clemenza — he distracts even from Duvall’s performance.
Duvall’s upgrade of every movie he ever appeared in dates back to his first feature film, To Kill a Mockingbird, as the spooky yet noble Boo Radley. A struggling New York actor in the early 60s, he was roommates with two fellow future legends, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. Duvall continued to pay his acting dues on television, including a stint as a silly alien in Irwin Allen’s The Time Tunnel. But then he transcended a small role as a villain in the classic 1969 John Wayne western, True Grit, into Rooster Cogburn’s memorable adversary (“I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man.”)
But it was the 70s new wave of Hollywood directors who recognized and employed his full potential, beginning with George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas cast Duvall as the lead in his avant-garde science-fiction debut, THX 1138 (1971). This led to the film’s producer, Coppola, casting him in The Godfather. And Duvall never looked back, and movie audiences never looked away from him. The theatrical cut of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) is almost two and a half hours long, but it’s Duvall’s 10-minute sequence everyone remembers, especially his speech delivery, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning…”
In his indispensable Hollywood memoir, Adventures in the Screen Trade, legendary screenwriter William Goldman praises Duvall for taking on the unsympathetic title role in The Great Santini (1979), which no other name actor wanted without changes. Duvall played the protagonist’s father exactly as written, cold and cruel, though with a hint of affection for his son. The decision earned Duvall his first Best Actor Oscar nomination.
He won the award five years later for his sublime performance as a washed-up country star who redeems himself through faith and fatherly love in Tender Mercies. His commitment to the role extended to composing and singing his character’s songs. I was a Washington Post copyboy in 1983 when Tender Mercies came out. The Post film critic Gary Arnold ripped the movie. Unfortunately for him, Executive Editor Ben Bradlee loved it and fired Arnold.
But it was on the small screen in 1989 that Duvall delivered his most indelible, sublime performance — as surly, wise old ex-Texas Ranger Augustus (“Gus”) McCrae in the magnificent western miniseries, Lonesome Dove. Everyone involved is in top form, but Duvall is unforgettable. Until he died of cancer in 2002, TV stalwart Robert Urich (Vegas, Spenser for Hire) took deep pride in Duvall’s complimenting his acting in Lonesome Dove.
Duvall was courageously less complimentary to the most powerful director in Hollywood, Steven Spielberg, when he reportedly gushed about meeting Fidel Castro in Cuba in 2004. Duvall said, “Now, what I want to ask him — and I know he’s going to get pissed off — would you consider building a little annex on the Holocaust museum, or at least across the street, to honor the dead Cubans that Castro killed?” We’ll never see his kind of truth and art again.
READ MORE from Lou Aguilar:
Munich and the Fate of the West
A Fountainhead for the Screen Art
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