This day sort of didn’t happen for me, in some sense. Yesterday I did a lecture which involved a long drive, and today I was just wiped out. Slept late, accomplished little in the writing realm except for some research-related reading.
Robert Duvall has died. I don’t know if he was my favorite actor; I just don’t think in those terms. But I think he was the actor I trusted most.
He came up in the same generation as Pacino and Hackman, but he identified better than any other actor with the common people of America. Speaking as a farmer’s son, I believed him utterly when he presented himself as a redneck. His contemporaries didn’t have that touch, and (I suspect) didn’t even want it.
I became a Duvall fan, I think, when I read him quoted in a newspaper, many years ago. I don’t remember the words exactly, of course, but it went something like this – “Southern governors ought to place roadblocks at their state lines, and turn back every Hollywood film crew that tries to cross. ‘We know what you want to do here,’ they should say, ‘and we’re not putting up with it.’”
His performance as Robert E. Lee in “Gods and Generals” was the only portrayal of the man that ever satisfied me.
His actual origins were privileged and pure California. His father was an admiral, his mother an actress. He was raised as a Christian Scientist, though he later said he didn’t attend church at all.
And yet, in “Tender Mercies” (clip above) and “The Apostle” he gave portrayals of born-again Christians that rang true as a solid gold dollar in a collection plate.
R.I.P., Robert Selden Duvall. Well done.
