The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (126 page)

In 1977, he directed a documentary,
We’re Not the Jet Set
, about Nebraska farm people he had met during the making of
The Rain People
. He was the son hating his stronger father in
The Betsy
(78, Daniel Petrie); a dynamic Kilgore in
Apocalypse Now
(79, Coppola); and
The Great Santini
(79, Lewis Carlino).

Just before doing Kilgore, he had played the lead on TV in
Ike: The War Years
(78, Melville Shavelson). He was the cop in
True Confessions
(81, Ulu Grosbard);
The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper
(81, Roger Spottiswoode). He directed
Angelo, My Love
(83), and in the same year won the best actor Oscar for
Tender Mercies
(83, Bruce Beresford).

He may have felt that that would lead to star roles, but Duvall is by nature a supporting actor: on TV in
The Terry Fox Story
(83, Ralph Thomas);
The Stone Boy
(84, Chris Cain);
The Natural
(84, Barry Levinson); brilliant in
The Lightship
(86, Jerzy Skolimowski) as a very swishy Southern gent;
Hotel Colonial
(87, Cinzia Torrini);
Let’s Get Harry
(87, Stuart Rosenberg);
Colors
(88, Dennis Hopper); outstanding on TV in
Lonesome Dove
(89, Simon Wincer);
The Handmaid’s Tale
(90, Volker Schlondorff);
Days of Thunder
(90, Tony Scott);
A Show of Force
(90, Bruno Barretto); excellent as the father in
Rambling Rose
(91, Martha Coolidge); on TV doing
Stalin
(92, Ivan Passer);
Falling Down
(93, Joel Schumacher);
The Plague
(93, Luis Puenzo);
Geronimo
(93, Walter Hill);
Wrestling Ernest Hemingway
(93, Randa Haines); and
The Paper
(94, Ron Howard).

Duvall’s good-natured persistence is one of the more comforting things in contemporary film. He does not resist every offer to be hammy. He walks through some parts. But he retains the passions for such things as his film
The Apostle
(97), one of the events of the decade. Over seventy now, he made a new film about one of his passions—
Assassination Tango
(it’s the dance he loves). The recent credits are:
Something to Talk About
(95, Lasse Hallstrom);
The Stars Fell on Henrietta
(95, James Keach);
The Scarlet Letter
(95, Roland Joffe);
A Family Thing
(96, Richard Pearce);
Phenomenon
(96, Jon Turteltaub);
Sling Blade
(96, Billy Bob Thornton); as Eichmann on TV in
The Man Who Captured Eichmann
(96, William A. Graham);
The Gingerbread Man
(98, Altman);
Deep Impact
(98, Mimi Leder); a crusty lawyer in
A Civil Action
(98, Steven Zaillian);
Gone in Sixty Seconds
(00, Dominic Sena);
A Shot at Glory
(00, Michael Corrente);
The 6th Day
(00, Spottiswoode);
John Q
(02, Nick Cassavetes); as Robert E. Lee in
Gods and Generals
(02, Ronald F. Maxwell).

He danced in and directed
Assassination Tango
(02), and he acted in
Open Range
(03, Kevin Costner);
Secondhand Lions
(03, Tim McCanlies);
Kicking & Screaming
(05, Jesse Dylan);
Thank You for Smoking
(05, Jason Reitman); in the TV miniseries
Broken Trail
(06, Walter Hill);
Lucky You
(07, Curtis Hanson);
We Own the Night
(07, James Gray);
Four Christmases
(08, Seth Gordon);
The Road
(08, John Hillcoat), where his role is called “Old Man”;
Get Low
(10, Aaron Schneider), planning his funeral.

Shelley Duvall
, b. Houston, Texas, 1950
Only once has Shelley Duvall played a large part for anyone except Robert Altman—and that is her wife in
The Shining
(80, Stanley Kubrick) where, arguably, she is meant as a parody of helplessness, and felt as the casting coup of misogyny. (Like Jack Torrance, Kubrick seemed to regard women as children, hags, or silent beauties—no character allowed.) It’s as if most other directors didn’t know what to do with Duvall—was she too odd, too Texan, too much an Olive Oyl in waiting? Yet in 3
Women
(77, Altman), she is endlessly intriguing—was that acting, casting, or Altman’s eye? Elsewhere, Altman used her (often briefly) in
Brewster McCloud
(70);
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
(71); in the lead in
Thieves Like Us
(74); as the kooky L.A. Joan in
Nashville
(75);
Buffalo Bill and the Indians
(76), as President Cleveland’s wife; and at last as Olive Oyl in
Popeye
(80).

In addition, she had a scene in
Annie Hall
(77, Woody Allen) for her strangeness; and she appeared in
Time Bandits
(81, Terry Gilliam);
Roxanne
(87, Fred Schepisi); and
Suburban Commando
(91, Burt Kennedy).

But in the 1980s the unaccountable woman became a very successful producer for cable TV, notably with
Faerie Tale Theatre
, a variable series, but one of the few on American TV that sought to reach children in their gentler imaginations. It also gave interesting opportunities to directors and actors.

She plays small roles now, or bigger parts in films about children (or sometimes horror):
Underneath
(95, Steven Soderbergh);
The Portrait of a Lady
(96, Jane Campion);
Twilight of the Ice Nymphs
(97, Guy Maddin);
Shadow Zone: My Teacher Ate My Homework
(97, Stephen Williams);
Alone
(97, Michael Lindsay-Hogg);
Tale of the Mummy
(98, Russell Mulcahy);
Casper Meets Wendy
(98, Sean McNamara);
Home Fries
(98, Dean Parisot);
Big Monster on Campus
(98, Mitch Marcus);
The 4th Floor
(Josh Klausner);
Dreams in the Attic
(00, Bob Willems);
Manna from Heaven
(01, Gabrielle Burton).

Julien Duvivier
(1896–1967), b. Lille, France
1919:
Haceldama
. 1920:
La Réincarnation de Serge Renaudier
. 1921:
L’Agonie des Aigles
(codirected with Bernard Deschamps). 1922:
Les Roquevillard; L’Ouragan sur la Montagne; Der Unheimliche Gast
. 1923:
Le Reflet de Claude Mer-coeur; Credo; L’Oeuvre Immortelle
. 1924:
La Nuit de la Revanche; Coeurs Farouches; La Machine à Refaire la Vie
(codirected with H. Lepage) (d). 1925:
L’Abbé Constantin; Poil de Carotte
. 1926:
Le Mariage de Mlle. Beulemans
. 1927:
L’Agonie de Jérusalem; Le Mystère de la Tour Eiffel; L’Homme à l’Hispano
. 1928:
Le Tourbillon de Paris; La Divine Croisière
. 1929:
La Vie Miraculeuse de Thérèse Martin; Maman Colibri; Au Bonheur des Dames
. 1930:
David Golder
. 1931:
Cinq Gentilshommes Maudits
. 1932:
Allo Berlin! Ici Paris!; Poil de Carotte; La Vénus du Collège
. 1933.
La Tête d’un Homme; La Machine à Refaire la Vie
(d.);
Le Petit Roi
. 1934:
Le Paquebot Tenacity; Maria Chapdelaine
. 1935:
Golgotha; L’Homme du Jour
. 1936:
La Bandera; La Belle Équipe; Le Golem
. 1937:
Pépé le Moko; Un Carnet de Bal
. 1938:
The Great Waltz
. 1939:
La Fin du Jour; La Charrette Fantôme
. 1940:
Untel Père et Fils
. 1941:
Lydia
. 1942:
Tales of Manhattan
. 1943:
Flesh and Fantasy
. 1944:
The Imposter
. 1946:
Panique
. 1948:
Anna Karenina
. 1949:
Au Royaume des Cieux; Black Jack
. 1950:
Sous le Ciel de Paris Coule la Seine
. 1951:
Le Petit Monde de Don Camillo
. 1953:
La Fête à Henriette; Le Retour de Don Camillo
. 1954:
L’Affaire Maurizius; Marianne de Ma Jeunesse
. 1956:
Voici le Temps des Assassins
. 1957:
L’Homme à l’Imperméable; Pot-Bouille
. 1958:
Marie-Octobre; La Femme et le Pantin
. 1960:
Boulevard; La Grande Vie
. 1961:
La Chambre Ardente
. 1963:
Le Diable et les Dix Commandements
. 1964:
Chair de Poule
. 1967:
Diaboliquement Votre
.

Duvivier was a professional survivor in troubled times: a man who managed always to look spruce but seldom original or interesting. He never lost composure in a long, industrious career, but he never found much else. Beginning as an actor, he was assistant to Louis Feuillade and Marcel L’Herbier. As a director, he displayed a cyclical complacency, remaking several of his own films, including
La Machine à Refaire la Vie
, a documentary on the movie process. During the 1930s he was very successful commercially:
Poil de Carotte, Pépé le Moko
, and
Un Carnet de Bal
are all blandly proficient works. As war came nearer, Duvivier went to MGM to direct Luise Rainer in the inane
Great Waltz
. By 1941, he was in Britain for Korda making
Lydia
—a virtual remake of
Carnet de Bal;
and he returned to Hollywood to make the episodic
Tales of Manhattan
and
Flesh and Fantasy. The Imposter
, starring Jean Gabin, was made in Algeria—the setting for his melancholy thriller,
Pépé le Moko
—while
Anna Karenina
, again for Korda, starred an uneasy Vivien Leigh. These excursions into a rather lusher romance than France offered did not encourage Duvivier’s fancy. It was in his character to be discreet with luxury—a less cautious man would have made Leigh relax. Duvivier returned to France and found a national hero in Fernandel’s Don Camillo. He went on, shy of the beauty of Danielle Darrieux in
Marie-Octobre
, of Françoise Arnoul, Micheline Presle, and Darrieux in
Le Diable et les Dix Commandements
. It is hard to feel warmly toward a director reluctant to celebrate beautiful women.

Allan Dwan
(Joseph Aloysius Dwan) (1885–1981), b. Toronto, Canada
1914:
Richelieu; Wildflower; The Country Chairman; The Straight Road; The Conspiracy; The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch
. 1915:
The Dancing Girl; David Harum; The Love Route; The Commanding Officer; May Blossom; The Pretty Sister of Jose; A Girl of Yesterday; The Foundling; Jordan Is a Hard Road
. 1916:
Betty of Greystone; The Habit of Happiness; The Good Bad Man; An Innocent Magdalene; The Half-Breed; Manhattan Madness; Fifty-Fifty
. 1917:
Panthea; The Fighting Odds; A Modern Musketeer
. 1918:
Mr. Fix-It; Bound in Morocco; He Comes Up Smiling
. 1919:
Cheating Cheaters; Getting Mary Married; The Dark Star; Soldiers of Fortune
. 1920:
The Luck of the Irish; The Forbidden Thing
. 1921:
A Perfect Crime; A Broken Doll; The Scoffer; The Sin of Martha Queed; In the Heart of a Fool
. 1922:
The Hidden Woman; Superstition; Robin Hood
. 1923:
The Glimpses of the Moon; Lawful Larceny; Zaza; Big Brother
. 1924:
A Society Scandal; Manhandled; Her Love Story; Wages of Virtue; Argentine Love
. 1925:
Night Life of New York; The Coast of Folly; Stage Struck
. 1926:
Sea Horses; Padlocked; Tin Gods; Summer Bachelors
. 1927:
The Music Master; The Joy Girl; East Side, West Side; French Dressing
. 1928:
The Big Noise
. 1929:
The Iron Mask; Tide of Empire; The Far Call; Frozen Justice; South Sea Rose
. 1930:
What a Widow!; Man to Man
. 1931:
Chances; Wicked
. 1932:
While Paris Sleeps
. 1933:
Her First Affair; Counsel’s Opinion
. 1934:
The Morning After; Hollywood Party
(codirected with Richard Boleslavsky and Roy Rowland). 1935:
Black Sheep; Navy Wife
. 1936:
The Song and Dance Man; Human Cargo; High Tension; 15 Maiden Lane
. 1937:
Woman-Wise; That I May Live; One Mile from Heaven; Heidi
. 1938:
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm; Josette; Suez
. 1939:
The Three Musketeers; The Gorilla; Frontier Marshall
. 1940:
Sailor’s Lady; Young People; Trail of the Vigilantes
. 1941:
Look Who’s Laughing; Rise and Shine
. 1942:
Friendly Enemies; Here We Go Again
. 1943:
Around the World
. 1944:
Up in Mabel’s Room; Abroad With Two Yanks
. 1945:
Brewster’s Millions; Getting Gertie’s Garter
. 1946:
Rendezvous with Annie
. 1947:
Calendar Girl; Northwest Outpost; Driftwood
. 1948:
The Inside Story; Angel in Exile
. 1949:
Sands of Iwo Jima
. 1950:
Surrender
. 1951:
Belle le Grand; The Wild Blue Yonder
. 1952:
I Dream of Jeanie; Montana Belle
. 1953:
The Woman They Almost Lynched; Sweethearts on Parade
. 1954:
Flight Nurse; Silver Lode; Passion; Cattle Queen of Montana
. 1955:
Escape to Burma; Pearl of the South Pacific; Tennessee’s Partner
. 1956:
Slightly Scarlet; Hold Back the Night
. 1957:
The River’s Edge; The Restless Breed
. 1958:
Enchanted Island
. 1961:
The Most Dangerous Man Alive
.