The biggest news of the day: Robert Duvall just turned 95! (video clips)

Re-posted by N.S.

The biggest news of the day: Robert Duvall just turned 95!

Usually, I don't honor people until they've died. I'm very pleased to be able to honor Robert Duvall, one of the greatest actors of all time, while he is still among us.

The greatest praise I can pay to this man is to recall how he towered over the last episode of Lonesome Dove (1989), the greatest mini-series of them all, without even being there. His character, Capt. Augustus McCrae, Texas Rangers, had been killed by commanches in Montana in the previous episode. On his deathbed, Gus asked his lifelong best friend, Capt. Woodrow Call, to carry his corpse 1,000 back to Texas, in order to bury him in "Clara's Orchard," a patch of land on the outskirts of San Anton,' where he'd had a big fight with the love of his life. (As played by Angelica Huston, Clara was the worst role in the miniseries. It just stunk.)

Woodrow carried Gus' wrapped corpse on a horse-drawn wagon, on land, fighting off buzzards, all to a beautiful elegy by Basil Pouledouris.

Gus McCrae was very loosely inspired by Oliver Loving, who really was killed by commanches in roughly the way Gus McCrae was, and the story about Woodrow Call (real name: Charlie Goodnight) carrying his corpse back to Texas was supposedly more or less true, though nobody knows how far Charlie carried Oliver, or if he jobbed out the duty to another man. Print the legend!

And as great as Duvall's performance was, keep in mind that he also had a brilliant role.


imdb.com "career retrospective"

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi4130980633/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

Quick history of Duvall's career--best played with the sound off

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/T6pjFDeHlQg


His first movie role: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) (10/10) movie clip - "Scout meets Boo Radley" (1962) HD (with a big assist from Elmer)





The Godfather (1972)





"Don't worry about anything, Frankie five angels" - The Godfather, Part 2 (1974)





"The smell of napalm in the morning" - Apocalypse Now (4/8) movie clip (1979) HD





Tender Mercies (1983)





"The delicate balance" (Lonesome Dove, 1989)





"The Gus McCrae school of bartending (Lonesome Dove)





Cuttin' the Cards (Lonesome Dove)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaRae8UNj7s


"Don't underestimate Gus" (1989) Augustus 'Gus' McCrae


"The final goodbye" Lonesome Dove





"The Speech" - Secondhand Lions (2003)


N.S.: As great as Duvall is, that speech was the kind of thing that John Wayne could have delivered without a script.





More dawdlin' service: Open Range (2003)





Jack Reacher (2012): Bull's Eye





"Robert Duvall's favorite role of all time" (interview)





""@JediPhoenix1976 "The Corleone Family was like the Roman Empire."

"It was, once."

"Ah, the sadness in Tom's voice...even as powerful as the Family appears to be under Michael, it's still not the same as it once was. And Tom knows it. I can only imagine how Part 3 would have turned out if Robert Duvall stayed on and Coppola was able to do what he planned."

N.S.: "What he planned"?!

Coppola's plan for Part III was to do what he did: Take the money and run! I remember that day I read about the plans for III in my kitchen with my then-GF. I said it was a money grab, and I was right. Coppola didn't even write it. He paid a couple of Paramount execs to write the screenplay, and they later had to sue him for the credits.