Shelley Duvall Movies
Wide-eyed, toothy, pencil-thin leading lady Shelley Duvall is the daughter of prominent Houston attorney Robert Duvall (not to be confused with Robert Duvall, the actor). While attending a party in 1970, Duvall was spotted by director Robert Altman, who cast her as a Superdome tour guide in his Texas-filmed Brewster McCloud (1970). She went on to play eccentric secondary roles in Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) and Nashville (1975), and co-starred opposite another Altman "regular," Keith Carradine, in Thieves Like Us (1974). She earned the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival for her portrayal of a garrulous, self-involved senior-citizen-center worker in 3 Women (1977), then wrapped up the Altman phase of her career as Olive Oyl (a role she was surely born to play) in Popeye (1980). Of her non-Altman film assignments, her best included Kubrick's The Shining (1980) -- in which she was cast against type as the only thoroughly normal person in the picture -- and Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977); she was also perfection-plus as the protagonist in the made-for-PBS adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976). From 1982 onward, Duvall cut down on her acting appearances, concentrating instead on her behind-the-scenes responsibilities as producer of such superlative Showtime Cable Network projects as Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre (1982-1987), Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales and Legends (1985-1988), and Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories (1992). These and other star-studded, family oriented endeavors have been assembled by one or all of Duvall's three production companies: Amarillo Productions, Platypus Productions, and Think! Entertainment. Shelley Duvall has also functioned as executive producer of the 1989 TV remake of Dinner at Eight, and has served on the board of governors of the National Association of Cable Programming. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1990
- Add Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales and Legends: Ponce de Leon to QueueAdd Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales and Legends: Ponce de Leon to top of Queue
This film, hosted by Shelley Duvall, is a spoof, loosely based on the exploits of Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon. The Spaniard laid claim to Florida in 1513, landing near St. Augustine. History has it that he was seeking the Fountain of Youth, a legend that he had learned from native peoples in the Caribbean. He never did find it, but a few years later he was made acquainted with an Indian arrow, which dealt him a mortal blow. The film features photography of the lands that Ponce de Leon conquered throughout the Caribbean, as well as of Florida. ~ Rose of Sharon Winter, All Movie Guide
- 1990
An all-star cast is included on this children's adventure that follows a search for Mother Goose by her son (Dan Gilroy) and Little Bo Peep (Shelley Duvall). ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- 1989
A reptile-collecting high schooler is shocked to discover that one of his many frogs is actually an enchanted prince looking for a fair maiden to free him. This delightful entry from the Wonderworks series, chronicles the teens attempts to help out his froggy friend. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1987
- Add Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales and Legends: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to QueueAdd Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales and Legends: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to top of Queue
The Lyons Group presents this retelling of Washington Irving's classic story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Part of Shelley Duvall's American Tall Tales series, American Tall Tales: Legend of Sleepy Hollow features Ed Begley Jr. as Ichobod Crane, the cowardly school teacher forced to face the infamous headless horseman. Released in 1987, the program is designed for young viewers and co-stars Beverly D'Angelo and Charles Durning. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
This modernization of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac casts Steve Martin as C. D. Bates, the fearless, quick-witted fire chief of a Washington State resort town. Bates' most trusted fireman is the handsome but tongue-tied Chris McDonell (Rick Rossovich). Both men are in love with the beautiful Roxanne Kowalski (Darryl Hannah), but Bates, adorned with a huge nose that makes Bob Hope look like Nanette Fabray, is convinced that he's too homely to win Roxanne's heart. Thus, in the self-sacrificing tradition of Cyrano de Bergerac, Bates courts Roxanne vicariously by feeding his rival Chris the proper romantic words and phrases. The inherent pathos in Roxanne is offset by moments of slapstick, notably the scene wherein C. D. Bates vanquishes a pair of hooligans with a tennis racket. Steve Martin himself is credited with the screenplay for Roxanne, though he generously cites Edmond Rostand as his inspiration. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Steve Martin, Daryl Hannah, (more)
- 1986
- Add Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales and Legends: Darlin' Clementine to QueueAdd Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales and Legends: Darlin' Clementine to top of Queue
No relation to the similarly titled John Ford film, My Darlin' Clementine originated as a 47-minute TV special. Shelley Duvall (who also produced) plays the title character, the daughter of a miner (forty-niner) whose shoes are number nine. Ed Asner costars as Clementine's dad, while David Dukes is the moonstruck young man who loses Clementine to the briny deep. The tragic elements of the ballad (which of course was meant to be a spoof even back in the 19th century) are tempered by in-the-know comedy vignettes. My Darlin' Clementine was first telecast on the Showtime Cable service as part of the American Tall Tales and Legends anthology. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shelley Duvall, David Dukes, (more)
- 1986
Oh No! Mr. Bill is about to be splattered by the evil Mr. Sluggo in this live action film. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1985
- Add Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales and Legends: Annie Oakley to QueueAdd Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales and Legends: Annie Oakley to top of Queue
This episode of Shelley Duvall's American Tall Tales tells the rip-roaring story of Annie Oakley, one of the Old West's greatest sharpshooters and popular star of Buffalo Bill's traveling Wild West Show. The program includes some legendary episodes -- part fact, part fiction -- and shows some actual footage of Annie Oakley in action (filmed in 1903 by Thomas Edison). Jamie Lee Curtis plays the title role. ~ Alice Duncan, All Movie Guide
- 1984
- PG
In this black-and-white short, novice director Tim Burton tells the story of Frankenstein's monster in suburbia as a children's fable about tolerance. Loving parents Ben (Daniel Stern) and Susan Frankenstein (Shelley Duvall) encourage their son Victor's (Barret Oliver) home movies, starring their energetic bull terrier, Sparky. Following a terrible car accident, Sparky is dead and Victor is inconsolable. After an experiment with a frog in his science class, Victor gets the idea to make an electrical experiment of his own. After building a fantastic laboratory with only household items, he reanimates his beloved dog. Unfortunately, the family's nosy neighbors become fearful of the monster, even though he has done no wrong. The climactic ending acts as an homage to James Whale's original 1931 film and its sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- 1983
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The classic tale of a kind-hearted princess stalked by a jealous stepmother is brought to life in this early episode of Faerie Tale Theatre. Elizabeth McGovern is Snow White, the princess whose stepmother, the queen, banishes her because she is jealous of the girl's beauty. She takes up residence with a septet of friendly dwarfs in the woods, but eventually falls victim to a poisoned apple delivered by the queen in disguise. Only a kiss from a prince (Rex Smith) will awaken her. Veteran actress Vanessa Redgrave portrays the insanely wicked queen, and Vincent Price lends his incomparable voice and screen presence to the film as the queen's omnipresent magic mirror. ~ Carrie Downes, All Movie Guide
- 1982
In one of Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre productions, the actress stars as the title character who is rescued by a prince (Jeff Bridges) from her imprisonment in a tower. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- 1982
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This charming fantasy was originally part of Shelly Duvall's HBO series Faerie Tale Theatre and features actor Herve Villechaize as the irascible gnome who grants the wish of an impoverished but boastful miller who claims his lovely daughter can spin straw into gold. While Rumpelstiltskin is willing to help the miller, his generosity does not come without a high price: in exchange for the gift, the daughter must give up her first-born child. She can only escape the bargain if she can guess his name. The bargain is struck. When the king learns of her talent, he marries her and puts her in a room to spin. The real trouble begins when she gets pregnant. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
A young boy joins a group of renegade dwarves on an unpredictable journey through time in this humorous fantasy. Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam mostly achieves a tricky balancing act in his second feature as sole director, creating a dark, irreverent comedy disguised as a family adventure. Particularly amusing are the boy's encounters with various historical figures, including an entertainment-starved Napoleon (Ian Holm), a powerful Agamemnon (Sean Connery), and a surprisingly stuffy Robin Hood, embodied by Gilliam's Python cohort John Cleese. Episodic by nature, the film is less successful when dealing with the larger narrative, which concerns the pursuit of the dwarves and their time-traveling map by the Supreme Being. However, the combination of Gilliam's visual exuberance and the witty script (by Gilliam and Michael Palin) ensures an entertaining, if erratic, journey. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Cleese, Sean Connery, (more)
Based on the long-running comic strip created by E.C. Segar (and less on the animated cartoons created by Max Fleischer, which were decidedly different in tone and approach), Popeye follows the sailor man with the mighty arms (played by Robin Williams in his first major film role) as he arrives in the seaside community of Sweethaven in search of his long-lost father. Popeye meets and quickly falls for the slender Olive Oyl (Shelley Duvall, in the role she was born to play), but Olive's hand has already been promised to the hulking Bluto (Paul Smith), of whom Olive can say little except, well, he's large. Eventually, Popeye and Olive are brought together by Swee' Pea (Wesley Ivan Hurt), an adorable foundling, and Popeye finally meets his dad, Poopdeck Pappy (Ray Walston). Director Robert Altman in no way tempered his trademark style for this big-budget family opus, crowding the screen with a variety of characters and allowing his cast to overlap as much dialogue as they want. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall, (more)
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" -- or, rather, a homicidal boy in Stanley Kubrick's eerie 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel. With wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and psychic son Danny (Danny Lloyd) in tow, frustrated writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as the winter caretaker at the opulently ominous, mountain-locked Overlook Hotel so that he can write in peace. Before the Overlook is vacated for the Torrances, the manager (Barry Nelson) informs Jack that a previous caretaker went crazy and slaughtered his family; Jack thinks it's no problem, but Danny's "shining" hints otherwise. Settling into their routine, Danny cruises through the empty corridors on his Big Wheel and plays in the topiary maze with Wendy, while Jack sets up shop in a cavernous lounge with strict orders not to be disturbed. Danny's alter ego, "Tony," however, starts warning of "redrum" as Danny is plagued by more blood-soaked visions of the past, and a blocked Jack starts visiting the hotel bar for a few visions of his own. Frightened by her husband's behavior and Danny's visit to the forbidding Room 237, Wendy soon discovers what Jack has really been doing in his study all day, and what the hotel has done to Jack. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, (more)
- 1977
This 1977 episode of Saturday Night Live is hosted by Shelley Duvall and features musical guest Joan Armatrading. ~ Skyler Miller, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shelley Duvall, Joan Armatrading, (more)
Woody Allen's romantic comedy of the Me Decade follows the up and down relationship of two mismatched New York neurotics. Jewish comedy writer Alvy Singer (Allen) ponders the modern quest for love and his past romance with tightly-wound WASP singer Annie Hall (Diane Keaton, née Diane Hall). The twice-divorced Alvy knows that it's not easy to find a mate when the options include pretentious New York intellectuals and lifestyle-obsessed Rolling Stone writers, but la-di-dah-ing Annie seems different. Along the rocky road of their coupling, Allen/Alvy weigh in on such topics as endless therapy, movies vs. TV, the absurdity of dating rituals, anti-Semitism, drugs, and, in one of the best set pieces, repressed Midwestern WASP insanity vs. crazy Brooklyn Jewish boisterousness. Annie wants to move to Los Angeles to find that fame that finally does in the relationship -- but not before Alvy gets in a few digs at vacuous, mantra-fixated California. Originally entitled Anhedonia (the inability to enjoy oneself), Annie Hall blended the slapstick and fantasy from such earlier Allen films as Sleeper (1973) and Bananas (1971) with the more autobiographical musings of his stand-up and written comedy, using an array of such movie techniques as talking heads, splitscreens, and subtitles. Within these gleeful formal experiments and sight gags, Allen and co-writer Marshall Brickman skewered 1970s solipsism, reversing the happy marriage of opposites found in classic screwball comedies. Hailed as Allen's most mature and personal film, Annie Hall beat out Star Wars for Best Picture and also won Oscars for Allen as director and writer and for Keaton as Best Actress; audiences enthusiastically responded to Allen's take on contemporary love and turned Keaton's rumpled menswear into a fashion trend. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, (more)
Robert Altman's Three Women takes a surreal, improvisational and rather eerie look at the lives of three women in a western desert town. The plot centers around the youngest of the women, Pinky (Sissy Spacek), an eccentric, withdrawn woman trying to begin a new life. She finds work as an attendant at a hot springs spa catering to the elderly and infirm. There she befriends her co-worker Millie (Shelley Duvall), an equally strange but more outgoing woman; the two bond, and are soon sharing an apartment. Pinky becomes increasingly dependent on Millie, eventually adopting aspects of her personality and appearance. This obsessive attachment is threatened when Pinky discovers Millie with a man -- Edgar (Robert Fortier), the macho, faux-cowboy husband of local artist Willie (Janice Rule), the last of the title's three women. Pinky's subsequent, desperate actions precipitate the film's enigmatic conclusion, involving an unexpected series of confrontations and role reversals amongst the three women. This story tends to take a backseat to the elliptical, spooky imagery, particularly the desert landscapes, and the quirky performances -- not surprising, given that the film was reportedly shot without a full screenplay and inspired by Altman's own dreams. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, (more)
Many observers consider the 60-minute Bernice Bobs Her Hair to be the best-ever filmed adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Bernice (Shelley Duvall), a shy retiring girl of the Roaring 20s, yearns to be popular. On the advice of her flapper cousin Marjorie (Veronica Cartwright), Bernice cuts her unfashionable long hair into a short bob, begins dressing more stylishly, and learns the Most Valuable Rule: "When you're with a man, there are only three topics of conversation: you, me and us." Bernice Bobs Her Hair first aired on PBS' American Playhouse on April 5, 1977. It was telecast in tandem with a dramatization of Sherwood Anderson's oft-adapted I'm a Fool. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shelley Duvall, Bud Cort, (more)
- 1976
- R
- Add Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson to QueueAdd Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson to top of Queue
"Truth is whatever gets the loudest applause." Debunking western myths even more than he did in McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976) sardonically explores the gap between western history and legend in show biz-obsessed America. Megalomaniac "Buffalo Bill" Cody (Paul Newman) assumes the legend created for him by writer Ned Buntline (Burt Lancaster), aided and abetted by his producer (Joel Grey) and his publicist (Kevin McCarthy), perpetuating myths of white triumph over savage "Injuns" in his Wild West show, as audiences cheer him on and buy his merchandise. But when Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts) joins the troupe with his interpreter (Will Sampson), his request for authenticity threatens to throw a wrench into the proceedings. Regardless of how Bill may feel about the facts, he must bow to the preferences of the paying public. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Newman, Joel Grey, (more)
- 1976
Shelley Duvall guest stars as Aggie, an incredibly naïve young waitress. Aggie is the only witness when a cop accidentally kills his girlfriend. Preying upon Aggie's childlike faith in the infallibility of authority figures, the killer persuades her to finger another man as the culprit -- but undercover detective Tony Baretta (Robert Blake) smells a rat. This was the final episode of Baretta's second season. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Blake, Edward Grover, (more)
Following 24 characters through 5 days in the country music capital, Robert Altman's 1975 epic presents a complexly textured portrayal (and critique) of American obsessions with celebrity and power. Among the various stars, aspirants, hangers-on, observers, and media folk are politically ambitious country icon Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) and his fragile star protegée Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley); Tom (Keith Carradine), a self-absorbed rock star who woos lonely married gospel singer Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin); Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles), a talentless waitress painfully humiliated at her first singing gig; Albuquerque (Barbara Harris), a runaway wife with dreams of stardom; nightclub owner Lady Pearl (Barbara Baxley), who reminisces about "those Kennedy boys"; single-minded groupie L.A. Joan (Shelley Duvall); vapid BBC commentator Opal (Geraldine Chaplin); and campaign guru John Triplette (Michael Murphy), who is trying to organize a concert rally for the unseen but always heard populist presidential candidate-cum-demagogue Hal Phillip Walker. Everything comes to a head during a climactic concert at Nashville's replica of the Parthenon temple, as the entertainment-hungry audience is momentarily woken out of its stupor by unexpected violence, only to be lulled into a restorative sing-along to "It Don't Worry Me." ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henry Gibson, Barbara Baxley, (more)
