Robert Duvall died Sunday at the age of 95.
He’s being remembered for his decades-long career and memorable roles in films such as “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now.” He was nominated seven times for acting Academy Awards.
But, of all the characters Duvall took on, it’s his roles as two very different Texans that stick with Texas Standard commentator W.F. Strong the most. Duvall won his single Oscar in 1984 for portraying a broken-down country singer in Horton Foote’s “Tender Mercies.”
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“I was in graduate school when that movie came out – I was going to school in Arizona and I remember seeing it and saying ‘he nailed that Texan,’” Strong said. “I learned later that he had studied Texans, so to speak. He had actually traveled around the state for that role recording country artists, talking to them, going to what we would call dives.”
Strong called Duvall an “actor’s actor” who “never phoned in a performance.” Strong was later impressed to learn Duvall’s Texas bonafides went deeper.
“He had come to Texas when he was 10 years old – his, I think, his mother’s side of the family was from Texas. It’s where he learned to ride a horse here. So he had some defining experiences early on that I think made him love this state,” Strong said.
Strong said the scene that sticks with him from “Tender Mercies” is when Duvall is in a garden having a conversation about the recent loss of his daughter.
“Everything about the movie and his character is very introspective, even brooding,” Strong said. “It’s the opposite of Gus McRae. You know, Gus is an extrovert, a lover of life, and very different characters. So the roles are polar opposites, but he nailed both of them.”
Augustus “Gus” McCrae is the character Duvall played in the 1989 television miniseries “Lonesome Dove” based on the novel by Larry McMurtry. But McCrae is not the role he was originally cast in. He was supposed to play Woodrow Call.
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But Strong said Duvall had devoured the book and fell in love with Gus.
“And he was chomping at the bit, so to speak, to play Gus,” Strong said. “And he had, you know, by this time he was quite a famous artist, an actor, and he had power. And he went in and he told them, ‘not only do I want to play the role of Gus instead of W.F. Call, I want play Gus. And I want Tommy Lee Jones to play Call.’ Because he wanted a authentic Texan in that role.”
Strong said Duvall “put all of his credibility on the line” with the ask – and he convinced them. Duvall called it the role of his life.
“He just loved Gus,” Strong said. “And what did he say? The Brits have Shakespeare and they have Othello. And he said, we have Westerns and we have Gus McCrae.”
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Strong said that Duvall’s Gus is not “a stereotypical Hollywood cutout of a cowboy.”
“He didn’t take on an iconic role, he made the role iconic,” Strong said. “Gus was the guy that we meet down at the feed store. He was authentically, completely Texan. And he was all hat and all cattle, you might say.”
Strong has made efforts in the past to pick his favorite “Lonesome Dove” lines – many of them from Gus. He credits much of this to McMurtry’s writing but says Duvall “amplified McMurtry and made it more powerful than it was in the book.”
“I think the reason we like Gus so much is he sucked the marrow out of life. He was a fun junkie. He just loved life. And that’s infectious. That’s why we love him,” Strong said.
W.F. Strong is a Texas Standard commentator and a professor of culture and communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His regular “Stories from Texas” segment is available online and as a podcast.
