Shelley Duvall, scream queen of 'The Shining' and a well-cast Olive Oyl, dies at 75
Shelley Duvall wasn’t a stranger to rejection. In the ’80s, television executives struggled to take the actor seriously as a producer when she pitched her idea to turn fairy tales into live-action shows. But she knew networks “needed me as much as I needed them,” and she made it happen anyway.
With the eventual green light from Showtime and an all-star roster featuring Robin Williams, Teri Garr, Jeff Bridges, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli and Vanessa Redgrave, Duvall’s “Faerie Tale Theatre” became a reality. Even more, it became part of Duvall’s Hollywood legacy — which at the time joined memorable performances in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,” Robert Altman’s “3 Women,” “Thieves Like Us” and “Popeye,” and Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.”
“If I had listened to everyone who told me no, I’d never have gotten anything accomplished,” Duvall told The Times in 1991. “When I really believe in something and someone says, ‘You can’t do it,’ it just spurs me on."
Duvall, whose piercing scream famously punctuated the many horrors of “The Shining,” died Thursday morning. She was 75.
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Daniel Gilroy, Duvall’s longtime partner, confirmed that she died at her home in Blanco, Texas, of complications from diabetes. “She had been suffering a lot lately,” Gilroy said, and had lived several months in hospice care. “This was not unexpected.”
“I think of her as a bird in a way, and now she’s free to just fly away,” he said.
Just years before bringing the vibrant whimsy of “Faerie Tale Theatre” to the small screen, Duvall concerned herself with the chilling world of Kubrick’s 1980 film “The Shining.” She starred as Wendy Torrance, the docile wife of Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance. The film follows a college professor who travels with his family to spend a winter at the Overlook Hotel in the Rocky Mountains and write a book. The hotel’s haunted past turns an idyllic family retreat into a gory nightmare.
“Here’s Johnny!,” Nicholson’s Jack screams after he chops through a bathroom door. On the other side of the wall, Duvall cowers in a corner with a knife in her hand. The encounter easily made for one of the film’s most iconic moments.
“The Shining” continued to live on with Duvall far after the cameras cut. In 2021, Duvall told the Hollywood Reporter about the lasting trauma from her performance and Kubrick’s grueling approach to filming.
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“To wake up on a Monday morning, so early, and realize that you had to cry all day because it was scheduled — I would just start crying,” she told the Hollywood Reporter. “I’d be like, ‘Oh no, I can’t, I can’t.’ And yet I did it. I don’t know how I did it. Jack said that to me too. He said, ‘I don’t know how you do it.’”
Duvall had opened up about her career years after she made headlines for a concerning appearance on “Dr. Phil” in 2016. She told host Dr. Phil McGraw that she was being threatened by a man and suggested that her “Popeye” co-star Williams, who died in 2014, was still alive. She also revealed that she was facing mental health issues.
After the interview, fans criticized McGraw for “showboating the visibly ill.”
Duvall retreated from Hollywood for decades after the turn of the 20th century, but returned to acting for the 2023 indie horror film “The Forest Hills.” Before that, she had last appeared in films “Manna From Heaven,” “Dreams in the Attic” and “Boltneck” in the early aughts.
She was born July 7, 1949, in Fort Worth and lived mostly in hotels for the first five years of her life while the family traveled with her father, who was working all over Texas for the state insurance board.
Duvall was the eldest of four children and “was practically a parent to my [three] brothers,” she told The Times in 1991. She wanted to pursue a career in science, then was “discovered” in Houston during a party where three crew members on Altman’s 1970 cop film “Brewster McCloud” were in attendance. “Brewster McCloud” became Duvall’s first acting job.
“I thought, ‘Uh oh, a porno movie, my mom’s going to kill me!,’” Duvall told The Times.
After “Brewster” came ”McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” “Thieves Like Us,” “Nashville,” “Buffalo Bill and the Indians,” “Three Women” and “Popeye.” In his 1980 review for “Popeye,” The Times' late film critic Charles Champlin praised Duvall for “her deliciously addled, uncoordinated, petulant but finally quite endearing Olive Oyl.”
Duvall’s additional film credits include “The Portrait of a Lady,” “Roxanne,” “Time Bandits” and Tim Burton’s “Frankenweenie” short film. Her TV acting career includes appearances in “The Hughleys,” “Wishbone,” “The Adventures of Shirley Holmes,” “Fraiser” and “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle,” which she produced.
As a producer, Duvall also worked on “Tall Tales & Legends,” “Popples,” “Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme” and “Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories,” among others, according to IMDb.
Duvall married Bernard Sampson in 1970, but they divorced in 1974. She and singer Paul Simon shared a romantic relationship but broke things off before she began filming “The Shining.” She had been with Gilroy since the late 1980s, but the two never married.
The actor-producer was also a fashion icon — her “Faerie Tale Theatre” introduction recently inspired a TikTok sound that fashion enthusiasts have used to show off their outfits — and an animal lover who cared for multiple dogs and birds over the course of her life. Duvall celebrated her 75th birthday over the weekend.
“She had lots and lots of cards and letters and well wishes from all over the place,” Gilroy said Thursday, “but she’s been bedridden now for over a month, maybe six weeks or so. She’s not been happy lately, she’s been suffering, but we made her as comfortable as possible.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
