Like his friend from the 1950s Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall had to wait for the culture to come around to men who had his ordinary-guy looks, and that wasn't until he was entering middle age. An early, small role as Boo Radley in 1962's "To Kill a Mockingbird" didn't lead to much, and years later he was still little known when he made a thrilling appearance as a villain in the climax of "True Grit" (1969), shouting at John Wayne, "I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man." But Mr. Duvall, who died Sunday at age 95, didn't make his name until he played the Corleone family consigliere three years later in "The Godfather." Calm, lawyerly, reasonable, he was the smooth corporation man who made the Mafia professional. Though he landed the first of his seven Oscar nominations for the role, Mr. Duvall didn't get to set fire to the scenery. That opportunity would arrive at the end of the decade however.
In "A Man in Full," Tom Wolfe describes his manly hero Charlie Croker like this: His "baldness was the kind that proclaims masculinity to burn -- as if there was so much testosterone surging up through his hide it had popped the hair right off the top of his head." The description could have been written for Mr. Duvall. He never rose beyond private first class during a 1950s stint in the military, but he projected so much machismo that he seemed born to wear an officer's uniform. In 1979, he did so twice: In "The Great Santini" -- which was also released under the title "The Ace" and flopped at the time, only to come to be regarded as an essential 1970s character piece -- he played Lt. Col. "Bull" Meechum, a ramrod of a Marine pilot forged out of pure steel and yet so vulnerable to humiliation that, after losing at basketball to his young-adult son, he bounces the ball off the hapless boy’s head while ridiculing him. Such is the man's sense of duty that, when his equipment fails in the movie's climax, he pilots his plane into the sea rather than bailing out and risking hurting anyone by letting the crash occur in a populated area. Horrible, yet honorable: Mr. Duvall’s Meechum balanced both.
The same year, Mr. Duvall reunited with his "Godfather" director, Francis Ford Coppola, to play another pilot-colonel, this one an Army cavalry officer named Kilgore whose demented acts encapsulated the insanity of war in a whirlwind sequence in the middle of "Apocalypse Now." Bent on destroying a coastal village in Vietnam because he has heard the surfing was good, he dials up Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," strafes the town with napalm and delivers the indelible line "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," because it "smells like victory." Mr. Duvall seemed as unhinged as anyone in "Dr. Strangelove," and yet he's so deadpan, and so commanding, that as he crouches in the chaos wearing an 1860s-style Cavalry Stetson it's easy to understand why his boys might follow him everywhere, and even attempt to surf amid the explosions. The way Kilgore at first proudly offers his canteen to, but then thoughtlessly withdraws it from, an enemy soldier who is about to die is priceless, and reportedly based on a real incident.
In both movies, Mr. Duvall is somehow funny and brutish at the same time.
Yet as he proved in his heartbreakingly sensitive, Oscar-winning turn as a slowly self-healing alcoholic in "Tender Mercies" in 1983, Mr. Duvall could command the screen even when he wasn't doing much of anything except trying to be a good man. His equally charismatic, Golden Globe-winning role alongside Tommy Lee Jones as a former Texas ranger in the massively popular 1989 miniseries "Lonesome Dove" proved that he could be an old-school cowboy hero. His avuncular, experienced air served him well in such highly regarded dramas as Dennis Hopper's 1988 LAPD tale "Colors," in which his seen-it-all patrolman tries to explain how to police like a member of the community instead of as an invader to his gung-ho young partner played by Sean Penn. Mr. Duvall radiated a kind of hard-earned wisdom.
Having grown up the son of a naval officer who made it to rear admiral, Mr. Duvall seemed to have a natural rapport with authority, and leadership roles were perfect fits, especially after he hit middle age. Some of his lesser-known star turns were as Dwight Eisenhower ("Ike," a 1979 TV miniseries), Robert E. Lee ("Gods and Generals," 2003) and Joseph Stalin ("Stalin," a 1992 HBO film). His own sense of how to shape a character as writer and director came through most clearly in "The Apostle," a 1997 drama that took years to get made and was his most successful effort as a filmmaker. As its star, he earned another Oscar nomination with a performance that was drenched in appreciation for his character—a struggling Pentecostal preacher trying to stay on the path to goodness but frequently stumbling off it.
The military background meant growing up in various places around the country, which may have helped Mr. Duvall develop into a broadly American actor who couldn't easily be tied to a place. He could come across as a Californian, a Texan, or a Southerner; though he also trained on New York stage and had no difficulty portraying New York network executive in "Network." In a 2010 interview with Collider, he suggested an open-heartedness that made an excellent foundation for his supreme versatility. Referring to author of "Tender Mercies," he said: "You know, Hollywood sometimes tends to patronize interior United States. As Horton Foote used to say—the great Texas playwright—a lot people from New York don't know what goes on beyond South Jersey Shore." Mr.Duvall knew it,felt it,exulted in it.