Appreciation: Shelley Duvall (1949-2024)

When an audience member asked Shelley Duvall where she ranks Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic, "The Shining" (1980), in her body of work, the Texas born actress jokingly said, “It’s my Vietnam.”

Duvall, who was born in Fort Worth, Texas and grew up in Houston, recounted her experiences working with the reclusive director whom she called “a genius” before a full house, April 26, 1999, at the USA Film Festival in Dallas following a screening of the film.

Filming "The Shining" took six days a week, 16-hour days and lasted a year and one month.

“I was so out of touch with the world after that film finished that I didn’t know what to do with myself,” Duvall said.

Audiences applauded when Duvall’s name flashed on the movie’s opening credits as a beat-up Volkswagen made its way through the Colorado mountains.

“They say there are a million stories in the naked city,” Duvall began. “Well, there are a million stories on The Shining that I really don’t know where to begin.”

Duvall provided some interesting facts behind the making of the movie.

“Jack (Nicholson) and I weren’t really driving in Colorado or anywhere like most people think. We filmed it all at Elstree Studios in England. That was all second unit stuff; the driving shots in the Volkswagen going up and up to the Overlook Hotel.”

The actual front of the building seen in the film was actually the Lookout Mountain Hotel in Oregon.

“That was built to scale in the back lot,” Duvall added. “The sets inside were huge and covered the entire studio.”

Kubrick never told his cast how to do a scene while shooting the film.

“He doesn’t really give you a whole lot of direction as to doing it this way or that way,” she explained. “As a matter of fact, before we shot my first scene which was in the apartment, Stanley took me aside, told all the other crews to go away and asked me privately, ‘Listen, Shelley, how would Robert Altman do it?’”

The question came up because Duvall had worked with Altman in the past prior to "The Shining" that included "Nashville" in 1975 and "3 Women" in 1977.

“I just looked at him and said, ‘What???’” she exclaimed not expecting a great director like Kubrick to ask her that.

“Stanley never said act this way with Jack,” she commented. “But Jack would give a different take than I would. Working with Robert Altman, I never did more than five takes and that was only one time in the seven films I had done with him.”

According to several articles in Variety and Entertainment Weekly, however, Kubrick was known for shooting more than thirty takes of a scene.

“I was really worried when I first started working with Stanley that by the time the fifth take occurred, I asked him, ‘Am I doing anything wrong,’” she asked. “Stanley just said ‘No. I just don’t print anything until after 35 takes.’”

During the last 40 to 45 minutes of the film, Duvall’s character, Wendy, was seen frantically running around throughout the hotel trying to find her son, Danny. She was frightened, crying, and holding a sharp long knife to protect herself from Nicholson’s psychotic ax-wielding Jack Torrence and fleeing from the resort’s ghostly apparitions.

Director Stanley Kubrick and Shelley Duvall on the
the set of The Shining.

While shooting those sequences, the actress admitted she had to think of reasons to cry.

“I had already exhausted all the deaths in the family, pets and pretty soon, I would just wake up in the morning and cry because I didn’t want to go to work and cry all day,” Duvall added. “It was absolutely physically exhausting. I wondered how long a person could cry before going into shock.”

Filming those scenes, Duvall said she looked like a ghost.

“There was no makeup and the dark circles around my eyes, that was real,” she said. “I don’t think I remember ever having any circles whatsoever before I did this film.”

Though she admits her next movie with Altman, "Popeye" (1980), was “a much happier experience,” Duvall said working with Kubrick was still a fascinating one.

“It was great to work with Jack Nicholson, but it was too bad he had to be mad at me all the time,” she said. “He’s one of those guys who really gets into a part and sticks to it.”

Duvall said she didn’t know where or what actor Danny Lloyd was doing today, who played their terrified son in the film and lived in Pekin, Illinois at the time when he got his first role.

“His father was a train engineer, and both parents quit their jobs and moved to England,” she said. “They were over there six months before Jack, or I were there.”

At the film festival, an audience member asked if Duvall thought Danny was a normal child.

“He was a very normal child when he came in,” she laughingly commented. “He was “Tony” when he came out,” in reference to the boy’s imaginary character in the film who was the devil. 

Another audience member inquired about a final scene Kubrick cut a week after the film played in theaters in 1980. According to author Laurent Bouzereau’s book, "The Cutting Room Floor", the original ending had Duvall’s character in the hospital being visited by Ullman who tells her that her husband died.

The actress, however, admitted she doesn’t remember the sequence ever being shot.

“Jack’s last day of filming was of him freezing to death and when it was over, he was so glad to go home to see his Lakers play again,” she said. “I don’t think Stanley ever wanted the film to end. I don’t think he ever wanted the process to end. He loved making movies.”

Renowned horror novelist Stephen King made it no secret he didn’t like Kubrick’s version of his bestselling 1977 novel when the film was released.

Duvall thought it was because the author would probably prefer his name at the beginning of the title.

“I think it would be because all the videos say, “Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining” and not “Stephen King’s The Shining,’” she remarked.

King adapted a script from his book and ABC remade it into a six-hour mini-series in 1997. Duvall said she only saw about thirty minutes of part two.

“It just wasn’t as good as the original,” she added. “I can’t help it. You have to be honest in your opinions otherwise, what is your opinion worth?”

Duvall died July 11, 2024, at age 75.

©7/11/24