Before They Were Kings: Part Three

Original article published in VANITY FAIR, March 2004>>>>>


BEFORE THEY WERE KINGS

(Part 3 of .. God knows HOW MANY??)


Robert Duvall was the lead in that “A View from the Bridge, playing, at 26, Eddie Carbone, a sullen Sicilian longshoreman in his 40’s from Red Hook, Brooklyn, with accent to match. “In the first rehearsal,” says Hackman, “Bobby already had this kind of physical thing that he was doing – like an animal – kind of glided across the stage. I was really impressed.” Grosbard still recalls in wonder, “You see a transformation happen that you can’t put your finger on, except it’s unmistakable. What does he draw on to do that?”

Duvall was born in San Diego in 1931. His father, Howard, a naval officer who rose to rear admiral, resettled his family in a series of cities and ended up in Annapolis, Maryland. Adjusting to numerous schools, Robert, though smallish, found status as an athlete. In his loving, committed Christian Science family, everybody was a singer or performer. Howard, whom Robert sometimes referred to as the admiral, ran a tight ship. Discipline was “a good whack” and a “go to your room” says Robert’s brother, William. But because of Howard’s long absences on duty, their East Texas mother – extroverted, musical, a former drama major – was in charge. William Duvall describes Bobby as “a problem child in some areas; he didn’t always conform to the usual mother-father rules of the house. He had the rebel in him.”

Duvall was fundamentally at loose ends until, like his friend Dustin, he recognized his talent, probably inherited from his mother. A Duvall-family legend has four year old Bobby convulsing a table of cowboys at his uncles Idaho ranch by imitating and old sheepherder wolfing down his meal. Later, in front of a mirror, Robert would comb his hair like Lawrence Olivier and “do my own corny version of his Hamlet. I remember that. Yeah.” A conventional career was utterly alien. Remembering his days at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, Duval says “You don’t know where to go, what’s gonna happen. You feel lost. It was like, ‘What’s next? In my life? The next day?’”

Like Hoffman, he kept from flunking by becoming a drama major. Playing an adult in Arthur Miller’s ALL MY SONS, he spoke the final, emotional speech – “They were ALL my sons” – and felt spontaneous tears wetting his cheeks. He remembers, “I was like totally at peace. And I thought, Oh, wow, maybe I have something here.” His extremely critical acting coach assured him, “You can’t do much more with acting than that.” In 1955, after two years in the army, he moved to New York and was accepted at the Neighborhood Playhouse, presided over by the fearsome acting teacher Sanford Meisner.

The trio was completed in 1958, when Hoffman arrived in New York with $50 in his pocket and an invitation to sleep on the Hackman’s kitchen floor for a few days. To Hoffman, the city loomed cold and lonely and terrifying – “I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.” He clung to the two room apartment for three weeks, until Gene and Faye, with no privacy, had had enough. Finally Hackman placed Hoffman with Bobby Duvall in a sixth floor, three bedroom walk up apartment at 109th street and Broadway. Hoffman says “The feeling was that Bobby was the new Brando. I felt he was the one, and probably I wasn’t. In a sense I was their little brother – you know, ‘My friend Dustbone, he’s very talented.’ Gene was older and married, so I was the tagalong.”

(to be continued)

(view parts 1-3 HERE)