Actress Shelley Duvall died today, July 11, 2024. She was seventy-five years and four days old. Most people remember her as the female lead in The Shining (1980). I remember her for her performance in one of the most powerful and touching episodes of The Twilight Zone, broadcast on September 27, 1986, entitled "A Saucer of Loneliness."
"A Saucer of Loneliness" was adapted by David Gerrold from an original story by Theodore Sturgeon, published in Galaxy Science Fiction in February 1953. Sturgeon's story has been reprinted many times since, and you can understand why once you have read it. Inspiration struck him before he began and he wrote his story in about four hours.
Shelley Duvall played several roles in movie and television adaptations of science fiction, horror, and fantasy stories, as well as tall tales and fairy tales. In 1989, she created and was executive producer of the TV show Nightmare Classics. There were four episodes in all. Three were adapted from original stories by tellers of weird tales Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Ambrose Bierce. Only Henry James out of the four original authors was not in Weird Tales. The Shining was also by an author who was in Weird Tales, Stephen King, though of course he was in a later incarnation of the magazine.
Shelley Duvall was at the height of her career during the 1970s, when great auteurs were at the forefront of moviemaking. She was in fact discovered by one of them, Robert Altman. She had great appeal on screen and unusual looks, too, but then in the 1970s actors and actresses were allowed unusual looks and an unusual manner. In looking at pictures of her today, I realized that she had a passing resemblance to Italian actress Mariangela Melato, who was also an actress of the 1970s and who was also associated with a great auteur, in her case Lina Wertmüller. Mariangela Melato was in The Seduction of Mimi (1972), a very funny movie, but I would recommend watching first Swept Away . . . by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August (1974), in which she gave a great performance, in which she looks very beautiful, and which has a great bossa nova soundtrack by Piero Piccioni.
Almost all of these people are gone now.
The closing of "A Saucer of Loneliness" may be a comfort to those who still have far to go in life:
". . . even to loneliness there is an end, for those who are lonely enough, long enough."
We send wishes for an end to loneliness for those who are lonely and condolences to the friends and family of Shelley Duvall.
Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley
That's a shame.
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