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Texas Standard’s commentator remembers the Academy Award-winning actor who was not born a Texan, but played a heck of one on TV and film.
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Angela Kocherga: This is a Texas standard. I’m Angela Kocherga. Robert Duvalll was not born a Texan, but he certainly played one on tv. The 95-year-old actor died Sunday. He had a career that spanned decades. His iconic roles were in the Godfather and Apocalypse Now, but many know him best as a Augustus McCrae. In the beloved television miniseries, lonesome Dove.
Duvall was nominated seven times for Academy Awards for his acting. He won once in 1984 for another Texas role. He played a broken down country singer in Horton Foot’s tender mercies. Texas Standard commentator WF Strong joins us now with a look at Duvall’s role as an honorary Texan wf. So great to speak with you.
W.F. Strong: Well, thank you.
Angela Kocherga: Well, I mentioned Duvalll was not from Texas. He was born in California, but he was no stranger to the Lone Star state when it came to acting roles. Tell us about his Texas connections and let’s start with Duvalll’s Oscar winning role in Tender Mercies. What did he bring to that character?
W.F. Strong: I tell you, I was in graduate school when that movie came out.
I was, uh, going to school in Arizona and I remember seeing it and saying. He nailed that Texan. I learned later that he had studied Texans, so to speak. He had, uh, actually traveled around the state for that role, uh, recording country artists, talking to them, going to, you know, what we would call, uh. Dives where he would, you would hear the, the real country bands playing in small venues.
You know, he was an actor’s actor. He really studied, he never phoned in a performance. He wanted to be authentic. And, and then I learned later on that he had, uh, he had come to Texas when he was 10 years old. His, I think his mother’s side of the family. Was from Texas where he learned to ride a horse here.
So he had some defining experiences early on that I think made him, you know, love this state.
Angela Kocherga: Well, is there a scene that stands out for you?
W.F. Strong: I guess for me it’s the garden scene. He’s hoeing the, the weeds after he is learned that his daughter died. He’s trying to, in ways forget a pass that he, he wants to get passed.
Robert Duvall: I was almost killed once in a car accident. I was drunk and I ran off the side of the road and I turned over four times and he took me outta that car for dead. But I lived
and I prayed last night to know why. I lived and she died, but I got no answer to my prayers.
I still don’t know why she died and I lived,
I don’t know the answer to nothing about a blessed thing.
W.F. Strong: And so, uh, everything about the movie and his character is very. Introspective, uh, even brooding. And the reason I thought of that, uh, particularly yesterday is because it’s the opposite of Gus McCray. You know, Gus is an extrovert, a lover of life, and very different characters.
So the roles are polar opposites, but he nailed both of them.
Angela Kocherga: Well, I was just about to ask you about that. I know you’re a big Lonesome Dove fan, and Deval brought Larry McMurtry’s character to life, but he wasn’t originally cast as Augustus. Tell us about that.
W.F. Strong: Yeah, he was supposed to play WF call and he had read the novel, he said in about 15 days.
He wrote, read the novel, and he just loved Gus and he, he was, uh, chomping at the bit, so to speak, to play Gus. And he had, um, you know, by this time he was, uh, quite a famous artist, an actor, and he had power. And he went in and he told him not only do I wanna play the role of Gus, instead of WF Call, I wanna play Gus and I want Tommy Lee Jones to play call because he wanted a authentic Texan in that role.
You know, he put all of his credibility on the line and he convinced them that. He wanted to play Gus and then of course he later said many times it was the role of his life. He just loved Gus. And, uh, what did he say? The Brits have Shakespeare and they have Othello. And um, he said, we have Westerns and we have Gus McCrae.
And he considered Gus McCray, his Macbeth, his Othello, his greatest role. And he embodied it. I mean, the thing that made Gus so good or made Duvall so good at playing Gus is that, uh, he didn’t send us a stereotypical Hollywood cutout of a cowboy. He didn’t take on an iconic role. He made the role iconic.
Gus was the guy that we meet down at the feed store. He was authentically, completely Texan and he was all hat and all cattle you might say, and that as a character. I think of the reason we liked Gus so much is uh, he sucked the marrow out of life. He was a fun junkie. He just loved life. And that’s infectious.
That’s why we, we love him.
Tommy Lee Jones: That’s a dang stupid thing to do. Bringing that old sign along, you’ll have us laughing stock of this whole country with that. We don’t rent pigs part.
Robert Duvall: Well, we don’t rent pigs. And I figure it’s better to say it right up front. ’cause a man that does like to rent pigs is. He’s hard to stop.
Tommy Lee Jones: And if that ain’t bad enough, you get all them Greek words on there too.
Robert Duvall: I told you Woodrow A. Long time ago, it ain’t Greek, it’s Latin.
Tommy Lee Jones: Well, what does it say that Latin?
Robert Duvall: Well, it’s a motto. It just says itself. Your vi your feet, your vi double feet, your whatever.
Tommy Lee Jones: You don’t have no idea what it says. You found that in some old book or something.
Bro, you know, it invites people to rob us.
Robert Duvall: Well, first Man comes along that can read a Latin and is welcome to Rob. As far as I’m concerned. I’d like the chance to shoot at an educated man once in my life.
Angela Kocherga: Well, you’ve done several stories about the Great Lines in Lonesome Dove. What do you remember most from Duvall’s performance?
W.F. Strong: It is hard to, uh, narrow it down to one thing, but if I, if I can take a kind of a global look at it and we have to thank McMurtry for writing it, but, uh, Gus amplified McMurtry and, um, made it more powerful than it was, you know, in the book. But I would say the thing that sticks out to me is that he had so many great lines.
He was just. Throwing off Proverbs right and left. And today you could make a book called Gus’s Lonesome Dove Bible. And uh, and you could, and you could print a little book of the Proverbs of Gus. And then he, he had ’em for every occasion, you know, he, he hung his friend Jake Spoon. And you know, people were shocked and, uh, even.
Inside the movie and outside the movie, people was, were shocked. He hung Jake’s spoon and, and he told Jake, he said, I hate to do it to you, but, um, you know, you crossed the line.
Robert Duvall: I wish you’d taken that change a little earlier, Jake man will go along with five killings. Take leave a little slow. Go ahead.
And he,
W.F. Strong: and so, um, he had a strict code of ethics that, uh, must be enforced.
Angela Kocherga: Well, such a powerful character and such a powerful performance by Robert Duvalll. WF Strong is a Texas standard commentator and a professor of culture and communication at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley WF. So great to speak with you.
Thank you again.
W.F. Strong: Well, thank you. Appreciate it.
Angela Kocherga: And you’re listening to the Texas Standard.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
