Robert Duvall made his movie debut in 1962 as Boo Radley in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and he won an Oscar as best actor as a washed-up country singer in the 1983 film “Tender Mercies.”
He’s also starred in acclaimed films from “Network” and “Apocalypse Now” to “The Great Santini” and “The Apostle.” And, Duvall’s happy to admit, he’s made plenty of not-so-great movies, too.
But Duvall points to “The Godfather” as a film he was absolutely certain was special, saying he knew even before it was finished.
“Maybe a quarter of the way through, I said to myself there’s something really important here, a really important film,” says Duvall, 91, and still making movies. “I’ve only felt that twice, and I felt it very strongly then.”
Duvall agreed to talk about director Francis Ford Coppola‘s three “Godfather” movies, the first two of which he stars in, on the occasion of their restoration for the 50th anniversary of the first film’s 1972 release. There’s a new 4K Ultra HD box set of all three.
Duvall played Tom Hagen, the adopted son, attorney and consigliere to Don Vito Corleone, the Mafia godfather played by Marlon Brando. That made him a brother to Sonny, Michael and Fredo Corleone, played by James Caan, Al Pacino, and John Cazale, respectively.
It’s a role he got in part due to an earlier collaboration with Coppola and Caan, Duvall says.
“In ‘The Rain People,’ they fired somebody so Jimmy Caan said, ‘Duvall could play that part,’” he says of Coppola’s 1969 drama. “So they brought me along on ‘The Rain People,’ and I became kind of together with the guys.
“Then, when Coppola started talking about ‘The Godfather,’ we were out in San Francisco, and he just thought automatically of the parts,” Duvall says. “Me as Tom Hagen, and Jimmy as the part he played.
“It was kind of already set, and Jimmy was responsible for that.”
On location
When filming on “The Godfather” began, it wasn’t immediately clear what it would become, or even if it would be finished with Coppola behind the camera, Duvall says.
“He worked under tremendous pressure because he thought he was going to be fired,” Duvall says of the interference Coppola faced from studio executives early on.
“I know personally, me, Bobby Duvall, I gained a lot of respect for Coppola, a lot, for working under that kind of pressure,” he says. “He kept to his guns and he got the vision that he wanted.”
As a result, the cast and crew focused mostly on the work in front of them, and less on the big ideas embedded in the screenplay co-written by Coppola and Mario Puzo, who wrote the novel on which the script was based.
“We didn’t talk a lot about this and that, this and that,” Duvall says. “We just kind of went ahead with our natural impulses.”
The cast, which included Diane Keaton as Kay, Michael Corleone’s girlfriend and future wife, and Talia Shire, Coppola’s sister, as Vito Corleone’s daughter Connie, all melded together even before the filming started.
“Before the first day of shooting or anything, we all got together for dinner,” Duvall says. “Brando was at the head of the table, and it was really like he was a godfather to us young actors.
“It all just fit,” he says. “It worked, the relationships and everything. All we had to do was go and do what we had to do to get the final result.”
Brando, already a movie icon, treated everyone as his equals, Duvall says, and between scenes the cast kept loose by playing practical jokes and pranks on each other.
“Francis would say, ‘C’mon, guys, we got to be serious,’” he says. “But we continued, and he knew that those pranks and whatever we did were therapeutic. He knew that fooling around was a good thing to loosen people up.”
What kind of pranks were these?
“I can remember one in particular, but I can’t tell you, it’s a little too graphic,” Duvall says. “But we did a lot of mooning and things like that. Trying to get people – ‘I gotcha!’”
Making a classic
Duvall says his instinct while shooting the film was borne out almost as soon “The Godfather” debuted.
“There’s always people who don’t accept,” he says. “I think Francis once said if a movie is accepted 100% it’s probably not good.
“So I remember at the St. Regis Hotel, at the opening night party, a very well-known stage and film director came up to us guys, me, Pacino, Jimmy Caan,” Duvall says. “He said, ‘You guys were great, you were excellent. But I don’t know about the movie.”
The director was right about their work – Duvall, Pacino and Caan all were nominated for the Academy Award for best supporting actor, and Brando won for best actor – but wrong about the film.
“I’m not going to name names, but I’ve worked with this gentleman before and since, and there’s no way he could have ever done a movie like ‘The Godfather’” Duvall says. “Not many people could.”
That’s partly because Coppola, in making a movie about a Mafia family, put more emphasis on family than on the mob, Duvall says.
“I think the humanity that’s instilled in the movie, the frame of the film, he was able to capture family,” he says when asked why the “Godfather” movies endure. “Coppola’s big into family, and he wanted to present that sense of family.
“That’s what made the thing work so well. The camaraderie of a close-knit family.”
Always acting
Duvall reprised his role as Tom Hagen for “The Godfather Part II,” the 1974 prequel for which Robert De Niro won an Oscar as best supporting actor as a younger Vito Corleone.
Duvall did not return for 1990’s “The Godfather Part III,” and he’s not shy about the reason why: Money.
“If you’re going to pay so-and-so two and three and four times what you pay me, you’re not going to get me,” he says. “But they went the other way, and so I said, ‘OK, I’m out.’
“But I continued the friendship with Coppola. He helped me with editing certain things I did and filmed. I haven’t seen him much lately, but for a while there we had a pretty close relationship.”
His closest friend from “The Godfather” movies remains Caan, the buddy who first connected him with Coppola.
“I talk to Jimmy maybe once every several months, or more if I want to or he wants to,” Duvall says. “We’ve been friends a long, long time.”
At 91, Duvall is still making movies, usually small parts in projects by friends and former collaborators.
Next up for him is “The Pale Blue Eye,” an Edgar Allan Poe-themed movie from writer-director Scott Cooper, Duvall’s director in “Crazy Heart.”
Acting, when it’s good, is a special kind of reward, says Duvall, who points to the TV mini-series “Lonesome Dove” as the only other time he knew in his heart the project was a success long before it was finished.
“I walked into the dining room and said, ‘Boys, we’re making ‘The Godfather’ of Westerns,’” he says. “And I think it panned out that way.
“Being an actor, you live an imaginary existence between ‘action’ and ‘cut,’” Duvall says. “When you live between those two words, you try to create something that’s from yourself, that’s alive, and legitimate and truthful.”
It’s that feeling that makes looking back at “The Godfather” films so special.
“If you figure you can do that, and people respond to that, it’s a rewarding thing,” Duvall says. “Those things you remember, and certain things you cherish.”
