Actress/producer Shelley Duvall has died at the age of 75, from complications of diabetes. She was born July 7, 1949 in Fort Worth. Texas, USA. She died July 11, 2024, in Blanco, Texas, just a few days past her 75th birthday.
Shelley Duvall embraced her unusual appearance and took on roles where she could truly shine as an actress. She starred as Olive Oyl in Popeye (1980) and famously starred as Wendy Torrance in the horror film The Shining (1980). She appeared in Time Bandits (1981) as Pansy. In Frankenweenie, (1984) she voiced Susan Frankenstein, young Victor’s mother. Shelley Duvall was Gabby in Caspar Meets Wendy (1998). She played Mama in the horror film The Forest Hills (2023).
Paradoxically, Popeye won the Stinkers Bad Movies Award for Worst Picture of 1981 and was nominated for a Saturn Award for the Best Fantasy of 1981, losing to the infinitely superior Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Shelley Duvall started as an actress, but she was also a producer. She was creator and host of Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre. The series was her attempt to memorialize timeless children’s stories so that future generations of children would always have them. The series was nominated for five Cable Ace Awards between 1988 and 1989, won two Peabody Awards in 1984 and 1985. It won the Television Critics Association Award in 1985 for Outstanding Achievement in Children’s Programming.
She is survived by her father, Robert Duvall, who is 93 years old.
We don’t know if you can hear us from the other side of the veil, Shelley. But just in case you can:
Thanks for everything. It was a beautiful life.
Susan Macdonald is the author of the children’s book “R is for Renaissance Faire”, as well as 26 short stories, mostly fantasy in “Alternative Truths”, “Swords and Sorceress #30”, Swords &Sorceries Vols. 1, 2, & 5, “Cat Tails” “Under Western Stars”, and “Knee-High Drummond and the Durango Kid”. Her articles have appeared on SCIFI.radio’s web site, in The Inquisitr, and in The Millington Star. She enjoys Renaissance Faires (see book above), science fiction conventions, Highland Games, and Native American pow-wows.
