Shelley Duvall Showed Us the Magic of Storytelling
We'll always have "Faerie Tale Theatre."
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Yesterday we said goodbye to actress and creator Shelley Duvall at the age of 75. Duvall had been through it over the last several years, even after leaving acting behind, with well-documented struggles with mental illness (which is one of many things we should never forgive Dr. Phil for). But to see all the social media comments dropped in the wake of her passing it was remarkable to see such outpourings of love and respect for a woman who was so often presented through a limiting prism.
In a weird twist of irony I also watched HBO’s upcoming documentary on Faye Dunaway (which is good, btw) and I kept going back to how Dunaway and Duvall are, in a way, strange bedfellows. Both women were praised and mocked for their unconventional looks. Each struggled with mental illness. Each was labeled difficult for, in many instances (Dunaway less so), talking about behavior we’d now deem as questionable or downright toxic. Duvall was done dirty by Hollywood and I can only hope that she found the peace in her personal life that her professional one didn’t yield her.
For me, Duvall was her 1982 Showtime series Faerie Tale Theatre, an anthology show wherein future A-list stars recreated Grimm’s fairy tales with Duvall acting as narrator. I don’t know if I’d be writing an oral history on a TV anthology series if not for what Duvall created (albeit in a vastly different genre than I’m writing today).
