Shelley Duvall

Shelley Duvall has passed away. A beautiful actress who generally conveyed a sense of gentleness and frailty, she frequently worked with Robert Altman, eventually being perfectly cast as Olive Oyl in his live action Popeye. But it's of course for Stanley Kubrick's The Shining that she's best remembered. That trademark frailty of hers is so fundamental to selling the overall menace that pervades that extraordinary film. It's due that film's remarkable longevity, as younger audiences have discovered it, that Duvall will hold a place in humanity's collective imagination for a very long time to come.

Duvall also produced a memorable series of fairy tales adapted for the screen in the 1980s.

X Sonnet #1862

The safety vouched by doors is fragile cash.
Supporting struts deceive the home with love.
No glob of faces earns the daily bash.
But still the heart recalls a hand and glove.
The empty movie houses break the day.
Abandoned wooden pieces fit but poorly.
But brick'll stand beside projected clay.
Electric hearts connect but ever sorely.
Pervasive dreams of candy conjure clouds.
The colour scorned was sapped from people's minds.
A now they'll ever walk through charcoal shrouds.
And dwell on webs no gentle spider binds.
A fragile spindle sang a subtle song.
Some restless souls discerned there's something wrong.