Robert Duvall has left us, at the fairly grand age of 95 and after 70 years on stage and screen. Quite a body of work, maybe not so many big roles in his later films (though he did get an Oscar nomination in 2015), but he kept pretty solidly working until just a few years ago… but until I saw this posted on Bluesky, I never knew about one of his more amusing parts:
Not only was Duvall the Corleone family consigliere Tom Hagen in The Godfather, he was Marlon Brando’s cue card wrangler as well. Brando was already infamous for his use of cue cards, cos he claimed that only knowing the broad outline of a scene actually made his performances more realistic rather than just being the sign of gross laziness most of his colleagues thought it was. And, as you can see above, it appears that even being a major part of the cast didn’t mean you wouldn’t get drafted to hold Marlon’s cards for him at some point. RIP Bob.
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