RIP Robert Duvall
Duvall in “The Godfather,” holding his “Tender Mercies” Oscar, remembering the smell of napalm in the morning, and back to the beginning with Boo Radley in“To Kill a Mockingbird”

RIP Robert Duvall

The man I knew and the acting legend

By Peter Travers

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He told me to call him Bobby. Too diminishing for an acting titan? Bobby didn’t think so. He wore his legend lightly and liked the modest familiarity of it, unless a stiffer formality was called for. Example: Mr. Duvall once sent me a letter, handwritten with a stamp on the envelope, about a magazine profile I did with him that wasn’t the cover story he thought the occasion warranted. You could feel the thunderclaps between the words, lightning between the syllables. I still do.