Shelley Duvall as Millie Lammoreaux in 3 WOMEN

SHELLEY DUVALL

SHELLEY DUVALL as Millie Lammoreaux in 3 WOMEN

Probably my favorite unseen performance of all time. Altman dreamed up the concept of 3 Women while sleeping by his wife's sickbed. He even dreamed the title and the casting of Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall and he knew that the story would somehow involve identity theft. But even that is too specific a description for this strange, beautiful and funny film. Altman has said that, of all his films, it comes the closest to eliciting a purely emotional reaction from the viewer.

Vincent Canby of the New York Times said in 1977

“Logic has nothing to do with films' effeciveness, though it does with all of the performances, beginning with Miss Duvall's. Millie Lammoreaux is the central figure in Robert Altman's funny, moving new film, "3 Women," and, as played as well as largely created by Shelley Duvall, she's one of the most memorable characterizations Mr. Altman has ever given us. Miss Duvall's large, round dark eyes are windows through which a tiny creature inside looks out upon a world whose complete disinterest Millie Lammoreaux refuses to accept.”

We all remember Shelley Duvall terrified face in the hotel bathroom as Jack Nicholson begins to break open the door from the other side in THE SHINNING. This film's performance by Shelley Duvall is a different kind of terrifying tale. A woman without a center. Without love in her life and is desperately is trying to be everything she says she is.

“Thoroughly Modern Millie”…Milie is like the the recipes she cuts out of Woman’s Day Magazine, ‘perfect’. Like her cannary yellow dress, her small apartment and hair cut, just perfect. Well, not quite. It’s doesn’t take long see right through Millie, she is frantically alone and of need of some sincere TLC - her loneliness is eerie, shocking and palpable. Relentlessly and deftly played by Shelley Duvall. It’s an in your face embarrassing to tenth degree rendering. Every molecule seems to scream for acceptance and love or just a little attention. Most of the journal entries and monologues and dialogue were created by Shelley Duvall herself. It’s an incredible performance. This film had no viewers when it was first release but later caught on with word of mouth and VHS and later DvD. I doubt with the reality TV brains that exist in today’s film taste would accept this ingenious and risky impressionistic film. People didn’t know how to take the film back then or the actors in it or what it all meant. Millie just made them uncomfortable and so did the other two women – Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule. But how deliciously uncomfortable Shelley Duvall is to watch.

Her coming down the stairs in the jumpsuit makes me howl every time I see it. Like genius satire – it’s high art at it’s best. Shelley striking a pose with every step trying the stir up the looks of the men sitting at the pool BBQ below – one man in particular – Tom, who always has cough. Millie makes it down to her favorite lounge chair a flips her new cosmopolitan, as all hip 70’s single women would do. Every turn of the page as though saying, 'look at me, look at me'! Nothing really for herself, no true desire or passion , everything , every move is a presentation of normal and sanity and beauty. Hysterical. It’s painful dream drama. Another great scene that will make cringe is when she joins the doctors in their commissary for lunch and sits between two of them, who talk right through her.

In a movie filled with mirrors, reflections, twins and multiple images. Millie always seems to be primping, making minute adjustments to her clothes and hair, perfecting her makeup, admiring herself in reflection while no one else seems to quite see her. So truthful it becomes funny because it is so uncomfortable to watch, you have to watch it again and again. Altman eerie dream keeps going full steam ahead – once it brings you in – largely due to Shelley Duvall incredible performance. I asked Mr. Altman about the dress in the car the car door, and he said, “Oh that happened once during one of the first takes and the DP pointed it out to me and we just keep doing it, it felt right and it felt right to Shelley”. Always working as a collaborator ‘ It felt right to Shelley”, and always available to find new things to throw into the mix to make his identity stealing drama work better.

Millie enjoys getting junks mail and fixing her curl and those tiny shrimp cocktail for her dinner party. Of course the guests never show and Millie comes undone.

Everyone else in the movie sees through her too ( but she thinks that they think she’s fabulous! – that’s what is so brilliant – the cruelty never affects her zealous or nerve) She's ignored even when she speaks directly to people, her party guests never arrive, and her plans for "hot dates" invariably end up with her going to the local dive bar -- which offers dirt bike racing and a gun range out back. The only people she gets are the tossed away old geezers at the gun range – whom she is flippant with and turns away from – of course. Looking back, it's ironic that 20th Century Fox, released both 3 Women and Star Wars the same year. The success of the latter caused the blockbuster system to click into place, which signaled the end of Altman's creative Hollywood phase. It’s sad really. This is what film could have been. Daring and unresting and personal with a ‘shining’ ( Get it Shining – Shelley Duvall was in the Shining.) performance at the center. Nevertheless, Altman quickly found a home in the independent movement and has continued to make fascinating films to his end.

Altman always points to Shelley when talking about how did he go about creating Millie. “I only had the idea – Shelley did all the work” Good casting Mr. Altman, rest in peace.