Robert Duvall's road to stardom began at Gateway in Bellport

Long before his success in Hollywood, Oscar winner Robert Duvall's entry into show business came by way of The Gateway in Bellport.

Duvall, who died Sunday at 95, was a mainstay at the theater during its salad days. appearing in roughly 20 productions there. The Gateway Theatre, as it was originally known, was founded in 1950 by Harry Pomeran, who ran it with his three children — Sally, David and Ruth, the mother of the current executive artistic director Paul Allan.

"My aunt, Sally Pomeran, was in college with Robert Duvall and brought him out here," said Allan, who recalled that everyone called the actor "Bodge."

Duvall appeared in both "Laughter in the Stars" and "The Little Prince" in 1952. After an Army stint, he returned to Gateway in 1955 where he performed steadily over the next four years in a variety of shows. Among them were the William Inge dramas "Picnic" and "Bus Stop," Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," Jean Anouilh's "Thieves' Carnival" and Agatha Christie's courtroom mystery "Witness for the Prosecution" as the solicitor.

In his bio for the "Witness" Playbill in 1957, Duvall wrote that he had graduated from the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in Manhattan and was a member of the workshop run by actor Sanford Meisner and that he worked with Alvin Epstein, a mime with Marcel Marceau's troupe.

Obviously his work with Meisner paid off since he landed two choice roles while at Gateway. In 1957, he starred as Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman conflicted by his incestuous feelings toward his niece in Miller's tragedy "A View From the Bridge." Two years later, he tackled the role of the animalistic Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Duvall also brought a couple of his friends to Gateway for tryouts — Dustin Hoffman, whose audition was unsuccessful, and Gene Hackman, who appeared in several productions, including "Witness" and "A View From the Bridge."

Yet even with such powerhouse roles, no one at Gateway could have imagined the level of stardom that Duvall would ultimately achieve, according to Allan, who said his mom often spoke of the actor.

"She said he was good but back then he was just a young actor starting out," he said. "No one had any feeling at that time that he'd become a big star."