Lancaster, Burt

BURT'S A's & B's

I never would have guessed that I’d be devoting one of these career summaries to Burt Lancaster, who was no particular favorite of mine, but a Criterion Channel collection led me in, and I kept digging deeper.  Not all the way down, as I have done for some actors, but skimming the top titles, hence the title of this essay.  That said, some of his films are among my vivid early memories of movie-going.

As a 9-year-old, one of the first “adult” films that made a memorable impact on me was Trapeze (1956).  Possibly it was Gina Lollabrigida that caught the little wop’s attention, she certainly shows off a 9-year-old’s vision of a woman, with a Jessica Rabbit-like figure in her skimpy circus outfit.  But I think my identification was more with the Burt Lancaster character, the ex-flyer-turned-catcher after a fall, than with Tony Curtis, the young flyer who comes to him hoping to reach the aerialist’s heights with a triple somersault.  At that point, I doubt I had an appreciation of Carol Reed’s direction, or took in the documentary quality of the shooting at the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris, though perhaps I saw that it was realer than most films I’d seen up till then.  Looking at the movie all this time later, I have to say that it holds up, and takes added interest from the knowledge that is was perhaps the most personal role that Lancaster ever played, since long before he became an actor, Burt was a circus performer, and did many of his own stunts in this film.

Burt Lancaster (his real name) was in an acrobatic duo act with his East Harlem childhood friend throughout the Thirties, having dropped out of NYU despite an athletic scholarship.  An injury ended that career, then the war came and he served in the army, eventually landing a postwar NYC theater role by happenstance.  The play flopped, but Burt was noticed by an agent, who got him his first film role at the age of 33, and eventually became his producing partner.  Though Lancaster has a dubious reputation for difficult on-set behavior, his durable relationships, and his outspoken liberal advocacy, make him seem likable.

I’ll get back to Burt’s bio in a bit, but for now I’m sticking with my own childhood perspective.  A year later, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) was all the rage among my cohort, in an era when Westerns really ruled the roost.  Lancaster is Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas is Doc Holliday in this oft-told tale of a notorious shoot-out in Tombstone, AZ.  They are both good, as is the location shooting as the story moves from Texas to Kansas to Arizona, while the unlikely relationship between lawman and gambler develops, held together by a hokey ballad, which like occasional studio-set scenes really dates the production.  The lack of historical realism (though the town setting is plausible enough, the clothes are incongruously clean and pressed), and the stereotypical treatment of women, also make this film less than convincing and less than classic, though handsome to look at.  Just about right for a boy’s story, but not so great for a grown man (or woman).  Director John Sturges went back and did the story his own way in Hour of the Gun, as John Ford already had in My Darling Clementine.

Run Silent, Run Deep (1958) was also important to me, having seen the movie and read the book, in what order I’m not sure.  World War II pictures were another dominant genre in the 50s, with submarine stories a staple, but few come up to this one.  No wonder an 11-year-old was captivated; sixty-plus years later, I still think it’s an outstanding example of its kind – tense, taut, and well put together by director Robert Wise.  Our man Burt is executive officer and presumptive next captain on a sub working out of Pearl, when he’s denied by Clark Gable re-claiming command after his old sub was destroyed, with an Ahab-like mission to go back and sink the destroyer that sunk him.  The rest of the crew is generic but well-cast, with unexpected faces like Don Rickles or George Reeves (whose role was cut because he was too recognizable as Superman on TV), and a speaking part for Burt’s old friend Nick Cravat.  Again, the realism stands out, with the obvious cooperation of the Navy, and top-notch special effects for the era.  This film runs deep and fast in its 93 minutes, and repays revisiting.

I also have a bit of personal history with The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), though I certainly didn’t see it when first released.  But among the very first pages of the journal I started keeping in 1974 is this reaction to the film: “Ludicrously bad in every respect except the photography.  If I had any self-respect, I would have walked out on this one.”  Spoken with the voice of my mentor in film studies at the time, so I returned for a revaluation years later, after I had developed more of a taste for classic Hollywood films and kept expanding my collection for the Either/Or Video Archive.  Now, upon third viewing, I really enjoy the on-location view of NYC nightlife in the Fifties, and Burt’s deliciously evil portrayal of the Walter Winchell-like gossip columnist, and Tony Curtis as his press agent toady.  I notice the tangy dialogue by Clifford Odets and the solid direction by Alexander Mackendrick, and credit James Wong Howe for the cinematography.  But I also note the insipidity of the young couple around whom the story revolves, and the odiousness of the primary characters and the milieu in which they operate.  So there’s no surprise that the movie flopped in its time, before being touted as a late-noir classic.

From here on, I touch on most of Lancaster’s high points in order of release, about evenly divided between first viewings and re-viewings.  I’m certainly not making an exaggerated case for his artistry or importance, but he is an appealing performer with a representative career.  What drew me into this survey was a chance to dip back into all the dominant genres of postwar Hollywood.

In The Killers (1946) director Robert Siodmak adapts an Ernest Hemingway short story into a film that is as noir as noir can get, with dark shadows and pools of light in an atmosphere of foretold doom. There is much of interest here, including Burt Lancaster’s film debut as the ruined-boxer kill-ee; a very young and thin Ava Gardner as femme fatale, fresh from North Carolina and far from the voluptuous, exotic screen vixen of my early moviegoing memories; and Edmund O’Brien as the insurance investigator who pieces the tale together. The story is appropriately convoluted, but impossible to care about, as are the characters. But as an exercise in style and mood, this film sets the mold, and launched Burt’s career.

I didn’t bother to catch up with the sensitive tough-guy roles that followed, in routine crime or Western stories, but jump to a movie that put his acrobatic skills on display, The Flame and the Arrow (1950).  By this time, Lancaster was one of the first actors to set up his own production company, with his agent Harold Hecht.  Sometimes they would initiate a project, then take it to a studio, or sometimes the studio would come to them with a story, or else Lancaster would take on a lucrative acting job to keep the company afloat.  In this case, Burt broke out as the successor to Fairbanks and Flynn as action hero, in this unabashed emulation of Robin Hood.  The idea was suggested by his old acrobatic partner Nick Cravat, who plays his sidekick in this film, as a mute to hide his NYC accent.  They get to work a number of their old routines into the action.  I noticed only one stunt that Burt did not do himself.  Directed by Jacques Tourneur and written by Waldo Salt (who would soon be blacklisted, but eventually came back to win Oscars for Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home), this film was such an exuberant success that Burt and Nick came back with Crimson Pirate two years later.

Lancaster got his first Oscar nomination for From Here to Eternity (1953), but split the Best Actor vote with Montgomery Clift, so did not add to the film’s haul of eight Academy Awards.  This is a “Best Picture” that deserves its classic status.  Deborah Kerr also fell short as Best Actress, but Donna Reed and Frank Sinatra took the supporting awards, while Fred Zinnemann took Best Director and the script (succinctly adapted from James Jones’ massive novel about the run-up to Pearl Harbor) and cinematography also took home Oscars.  Clift is the busted private, a talented bugler and boxer who refuses to fight in the ring after injuring a friend.  Lancaster is the master sergeant who has to follow his boxing-mad superior’s instructions to punish Clift till he relents, but meanwhile embarks on an affair with the captain’s wife, his roll in the surf with Kerr one of Hollywood’s most iconic scenes.  Sinatra is Clift’s similarly insubordinate buddy, while Reed is his prostitute girlfriend.  A lot of the book had to be toned down to receive the military’s necessary cooperation, but the trade-off in realism is substantial.  And Burt begins to add dimension and nuance to his square-jawed tough-guy persona.  Definitely worth a first or second look.

I thought Burt was painfully miscast in The Rose Tattoo (1955), as a clownish Sicilian truck driver.  He was always seeking to expand his range, but this was a reach too far.  He doesn’t appear till the second half of this adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, so I had ample opportunity to focus on Anna Magnani’s Oscar-winning performance in her first English language film.   Which was mercurial and superb, forceful but subtle, broad but witty, going so far as to awaken my ancestral unconscious.  She’s a seamstress somewhere down on the Gulf Coast, brought over from Sicily to marry the husband she idolizes.  When he dies suddenly, she is bereft and falls into a depression, antagonizing her teenage daughter, who has a romance of her own.  Burt breaks in on her isolation, and goes to great lengths to get through to her.  That’s about it, but Magnani’s performance adds many shadings.

They don’t make movies the way they used to, and you’d be glad of that if you saw The Rainmaker (1956), a filmed play of transparent unreality.  I can describe it best as Oklahoma without the music; it’s played so broadly that you keep expecting the actors to break into song.  Or maybe it’s The Music Man without music, about a huckster who comes to a drought-ridden Kansas town and upends the lives of various residents.  The film opens on Burt Lancaster’s wide toothy grin, and just keeps getting broader.  Katherine Hepburn performs gamely, but is sadly miscast as the prospective old maid, who takes care of her widowed father and two brothers, as they nonetheless try to marry her off.  There are moments of truth in the film, but they are overshadowed by garish theatricality.  Lancaster would realize this character much better in Elmer Gantry, as Hepburn had just realized hers much better in Summertime.

Separate Tables (1958) is in a tradition that goes back to Grand Hotel and beyond, the interlocking stories of disparate guests, this time at a seaside guest house in England.  Adapted from a Terrence Rattigan play and given excellent deep-focus direction by Delbert Mann, this is an impressive acting showcase, with David Niven and Wendy Hiller winning Oscars, and Deborah Kerr nominated for the highly-uncharacteristic role of a mousey spinster.  This was a Hecht-Lancaster production following up on their Oscar-winner Marty, with Burt brought in, along with Rita Hayworth, for star power late in the game.  With so many different storylines and acting styles on display, I won’t enumerate the characters and their interactions, but will say that this film far exceeded my expectations, and overcame my usual aversion to filmed plays and theatricality in general, for an unusually convincing melodrama,

Today The Unforgiven (1960) looks unforgivable in its racism, even though it’s adapted from a similar story by the author of The Searchers.  Where John Ford was making an honest effort to correct the Native American stereotypes of his earlier films, here John Huston washed his hands of the film, collected his paycheck to finance his castle in Ireland, and absconded at the end of the shoot.  The finished film has some merits, largely the cinematography and staging of action, but it’s incoherent, absurd, and offensive to modern sensibilities, with a lack of a strong directorial vision.  Audrey Hepburn is the young adopted daughter of cattle-ranching widow Lillian Gish; Burt Lancaster is the oldest of her sons, and the step-siblings are very fond of each other.  A mysterious stranger claims that Audrey was abducted as an infant in a raid on a Kiowa village.  The rumor sets off all sorts of reactions in the white community, mostly hateful.  And then the Kiowas arrive, to take her back.  There’s a well-staged attack by a raiding party of forty on four of the family hunkered down in a sodbuster house, which is ludicrous in its shooting gallery approach, where the settlers’ shots never miss and always kill, with the Injuns dropping like flies.  It’s not a spoiler alert, but a warning, to say that in the end the incestuous subtext becomes the overt basis for a semi-happy ending.  The film flopped, and foretold the end of the Hecht-Lancaster production team. 

Burt’s career-defining role, or at least his only Oscar win, came as the antihero Elmer Gantry (1960), in Richard Brooks’ adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel.  Gantry is a big character – a hard-drinking, hard-living, hard-loving salesman-huckster turned tent-meeting revivalist – and Lancaster fills out the role admirably, channeling Billy Sunday, the baseball player turned evangelical celebrity.  He hooks up with a sincere but canny preacher played by Jean Simmons (reminiscent of Aimee Semple McPherson – compare Barbara Stanwyck in The Miracle Woman), and together they build a ministry too hot not to burn down.  Gantry gets his comeuppance from Shirley Jones (in a role which legitimately earned her an Oscar), whom he had seduced while back in seminary, getting himself expelled and setting her on the road to perdition, and eventual fall into prostitution.  Brooks filmed only part of the book, but it was a passion project that achieved an epic dimension, and holds up very well.

Lancaster had another hit with Richard Brooks a few years later.  The Professionals (1966) was, well, a professional job, in a string of Westerns from The Magnificent Seven to The Wild Bunch, in which a bunch of gunslingers band together on a righteous rescue mission.  In this case, Burt is the demolition expert recruited by Lee Marvin, to join with Robert Ryan and Woody Strode and retrieve Claudia Cardinale, a tycoon’s wife who has been kidnapped for ransom by Mexican revolutionaries.  The film is well-acted and good-looking, put together in quite a professional manner, but routine in plot and characterization, though Marvin and Lancaster play very well together.  A fine, but not exceptional, late example of one of the era’s dominant genres.

Though apparently quite antagonistic, Lancaster made five films with John Frankenheimer.  The best known was Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), which was a pleasant surprise to me, most tellingly in the scenes at Leavenworth, where Burt’s character is slapped in solitary after killing a guard and takes up ornithology, in a very believable sequence of encounters with his avian friends.  Based on a profile of an actual lifelong prisoner, the film includes his prehistory with his mother (Thelma Ritter) and repeated conflicts with a warden (Karl Malden), who moves with him to Alcatraz, where the prisoner, now a recognized authority on birds, also writes a critical history of prisons but helps diffuse a cellblock revolt.  Lancaster plausibly humanizes the prisoner’s progression and aging without ever softening his hard edge.  The real Robert Stroud was never released and never saw the film of his life.  But I was glad to.

I knew I’d never seen Birdman, but it was a surprise to find Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May (1964) unfamiliar, and well worth seeing, even (or especially) at this late date.  I’m almost certain I read the bestselling book on which it was based, but somehow missed the film, one of many that paired Lancaster with Kirk Douglas.  Burt is a powerful right-wing general planning a coup against a president (Fredric March) who has signed a disarmament treaty with the Russians; Kirk is an aide who begins to suspect what his boss is up to.  This film stands up well against Frankenheimer’s more famous political conspiracy thriller, The Manchurian Candidate.

Always game for a challenge, Lancaster went to Italy to play the title character in The Leopard (1963) for Luchino Visconti.  Dubbed and butchered for American release, the film flopped, but after restoration two decades later, emerged rightfully as an all-time classic.  Lancaster performs admirably, powerful and poignant, as a Sicilian nobleman reacting to Italian nationalism in the mid-19^th century.  Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon also star in this international production.  Spectacle and reflection combine to good effect, as does Visconti’s own aristocratic background consort with Marxist views.  I particularly enjoyed showing this film on the big screen at the Clark some time back, but did not re-watch it for this survey.

I did, however, catch up with a later collaboration.  Conversation Piece (1974) was Visconti’s valedictory film, or one of a series of such, and brings back Lancaster as a Leopard-like aging aristocrat in a contemporary setting.  He’s actually a retired American scholar and reclusive connoisseur, whose Roman palazzo is invaded by a rich and vulgar family, who disrupt his repose and dislodge his memories.  There’s a marchesa and her bisexual boy-toy, plus her daughter and fiancé, in all sorts of erotic hijinks.  This Leopard is not reacting to the Risorgimento but to the Sixties regime of sex and drugs.  It’s all rather preposterous and incoherent, but not really a chore to watch from a removed perspective. 

In another oh-so-Sixties production, The Swimmer (1968), Burt gets to show off his fit fifty-something physique, in a bathing suit for the entire duration.  This adaptation of a John Cheever story by Frank and Eleanor Perry follows a Don Draper-like figure, an upper-middle-class bon vivant, who comes out of nowhere after a pool party and decides he could swim home through all his neighbors’ pools.  Some welcome his passing through, and some resent it, but at each stop the viewer picks up clues to his past that suggest his delusive present.  With faint gestures toward surrealism and psychedelia, the film unfolds in an atmosphere of desperate privilege.  I found it watchable on several levels, but not impressive.

I note but did not re-view the hard-to-find Go Tell the Spartans (1978), a Vietnam War drama that back in the day I considered every bit as good as or better than much more celebrated films like Platoon, with Burt as commanding officer, and not incidentally, financial supporter of the film, as part of his long tradition of political advocacy.

Lancaster got his fourth and final Oscar nomination for Atlantic City (1980), probably his deepest and most compelling performance, with the possible exception of The Leopard.  Louis Malle’s film holds up exceptionally well over repeat viewings, with a witty script by John Guare.  Shot during Atlantic City’s transition from old seaside resort to gambling mecca, with old hotels being torn down and glitzy casinos going up, the backdrop is embodied in Burt’s character, old and broken down, with fanciful memories of the good old days, when he was supposedly muscle for the mob.  “You shoulda seen it.  The Atlantic Ocean was really something back then.”  He takes voyeuristic delight in watching Susan Saradon, an oyster bar waitress aspiring to be a blackjack dealer, as she stands at her kitchen sink in their condemned apartment building, getting the stink off by rubbing a cut lemon over her bare arms and breasts while listening to opera (“Norma,” I understand, which is interesting as the name of Burt’s second wife and mother of his children, also the original name of his production company).  As her imagined savior after her estranged husband involves her in a drug deal gone bad, he gets to play out his fantasy of tough guy and potent lover, in one last burst of masculine power.

Local Hero (1983) makes a marvelous swan song to Burt’s career (though he did appear in more films, ending with a cameo in Field of Dreams in 1989).  In Bill Forsyth’s wonderful comedy, he plays a Houston oil tycoon with a passionate interest in astronomy, who sends Peter Reigert to buy up a quaint Scottish seaside village for a North Sea oil refinery and port.  Comic complications ensue, so eventually the tycoon helicopters in to take matters in hand himself, but whoa! – one look at those Northern Lights, and the plan changes.  This film nicely sums up Burt’s powerful persona, with a surprising tenderness and sensitivity underlying it.

Interiority was not Lancaster’s forte, but rather broad gestures and wide smiles.  He was a physical actor, with an imposing physique and penetrating blue eyes, but had both a heart and a brain.  He was always trying to extend his range, both in front of the camera and behind it.  Burt was, as Pauline Kael said, “a great specimen of hunkus Americanus.”  And his career spanned vast swaths of postwar cinema, well worth revisiting.