Burt Lancaster: Daring To Reach | The Hollywood Collection

I say to you I tell you tornado I say a tornado that's a terrible thing a terrible here was a guy who's as handsome as they come as macho as they come as sexual and appealing to women as they come we had an innate sense of what was right for him how he could do something different the next time remarkable men just a brilliant gift from God he had and a man who handled it beautifully without going off the deep end or losing it he was in charge of himself I want to do them like they need to do me he was ahead of his time he's practically a prototype for the modern actor he started his own production company Hector Lancaster he took risks he worked for independent features he did foreign features he did what interested him love and affection is what I got to offer on hot or cold days in this lonely old world I got nothing else anybody who looks at the films knows who Burt Lancaster is he's a combination of all of those characters the body of Burt Lancaster's work is really a tribute to an actor who simply refused to ever be pressed into any particular mold there's a constant striving to do one more performance to be one more guy that he hasn't been yet a constant striving to stretch the envelope to change and to grow I know that my roots come from my upbringing our mother was a very strong disciplinarian and a big powerful woman she weighed about 250 pounds and said about 5 foot 9 and she still have an expression when we did something she says shut up I'll jump down your throat Bert was actually the youngest child of the Lancaster family he grew up in East Harlem which is the neighborhood in the upper part of Manhattan that at that time was largely populated by Italian immigrants his mother and father were Irish by descent they were poor it was a difficult childhood he had to go out and hold boys jobs like many kids in that period shoveling snow shining shoes whatever he could do the settlement house was a great place for the kids to go they offered classes for kids after school programs and Bert said if it hadn't been for the settlement house who knows he could have ended up you know committing crimes or something he said because the settlement house gave him something to do he went there and he went to the library he said he was an avid reader Bert met Nick cravat when he was about 12 years old Nick was a street kid a little kid about 5 foot 2 at his maturity and he was feisty he was like a little pit bull and so you had this odd combination of Bert who could be quite gentle at times and this feisty little Nick my dad and Bert were both opera lovers so my grandmother was also and so she had a bunch of Enrico Caruso albums and so she would play the albums and the kids and and her would all listen he also had his first exposure to the theatre there but he was not interested at all in acting as a kid he thought that was [ __ ] stuff he graduated high school at 16 and went on to college with a basketball scholarship and was bored interestingly it was at the Union settlement house that he met an Australian Accra that by the name of curly breath he saw curly one day doing his workout at the union settlement house gym and said boy that's great stuff do you think he could teach me some of it and curly took him under his wing and and gave him a foundation as an acrobat and the next thing you know brought my dad around and my dad was small and strong and he also used a box so he you know he's real coordinated so the two of them started to learn all this circus acrobatics and they became great friends the three of them they made their own bars and they worked and they practiced and then they got an act together and then found an ad in a paper for the K Brothers Circus and they wrote a letter to K brothers offering their act and they call themselves Lang and cravat the parents chipped in my grandmother my father's mother chipped in $50 or so and then Burt's father chipped in about $50 and they got this car they drove it down there and then they showed up and there they were and they were hired and that's how the circus life began in 1940 birdy injured his arm and he had to retire from the circus for a while and he didn't really know what he wanted to do in Chicago he took a series of odd jobs he worked for example as a salesman at Montgomery Ward and he worked in various other rather menial jobs while he tried to figure out what he wanted to do with his life and before he really had settled upon something World War 2 we intervened I met Bert like us over the very first time World War two in Italy and he was with a 21st special service unit when they used to entertain us we used to watch Bert do some tricks on the trapeze and also get involved with various skits and sketches the next time I saw him was in New York when he had just come off a play sound of hunting and he played a sergeant well when I got out of the Army in 1945 quite accidentally met a man in an elevator who asked me if I was an actor and as I said to him yes I'm a dumb actor dumb actor is expression we used in the circus for when you don't talk you just do an act he was going to visit a girlfriend Norma who later became his wife and then as it turns out the good guy said hey would you be interested in reading for a part you look like the perfect you know what we're looking for the perfect look and the pot was not a very big part the what he did impressed a lot of people and so Hollywood got interested in him the star of a sound of hunting was Sam Levine who was a well-known New York actor at that point and Sam kind of took Bert under his wing Bert had a number of studio offers but what was he going to do he was really a novice in the field and Sam said well the first thing you need to do is get an agent and he began to introduce perk to appropriate parties one of them was named Harold Hecht and Hecht said to Lancaster look I'm not the biggest agent that you're going to be meeting with but you would be a very important client to me I won't eat unless you eat and I guarantee I'll get you jobs they also said something to Burt that was even more intriguing he said if you're going to be the star that I think you're going to be within five years we can be making our own movies as producers and for Lancaster that had enormous appeal once Byrd had signed with the herald Hecht Hecht immediately signed him up with Hal Wallis because he wanted to ensure an income and Wallace was great at signing up people like Kirk Douglas and any number of other ones Wallace said you give me two pictures a year for seven years and you can do any other projects that you want Harold knew about Mark challengers the killers Byrd impressed him he got one of the leads in the killers and now they were in business because amazingly you see that one film made him a star if there's a single thread in the career of Burt Lancaster it may well be the notion that nobody nobody was going to tell him what to do Lancaster was going to be his own man and this was a remarkable notion for an actor to have in 1945 when Burt started in the movies Lancaster's first independent production was kissed the blood off my hands which was a rather dark choice for him to make given the fact that he wanted to break away from the dark movies that how Wallace put him in did you rob will kill someone I'd kill him in the 40s Lancaster was primarily seen as a tough guy he was playing a series of inarticulate physically constricted vulnerable but hardened men he wanted to tap other sides of his persona and every time something came along where he could kind of break out of that mold he had to struggle with Hal Wallis to allow him to do it the first opportunity came with all my sons are played by Arthur Miller in which he really showed himself as a very endearing typically normal young guy in love with a young woman when we got around to making films the one that really was tailor made for Bert was the flame in the arrow and for the first time Bert took truly an active part because he staged all of the physical scenes himself Bert was very impulsive and he had a lot of energy he was always kind of bouncing around we had the scenes loved scene where he had been arguing and fighting with these noblemen and he was angered and he pulled me to him so forcefully that he hurt my arms so I went home that night with these bruises on my arm and my husband didn't know what had happened but it was because of Bert eventually when Bert made it to Hollywood and really started getting parts and getting known and everything then that's when he talked my dad into coming to Hollywood so my dad packed up the house and and the wife and I'm from Indiana and out to Hollywood he went he didn't have any acting experience so they were nervous about giving him lines so my dad said something like he talked his head off and they gave him the role of a mute so he kind of talked himself I guess I'm speaking he and nick cravat were wonderful to watch they were so cute together this is the type of industry where you don't always get an honest answer and we're particularly could always count on my dad to just right off the cuff with him and he wouldn't mince words he wouldn't pull his punches - sometimes you know Burt would get insulted and they'd get in a fight and they'd argue but they were like brothers and all of a sudden instead of this heavy brooding slow-moving bottled up kind of Burt Lancaster persona which people had been used to at that time you got a guy who was light and boolean and acrobatic and smiled all the time people today who think of those incredible teeth that had its real start with the flame in the era it really gave Burt a whole different persona a whole different side of themselves and remarkably throughout all of the rest of the decades of his career he kept that persona and the original persona that that sort of hunkered down man of control sort of side by side and would take the two of them out and interchangeably use them as the pictures demand you are charged with desertion theft shanghaiing sailors willful destruction of private property scandalous conduct with a certain South Sea woman Oh all we need is a preacher and a motel Burt loved to direct the second movie I made with Burt he practically directed Chuck Connors because chuck was new this was his first picture and burnt new it and he was about to take over Chuck and his performance because he felt he could guide him what are you doing here I'm on my honeymoon I'm on his honeymoon - he was always off in the corner with Chuck telling him what to do and I'm sure the real director was a little miffed at it but I don't think he said anything Burt was a very demanding tough guy you had to know what you were doing to work with him he didn't have any patience with you if you didn't know exactly what you wanted and what you were doing and he was a very intimidating guy to argue with along the way Burt saw that if he is going to get parts there were any good at all he had better be in a position to play opposite people like a Shirley booth for Burt Lancaster to be cast in this role was so unusual it was so against any typecasting that you could ever imagine I want a nomination for the movie of Shirley booth won an Academy Award but to me the one who deserved it the most was Burt Lancaster can I carry those for you they're not heavy I can manage I guess it would look silly a man my age carrying your books a lot of men your age go to school do they really I guess you've had your share of college he was playing a middle-aged man no it's much easier to go to old cuz you get makeup or - even younger because they can shoot you through gauze but to play this middle-aged former drunk it was the most unusual casting in the whole world now how Wallace originally wanted Humphrey Bogart for the role and Bogart would have been just about perfect for it but it was not to be and once again Burt had to go to Wallace and really fight for Wallace to even consider him I think I knew about it did you I had up stinking there that night I saw them you knew about it all the time and you thought you were putting something over him no I didn't duck I didn't know anything about it I was crazy if you think I didn't know we're running a regular Lonely Hearts place that's probably been going off for years ever since we were married no no it's not true duck you know that's what happen or I'm gonna fix you now daddy he was so versatile he could do when he did from here to eternity I was bowled over because he was so strong nobody gonna do nothing anybody doesn't he killing around here I'll do it okay fatso let's kill you would come on top she's nothing but trouble you better keep your mind of what you're thinking what he wanted to one-up an 11-1 the single most often shown seen from Burt Lancaster's career is of course the deep scene from here to eternity it took three days to actually film that scene because they had to time the waves in such a way that it would work the director originally had in mind that the two of them would kiss standing on the sand well when the producer buddy Adler saw in rehearsal I suppose you know this is terrible it doesn't have enough spice and Burt said well we actually rehearsed it another way would you mind if we showed that to you crazy enough it took us a long time we found it very hard to strike the right kind of note and balance in the piece we had to do it over and over and over before we got it and of course another reason we did it over and over again is because of our destroyed I never knew it could be like this nobody have a kiss mean away looks like we tied up with the wrong outfit when I think about Burt and his desire to find a role on the screen the picture that comes immediately to mind is Veracruz heck kept looking for somebody to play the villain in the piece I had done 25 or 30 pages and I knew they were pretty good and on the strength of them Harold got Gary Cooper to play the hero and I didn't know who to look for really for the villain I'd talked to hurt with great lengths about a favorite phrase of mine villain is moonlight and that's playing heroes or villains and then one day Bert said to me he said why don't I play the villain I begin to think of him playing apart and a script not finished kind of begin to tailor it this to me was my dream which they have a villain that we fall in love with Kenneth beginning to talk my language it was in Veracruz as I say that he came full blossom amongst women Bert had a monumental fascination and when people talked of him being like a caged lion any number of women said how much they'd like to be in that cage with him I felt so much in love with him myself just watching him on the screen that I went to Cooper and said I'm not going to kill Bert in the picture Cooper he's just too likable and Cooper said when I agreed to do it the agreement was that I killed Bert I won't finish the picture unless I kill him so I said to birth I and I told him this Bert said look quit worrying about it Jimmy that's okay with me for God's sakes he can kill me BIRT never played the movie store he never played that game he socially was rarely ever seen out with other performers he was always behind the scenes and his brilliance as an actor I think was an innate gift he challenged himself with everything he did he had to be challenged after come back little Sheba he just stepped out all the time and took roles whether they were like him or not I know with John Wayne and most actors John Wayne used to say to me well that's not a John Wayne role but there was no such role for Burt Lancaster he would jump into new waters and was daring like he was on the trapeze he dared try anything and he did I wanted to meet some sensible older lady you know I don't care if she's a little bit too plump or not such a stylish dresser the important thing in the lady is is understanding good sense you know yeah and I wanted to have a nice well furnished house and a profitable business of some kind such a lady with the world furnish thousand business but does she want with a man we three dependents and four cheese in the bill Abbot plays the number oh my love and affection in a world that that's lonely and cold it might be lonely but I would not say cold on this particular table love and affection is what I got the offer on hotter cold days in this lonely old world I got nothing else magic Ivalo has nothing who me I'm bottom one Chuck Ivalo oh yeah you know magic Ivalo means either horse you know this but I don't have a hostage not even a chicken I'm the grandson of the village idiot of rivairy oh I see you like to make jokes no no no no joke DeVito he chased my grandmother in the flooded rice beer she slipped on a wet rub balloon echo here I yeah I think the fact that Burt could hold his own and more with Anna mignon II Shirley booth Kate Hepburn was indicative of the man when we did the Rainmaker Kate Hepburn - they were both larger-than-life and they were both willing to step out and take chances that a lot of us more retiring or shy actors are often afraid to do I'm sick and tired of this I'm tired of you queer my work calling me out of my name I told you watch la big mouth liar and a fake her you normally how do you know I'm a fake maybe I can bring rain and then that rape gorgeous scene in the tack room when he tells Kate that she's pretty well such sensitivity who's your eyes closed see I'm uh I'm good say it lizzy say it I'm really say it again say it meanest I'm ready I'm ready Hecht el Lancaster and its predecessors HEC Norma and Hecht Lancaster were an incredibly positive force in the emergence of independent film production companies that were owned by actors directors and other creative people now Bert's was not the first of these ventures but it was by far by far the most successful the early films the films that featured Bert as the swashbuckler in these very light-hearted colorful adventures like the flame and the arrow and ten tall men and the Crimson pirate were highly successful pictures Veracruz was an enormous box-office hit and trapeze was the biggest hit of all leaves the wonder show the world with the wonder cast of the world Burt Lancaster Tony Curtis Gina Lollobrigida directed by Carol Reed produced by James Hill Burt had a tendency to want to help other people and one of the people who wanted to help with Tony Curtis because Tony is what I would call a natural born actor and Carol said to me looks the shot was the reason I'm never going to get the shot unless he quits coaching it tell her the price you put on it tell her how you said anybody could have a anybody who said because she was a cheap mother well Burt continued to coach nip and finally Carol came to me and said look I'm not going to take any more from this fellow I'm going to tell him off in front of the whole company well god I didn't look forward to that but I said to Carol finally let me tell you what I'm going to do Carol I'm gonna back you up well Carol laughed so hard that ended that but that is an insight into bird he worried about everybody in the show and he worried about everybody in life he confided the OK Corral Burt had agreed to do the picture even though it was basically Kirk's picture because that part of Doc Holiday was a much more exciting part than than Wyatt Earp I think Burt agreed to do it because he wanted to do that and the Rainmaker to wash up his commitments with Wallace then he would be on his own Burt Lancaster as the famous Wyatt Earp Kirk Douglas as the notorious Doc Holliday two men as different as day and night it going down the Backstairs I enjoyed watching the buy play between Kirk and Burt they seemed to enjoy each other tremendously in that city and thank you properly you can thank me properly by staying out of Dodge City Kirk is one of the always seem to me to be one of those actors who was a lot of that a lot of angst you felt like Kirk could explode at any moment you are dirt just like me Burt scene much easier much more pulled back much more laid back Kirk is a very dear friend of mine and we've done six pictures together we have a lot of controversy and conflict when we work because he's very much like me he's conceited he tries to tell me how to act I try to tell him how to act and it goes this way and strangely enough out of this kind of feuding and fighting and fussing has come a great respect and mutual love that we made the difference in the acting styles between Kirk and Burt ah interestingly enough two strong men to powerfully dominant men who had different approaches Burt was I felt more aware and gave out more to his leading lady or his leading actor when Burt looked at you and Burt responded to your work gave you the dialogue you were in that scene it was real and it was like a beautiful tennis match you had playing with a good partner it was magic and the love scenes well all I could tell you is that I have been I have done love scenes and been kissed by some of the most stunning handsome gorgeous Hollywood male stars in the business and it's been wonderful but let me tell you something when you've been kissed by Burt Lancaster you have been killed by 1956 the three partners Burt Harold and Jim Hill were writing very high at the same time in 1955 their company had produced a very small black and white picture with Ernest Borgnine at Betsy Blair I had done the television original one hour version of Marty written by Paddy Chayefsky Harold Hecht identified with the character of Marty greatly and wanted to do it as a film no television script had ever been adapted for the films he wanted to do it he bought the rights from patty Marty won the Oscar for Best Picture an actor's independent production company had never ever made such an achievement before while marty was a blessing but in a way was also kind of a curse because now Hecht L Lancaster's saw themselves not just as producers of entertainment but producers of serious dramatic fare some of which starred Burt and some of which didn't Harold bought a property that I happen to mentioned to him and next thing he bought it that was Harold and it was the sweet smell of success and I couldn't have been more excited because the first person I got with Clifford or death to do a rewrite of the script and as fine of writing as he ever did in his life now I didn't know what Bert's reaction would be when he came back to me and said I think I'd like to play hunter well I tell you I was sure to knock me over with a feather because that was so far from anything he had done up until then Burt Lancaster as JJ hunsecker world famed columnist whose gossip is gospel to 60 million readers Tony Curtis as Sidney Falco the kid who had ideas about taking over but we happen to know on your star pupil because I reflect back to you your own talent I'd hate to take a bite of you you're a cookie full of arsenic the idea of doing a sweet smell appealed a bird surely because the part was so foreign to anything that he played or was to play it's so typical of him that he never came to me and said what do you think this will do to my career I never heard him ever say that about anything that he did he just said I want to do it here you are out in the open where any hip person knows that this one is totally that one around for you I thought Tony Curtis was fantastic and bird saw to it that he was fantastic because he knew there was really Tony Curtis his picture jpz look I can explain why you put your hands on my sister but in its day in the mid-50s pictures like sweet smell of success were not what Americans went to the box office to see and from that point Hecht el Lancaster began to experience ever ever increasing financial difficulties at the same time the company continued to acquire properties continued to grow continue to make more pictures and to spend money as if the heyday was in full flower you see no woman in my house how much woman worth there are not enough horses to pay for her not all you can own or all you can steal I don't a and the whole mess finally caught up with them and the company died very very quietly and very very quickly in 1959 CIN CIN CIN you're all sinners you're all doomed to partition I had a friend of mine lived in a hundred and six Street and he and I were pals in the time of fifteen sixteen years of age what the hell's the big idea when I did Elmer Gantry I got a letter from him and he said Burt he said that's the first time I've seen you act like you used to act when you were kid in the streets full of the old devil and baloney and so forth and so on I love that part Elmer Gantry is an all-american boy he's interested in money sass and religion I'd like to tear those holy wings off you'll make a real woman out of you I'd show you what Heaven's like no golden stairways or harp music or silvery clouds he was a favorite with my mother that's what I thought was wonderful he only had one tie and he would the night that he got his Oscar he came by to ask her if his everything matched that he was wearing the tie especially she said you don't have another time Bert well we'll make it match I'll get one of the Jimmy's father's shirts and that's what he wore the night that he won the Oscar when he got it for Elmer Gantry really everything that we had worked with and he had worked with had come to pass I mean there is truly the villainy is moonlight he made you love Elmer Gantry Burt Lancaster was always with the way we remember Burt Lancaster he was a real force on the screen and he was like that in in his personal life I was I like a lot of people were serving awe of and he was a he was an extraordinary physical specimen to begin with he looked like he looked like a a statue that that some great sculpture had had made he was always you know little taller than everybody else a little better built than everybody else she used to wear the most inexpensive clothes like he where he had a pair of khaki pants he warmed forever one pair of khaki pants and one coat that was a kind of a Harris Tweed that he called his thousand-mile er and there was a tie stuffed into the top pocket of the jacket he'd walk in 221 he'd take the tie out tie around round his neck and make it nice knot and he'd walk in he looked classier and more elegant and than anybody in the room I remember once passing him when he was sitting in his dressing room and he was reading a book that I had read and I stopped to discuss it with him I said you read much he said well I try to get through a book every day you know that's incredible I was I was very impressed with that burps very private and he wasn't really one to go to all the functions and the parties um he was a pretty quiet quiet man in fact one memory I have of him often times we would be at his beach house or somewhere I'd walk in the room he was he wouldn't know I was was coming in the room or something and often he'd be sitting I mean usually he'd be sitting on a chair with a bathrobe on reading with classical music I mean that's probably how I best remember him he never became a part of the Hollywood inner circle I don't remember bird ever inviting in the studio executive or anybody else like that over drew his mouth he hated premiers he hated really talking to the press when he was married for many years to Norma the mother of his children they kept the very quietly living in their home in bel-air he loved his children who was a good father he had five kids there's three girls and two boys Jimmy and Billy Susan Sheila and Joanne Jimmy has the oldest is married my cousin Annie as a matter of fact his major passion was bridge almost every Saturday night there was a major bridge game going on over at the Lancaster House Bert would show up in this big brown Cadillac and I think he would just honk and my dad would go out there and the two of them would jog in the morning just because he became a famous movie star didn't change the fact that Nick cravat was still his friend Bert had a better sense of who he was than almost any man I know and because of that there was nothing that I know that he was afraid of he knew exactly who he was and he was he was comfortable with it so he didn't have to change when he became a movie star he was also involved in his in his time and in and in the politics of his of his generation and he told me that he was making a movie in Paris at the time and he had gathered about 2,000 signatures of either Americans working in Paris or expatriates and had brought it to Washington to give to Martin Luther King as a symbolic gesture of support but he had come over specifically to participate in his famous civil rights march and what makes his his willingness to participate doubly endearing is the fact that he had a terrible fear of flying he did almost anything he could to avoid flying so the fact that he would be willing to get on a plane and fly from Paris to Washington and go back on a plane the very next day shows where his heart really lay a red screenplay called go tell the Spartans by Wendell Mane's because of the Vietnam open wound most of the studios stayed away from it I thought that Bert would be a terrific choice she said send the script down so I sent it down two days later we call back to say I love the script said Bert wait a minute which is very low in fact this particular budget is all your salary I don't think we'll be able to make a connection with your agent on that he said don't you worry about that I money has nothing to do with it I want to do this picture period when we rented a little motel across the street from the location he'd wake up at 5:30 in the morning and there would be a knock on the window 5:30 6:00 in the morning and I could see his eyes sticking through a little slit in the curtain he wanted to talk to me and I get up and open the door I said anything wrong he says no no I'm so happy with this script let's sit down and talk about that's exactly what we do Bert was never a testicle and he had everything to be egotistical about I mean he a great brain good looks highly intelligent and he was a great actor he always wanted to stretch his horizons I mean you remember Berta never stopped working Bert was a kind of a permanent student a permanent and I know what the right adjectives are I want to say voracious or obsessive they called him the Birdman and he is the most defiant man alive during the 43 years he spent in solitary confinement this amazing man did not break bread with another human being yet out of defiance and sheer strength of will taught himself in a prison cell half a dozen languages and mastered the intricacies of a score of scientific subjects an accomplishment to stagger the imagination no I think I've got you figured out Shu Rika first day I came here you as much as asked me to get down on my knees and whimper I wouldn't do it then I won't do it now I won't lick your hand and that's what eats your innit keeper will you keep this in mind man ain't whipped until he quits and I'll never give you that pleasure occasionally a role and a picture are so impressive that we behind the camera want to shout about it from the rooftops I have just been privileged to work in such a picture the film is the leopard from the celebrated bestseller and it provides one of the most challenging roles it's ever been my good fortune to portray he even had me come to Sicily to look over everything because he was terribly taken up with biscotti and he had a relationship like he never had with anybody before he was like a little kid he was taking me around the set and he showed me a bedroom then he opened drawers in the dresser to show me that they were all filled with the kind of gear and kind of clothes that a man would wear at that time I said but where do you show that in the film oh we don't show that he said but that's this connie's way he goes to those lengths that's how much like a little kid Bert still was about his trade Burt Lancaster for many years had been accused by critics someone who didn't get underneath the skin of his characterizations that was rather sort of thin and not well developed and and one no D he took that criticism quite seriously and began to really look into himself and try to find out what it was that he had to do in order to improve himself in order to develop in a way in which there would be more nuances more shadings more colors more life at it to the character he was doing I remember he called me once from the from the road where he was where he was playing the lead in Knickerbocker holiday singing September song the role that Walter Houston made so famous and I remember the Glee with which he said to me the critics are killing me they're just they're just ripping me apart and I really deserved it I was really bad in this thing but I'm getting better I'm getting better all the time he was he was fearless about that Bert's background as an acrobat the physicality of that the the release through action through activity was perhaps a kind of symbol of a large part of his career the striving always armored and always kind of upward seeking new fields to conquer comes right out of the character of trapeze triple somersault that was the center of that story I think you could use that as a metaphor for for Bert's career Bert was always conscious of no matter how how Placid the scene may have been or how how flat the scene may have been uh his job was to unflattering and pump it full of yeast and make it rise which is what he did with Atlantic City what do you do when you watch me I look at you you take off your blouse then you run the water then you take a bottle of gold perfume when you put it on the sink and you slice the lemon you open a box of blue soap you run your hands into the water to feel the temperature and you take this open your hands if you look at his career you'll see that he would do one or two very commercial movies and then he would absolutely stick his neck out a mile he was always doing something that was a little bit risky and he alternated this way he do one that that was a big action picture the kind of Burt Lancaster movie that you expect him to do and then he'd really stick his neck out and try something I think the most distinctive thing about him was the way he selected his material at the time that I had done local hero which was 1982 he was I think 69 he had probably done 80 to 85 movies he was a star from his first film when he said he did one for the Pope and one for him whether it was doing something like Atlantic City or the leopard or local hero he could sustain it by doing major Hollywood films the director in the writer who's a Scottish fellow named Bill Forsyth who's from Glasgow this was his first movie pretty much with adults he wrote the part for Burt Lancaster there's a scene in local hero where his character happer has arrived on a helicopter and I'm leading him along these cliffs back to the hotel well the scene was shot at sunset when the light is just about to drop and I was watching Lancaster talking to the director Bill Forsyth and he was he was sort of saying something like this all right this is what I'm gonna do I'm gonna look to my left and then I'm gonna put my arm around McIntyre and I'm gonna gesture to the sky then perhaps I'll I'll look out to the sea and after bird finish talking bill said am i I think a wee bit less and Lancaster without missing a beat says all right how about this and he went on it to describe a whole other approach to the same scene and this one on and on and bill said again at the end when he was done and I think a wee bit less but at the end of the movie they gave him a party I think of Lancaster a party and he made a beautiful speech about his experience and local hero and how hard it is to find such a wonderful script and he wanted to thank the director who in his words spoke no known language I'm a pain in the neck I try to direct the picture I turned to the other actors how to act people hate me and when it's all over they wind up loving me I don't know why I mean he was larger than life anyway I don't think you could ever take it away from it but he never seen before a to let somebody else step in to the limelight or take the spotlight away from him Bert had such a variety tremendous variety of roles and he just played the heck out of every one of them and you believed him there any time Bert was in a film you want to go see it anytime he's on television you want to watch it that's the magic the magnetism that he had it seemed like he never forgot where he was from which is rare and most people most people are trying to run away from where they're from he was proud of his background he was reverential about the people who influenced him in his life and I think that's why people like him so much because I think they see in him themselves it still seemed like he was from the audience he didn't seem apart from the audience he seemed from the earth and that's not an easy thing to do for an actor in general especially for an actor who works in such a large way I think the uniqueness of Burt Lancaster's persona is that he could be to everybody whatever they wanted him to be he could be the poet he could be with great wisdom and soul he could be the athlete the Acrobat the western star riding the Plains with Kirk Douglas he could be whatever you want him to be because he was everything he encompassed at all he was an actor you

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Keywords: charlton heston, clint eastwood, biography, bio, actress, cinema, michael caine, stage, marilyn monroe, steve mcqueen, actor, lassie, audrey hepburn, shirley temple, theater, filmmaker, biopic, director, movie, documentary, the 7 year itch, gentlemen prefer blondes, unheard, giveaway, biography channel, yul brynner, jane russell, katherine hepburn, bio channel, full biography, mini biography, some like it hot, the biography channel, short biography, billy wilder, tony curtis, jack lemmon

Id: 7jPGW-DViKA

Length: 48min 27sec (2907 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2016