Burt Lancaster: Daring to Reach

[Music] naturally handsome with the body of a greek god for bert lancaster there was no role no character no hero or villain he wasn't willing to take on i'm gonna do them like they mean to do me his journey through hollywood was one of always meeting new challenges forming his own production company producing directing working for less money if he loved a film and always pushing his god-given talent to the limit on the silver screen [Music] i know that my roots come from my upbringing my mother was a very strong disciplinarian and a big powerful woman she weighed about 250 pounds to start about five foot nine and she used to have an expression when we did something and she said shut up or jump down your throat the youngest of four children bert was born on november 2 1913 to working class parents of northern irish descent he grew up in east harlem new york [Music] fortunately for young bert he had access to a settlement house built as part of a social reform movement to lift people out of poverty the settlement house was a great place for the kids to go they offered classes for kids after school programs and bert said if 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 he graduated high school at 16 and went on to college with a basketball scholarship and was bored so a young bert lancaster left university and took off with childhood pal nick cravat and joined the circus as an acrobat it was a great life bert said of the circus but after the bombing of pearl harbor by the japanese in 1941 he joined the army he was 28. i met bert lancaster for the very first time world war ii in italy and he was with the 21st special service unit when they used to entertain us we used to watch burt uh 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 uh he played a sergeant well when i got out of the army in 1945 i 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 use in a circus for when you don't talk you just do an act after a few bit parts in new york lancaster set his sights on hollywood a well-known fellow new york actor sam levine extended a helping hand sam said well the first thing you need to do is get an agent and he began to introduce 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 bert 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 bert had signed with the harold hecht hector immediately signed him up with hal wallace 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 hellinger's the killers bert impressed him he got one of the leads and the killers and now they were in business because amazingly you see that one film made him a star how are you chelsea hello sweden hello bert's reluctance and timidity in that very first scene that we worked in was in considerable contrast to the kind of in-charge guy that he was through most of his career [Music] he was the nature of the role i think swede was a victim he did not initiate action if there's a single thread in the career of bert 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 bert started in the movies did you rob or kill someone [Music] that's what they think what have i done to you i killed him eventually lancaster was able to shed his brooding tough guy image in the 1952 comeback little sheba for bert lancaster to be cast in this role was so unusual it was so against any type casting that you could ever imagine i won a nomination for the movie uh shirley booth won an academy award but to me the one who deserved it the most was bert lancaster go to school do they really i guess you've had to share college he was playing a middle-aged man now it's much easier to go to old because you can get makeup or to 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 hal 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 bert had to go to wallace and really fight for wallace to even consider him putting something over on me no i didn't duck i didn't know anything about it honestly you're crazy if you think i didn't know we're running a regular lonely hearts it's probably been going on for years ever since we were married no no it's not true doc you're alive no daddy daddy please knock that daddy whenever that's gonna happen anymore i'm gonna fix you now what's your fault [Music] he was so versatile he could do when he did from here to eternity i was bowled over because he was so strong nobody's going to do nothing anybody does any killing around here i'll do it okay fatso it's killing you what come on the single most often shown seen from bert lancaster's career is of course the beach 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 uh the producer buddy adler saw it in rehearsal he said well you know this is terrible it doesn't have enough spice and bert said well we actually rehearsed it another way would you mind if we showed that to you strangely enough it took us a long time we found very hard to strike the right kind of note and balance in the piece and 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 he rather enjoyed it [Music] i never knew it could be like this nobody ever kiss me the way you do looks like we tied up with the wrong outfit when i think about bert 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 uh hero and i didn't know who to look for really for the villain i talked to bert at great lengths about a favorite phrase of mine villainy is moonlight and that's playing heroes that are villains and then one day burt said to me he said why don't i play the villain i begin to think of him playing the part and his script not finished kind of began to tailor it this to me was my dream was to have a villain that we fall in love with countess you're 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 bird 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 bird i and i told him this bird said look quit worrying about it jimmy that's okay with me for god thinks he can kill me when we did the rainmaker kate hepburn too they were both larger than life and they were both willing to to step out and take chances that a lot of us more retiring or shy actors are often afraid to do how do you know i'm alive how do you know i'm a fake maybe i can bring rain and then that great gorgeous scene in the tack room when he tells kate that she's now pretty i'm pretty uh i can't say it lizzy say it i'm ready say it again ready say it mean it i'm really i'm ready i'm pretty [Music] in the late 1940s with his agent harold hecht and producer james hill lancaster formed one of the most successful talent-owned production companies in hollywood hecht hill lancaster [Music] hectile lancaster and its predecessors heck norma and hecht lancaster were an incredibly positive force in the emergence of independent film production companies um that were owned by actors directors and other creative people now bert was not the first of these ventures but it was by far by far the most successful the early films the films that featured burt as the swashbuckler in these very lighthearted colorful adventures like the flame in 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 the wonder show of the world with the wonder cast of the world bert lancaster tony curtis gina lola brigida directed by carol reed produced by james hill gunfight at the okay corral bert had agreed to do the picture even though it was basically kirk's picture because the part of doc holliday was a much more exciting part than than wyatt earp and i think byrd 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 bert lancaster as the famous wyatt earp kirk douglas has the notorious doc holliday two men as different as day and night get going down the back stairs i enjoyed watching the bike play between kirk and bert they seemed to enjoy each other tremendously being uh city and thank you properly you can thank me properly by staying out of dodge city kirk is a very dear friend of mine and we've done six pictures together and we have a lot of controversy and conflict when we work because he's very much like me he's uh 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 gain the difference in the acting styles between kirk and bert interestingly enough two strong men two powerfully dominant men who had different approaches bert was i felt more aware and gave out more to his leading lady or his leading actor when bert looked at you and bert 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 can 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 bert lancaster you have been kissed by 1956 the three partners uh bert harold and jim hill were were riding very high at the same time in 1955 their company had produced a very small black and white picture with ernest borgnine and betsy blair i had done the television original one-hour version of marty written by patti chawsky harold hecht identified with the character of marty greatly and wanted to do it as a film marty won the oscar for best picture an actor's independent production company had never ever made such an achievement before well marty was a blessing but in a way it was also kind of a curse because now heck till lancaster 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 happened to mention to him and the 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 was clifford odess to do a rewrite of the script and it's the as fine of writing as he ever did in his life now i didn't know what bert's reaction would be well he came back to me and said i think i'd like to play hunsaker well i tell you i was should have knocked me over with a feather because that was so far from anything he had done up until then we happen to know i'm 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 the sweet smell appealed to birds surely because the part was so foreign to anything that he played or was to play he'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 hep person knows that this one is toting that one around for you look i can explain why you put your hands on my system as the 50s wore on lancaster's production company began losing money and finally closed its doors in 1959 undaunted lancaster moved on to what most critics consider to be his greatest role that of elmer gantry in the 1960 movie adaptation of sinclair lewis's classic novel elmer gantry i had a friend of mine lived in 106th street and he and i were pals from the time we're 15 16 years of age what the hell is the big idea when i did almond gantry i got a letter from him and he said bert he said that's the first time i've seen you act like you used to act when you're a 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 sex and religion i'd like to tear those holy wings off you 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 tie 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 author and 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 he never became a part of the hollywood inner circle i don't remember bert ever inviting in studio executive or anybody else like that over to his house he hated premieres he hated really talking to the press this private man married norma anderson the second of his three wives in 1946 [Music] during their 23-year marriage they had five children [Music] bird 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 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 burt became involved in the civil rights movement of the 60s [Music] he was a strong supporter of dr martin luther king jr 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 in 1962 lancaster took on a role in birdman of alcatraz that reflected his own love of reading and knowledge imagination you know i think i've got you figured out schumacher first day i came here you as much as asked me to give it down on my knees and whip her i wouldn't do it then i won't do it now i won't lick your hand and that's what eats you ain't it keeper will you keep this in mind a man ain't whipped until he quits and i'll never give you that pleasure [Music] get out of here occasionally a roll 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 viscotti 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 his 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 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 burt still was about his trade bert lancaster for many years had been accused by critics as someone who didn't get underneath the skin of his characterizations that it was rather sort of thin and and not well developed and and one nodey 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 added to the character he was doing burp was always conscious of no matter how how placid the scene may have been or how how flat the scene may have been his job was to unflatten it and pump it full of yeast and make it rise then you take a bottle of gold perfume when you put it on the sink then you slice the lemons you open a box of blue soap you run your hands under the water to feel the temperature and you take this open your hands if you look at his career you will 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'd do one that that was a big action picture the kind of bert lancaster movie that you would 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 82 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 i'm a pain in the neck i try to direct the picture i turn it 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 he could ever take it away from him but he never seemed afraid to let somebody else step into 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 time burt 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 in 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 audience and that's not an easy thing to do for an actor in general and especially for an actor who works in such a large way i think the uniqueness of bert 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 planes with kirk douglas he could be whatever you want him to be because he was everything he encompassed it all he was an actor bert lancaster passed away after a long illness in 1994. he was 80 years old [Music] you

Channel: The Hollywood Collection

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Keywords: hollywood movie star, hollywood movie stars, history, movie stars, actor biography, biography, bio, hollywood actor bio, hollywood actor biography, biography documentary, biography documentary free, biography documentary movies, biography a&e, biography of famous people, full documentary biography, Burt Lancaster, burt lancaster, burt lancaster veteran, tough guy burt lancaster, airport, tough guy, old hollywood tough guy, burt lancaster actor, burt lancaster old hollywood

Id: FEMpMtM6HMQ

Length: 28min 8sec (1688 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 12 2022