Burt Lancaster
Burton Stephen Lancaster was an American actor. Initially known for playing tough characters with tender hearts, he went on to achieve success with more complex and challenging roles over a 45-year career in films and television series. Lancaster was a four-time nominee for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and he also won two BAFTA Awards, one Golden Globe Award for Best Lead Actor, one Silver Bear, one Volpi Cup and two David di Donatello awards. The American Film Institute ranks Lancaster as of the greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Lancaster performed as a circus acrobat in the 1930s. At the age of 32 and after serving in World War II, he landed a role in a Broadway play and drew the attention of a Hollywood agent. His appearance in film noir The Killers in 1946 with Ava Gardner was a critical success and launched both of their careers. In 1948, Lancaster starred alongside Barbara Stanwyck in the commercially and critically acclaimed film Sorry, Wrong Number, where he portrayed the husband to her bedridden invalid character. In 1953, Lancaster played the illicit lover of Deborah Kerr in the military drama From Here to Eternity. A box office smash, it won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and landed a Best Actor nomination for Lancaster.
Later in the 1950s, he starred in The Rainmaker with Katharine Hepburn, earning a Best Actor Golden Globe nomination, and in 1957 he starred in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral with frequent co-star Kirk Douglas. During the 1950s, his production company Hecht-Hill-Lancaster was highly successful, with Lancaster acting in films such as: Trapeze, a box office smash in which he used his acrobatic skills and for which he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor; Sweet Smell of Success, a dark drama now considered a classic; Run Silent, Run Deep, a World War II submarine drama with Clark Gable; and Separate Tables, a hotel-set drama which received seven Oscar nominations.
In the early 1960s, Lancaster starred in a string of critically successful films, each in very disparate roles. Playing a charismatic con-man religious revivalist in Elmer Gantry in 1960 won him the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Actor. Lancaster played a Nazi war criminal in 1961 in the all-star war crimes trial film Judgment at Nuremberg. Playing a bird expert prisoner in Birdman of Alcatraz in 1962, he earned the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor and his third Oscar nomination. In 1963, Lancaster traveled to Italy to star as an Italian prince in Visconti's epic period drama The Leopard. In 1964, he played a US Air Force general who, opposed by a colonel played by Douglas, tries to overthrow the President in Seven Days in May. Then, in 1966, he played an explosives expert in the western The Professionals. Although the reception of his 1968 film The Swimmer was initially lackluster upon release, in the years after it has grown in stature critically and attained a cult following.
In 1970, Lancaster starred in the box-office hit, air-disaster drama Airport. In 1974, he starred in another Visconti film, Conversation Piece. He experienced a career resurgence in 1980 with the crime-romance Atlantic City, winning the BAFTA for Best Actor and landing his fourth Oscar nomination. Starting in the late 1970s, he also appeared in television mini-series, including the award-winning Separate but Equal with Sidney Poitier. He continued acting into his late 70s, until a stroke in 1990 forced him to retire; four years later he died from a heart attack. His final film role was as Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams.
Early life
Lancaster was born on November 2, 1913, in New York City, at his parents' home at 209 East 106th Street, the son of Elizabeth and mailman James Lancaster. Both of his parents were Protestants of working-class background. All four of his grandparents were immigrants from the province of Ulster, Ireland. His maternal side was from Belfast.Lancaster grew up in East Harlem, New York City. He developed a great interest and skill in gymnastics while attending DeWitt Clinton High School, where he was a basketball star. Before he graduated from DeWitt Clinton, his mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Lancaster was accepted by New York University with an athletic scholarship, but dropped out.
Circus career
At the age of 9, Lancaster met Nick Cravat with whom he developed a lifelong partnership. Together, they learned to act in local theatre productions and circus arts at Union Settlement, one of the city's oldest settlement houses. In the 1930s, they formed the acrobat duo Lang and Cravat and soon joined the Kay Brothers circus. However, in 1939, an injury forced Lancaster to give up the profession, with great regret. He then found temporary work, first as a salesman for Marshall Field's and then as a singing waiter in various restaurants.World War II service
After the United States entered World War II, Lancaster joined the United States Army in January 1943 and performed with the Army's 21st Special Services Division, one of the military units organized to follow the troops on the ground and provide USO entertainment to maintain morale. He served in the Fifth Army in Italy under General Mark Clark from 1943 to 1945. He was discharged in October 1945 as an entertainment specialist with the rank of technician fifth grade.Acting career
Broadway
Lancaster returned to New York after his Army service. Although initially unenthusiastic about acting, Lancaster was encouraged to audition for a Broadway play by a producer who saw him in an elevator while he was visiting his then-girlfriend at work. The audition was successful and Lancaster was cast in Harry Brown's A Sound of Hunting. The show ran for only three weeks, but his performance attracted the interest of a Hollywood agent, Harold Hecht. Lancaster had other offers but Hecht promised him the opportunity to produce their own movies within five years of hitting Hollywood.Through Hecht, Lancaster was brought to the attention of producer Hal B. Wallis. Lancaster left New York and moved to Los Angeles. Wallis signed him to a non-exclusive eight-movie contract.
Hal Wallis
Lancaster's first filmed movie was Desert Fury for Wallis in 1947, where Lancaster was billed after John Hodiak and Lizabeth Scott. It was directed by Lewis Allen.Then producer Mark Hellinger approached him to star in 1946's The Killers, which was completed and released prior to Desert Fury. Directed by Robert Siodmak, it was a great commercial and critical success and launched Lancaster and his co-star Ava Gardner to stardom. It has since come to be regarded as a classic.
Hellinger used Lancaster again on Brute Force in 1947, a prison drama written by Richard Brooks and directed by Jules Dassin. It was also well received. Wallis released his films through Paramount, and so Lancaster and other Wallis contractees made cameos in Variety Girl in 1947.
Lancaster's next film was a thriller for Wallis in 1947, I Walk Alone, co-starring Lizabeth Scott and a young Kirk Douglas, who was also under contract to Wallis. Variety listed it as one of the top grossers of the year, taking in more than $2 million.
In 1948, Lancaster had a change of pace with the film adaptation of Arthur Miller's All My Sons, made at Universal Pictures with Edward G. Robinson. His third film for Wallis was an adaptation of Sorry, Wrong Number in 1948, with Barbara Stanwyck.
Norma Productions
Hecht kept to his promise to Lancaster to turn producer. The two of them formed a company, Norma Productions, and did a deal with Universal to make a thriller about a disturbed G.I. in London, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands in 1948, with Joan Fontaine and directed by Norman Foster. It made a profit of only $50,000, but was critically acclaimed.Back in Hollywood, Lancaster made another film noir with Siodmak, Criss Cross, in 1949. It was originally going to be produced by Hellinger and when Hellinger died, another took over. Tony Curtis made an early appearance.
Lancaster appeared in a fourth picture for Wallis, Rope of Sand, in 1949.
Norma Productions signed a three-picture deal with Warner Bros. The first was 1950's The Flame and the Arrow, a swashbuckler movie, in which Lancaster drew on his circus skills. Nick Cravat had a supporting role and the film was a huge commercial success, making $6 million. It was Warners' most popular film of the year and established an entirely new image for Lancaster.
Lancaster was borrowed by 20th Century Fox for Mister 880 in 1950, a comedy crime romance film with Edmund Gwenn. MGM put him in a popular Western, Vengeance Valley in 1951, then he went to Warners to play the title role in the biopic Jim Thorpe – All-American, also in 1951.
Halburt
Norma signed a deal with Columbia Pictures to make two films through a Norma subsidiary, Halburt. The first film was 1951's Ten Tall Men, where Lancaster was a member of the French Foreign Legion. Robert Aldrich worked on the movie as a production manager.The second was 1952's The First Time, a comedy which was the directorial debut of Frank Tashlin. It was meant to star Lancaster but he wound up not appearing in the filmthe first of their productions in which he did not act.
Hecht-Lancaster Productions
In 1951, the actor/producer duo changed the company's name to Hecht-Lancaster Productions. The first film under the new name was another swashbuckler: 1952's The Crimson Pirate, directed by Siodmak. Again, co-starring Nick Cravat, it was extremely popular. Taking the premise of The Flame and the Arrow a step further, it allowed the pair to, not only emphasise the absurdity of the story with more spectacle and comical situations but to demonstrate they were able to perform their own circus skills-based stunts without relying on stuntmen quite as much as most Hollywood stars. As if to downplay this, Lancaster himself speaks to the audience in the opening scene over footage of Lancaster performing a dangerous rope swing from one of his pirate ship's masts to the other. "…in a pirate world, believe only what you see." The footage is then reversed to show a near impossible backwards swing to the first mast again, from which he proclaims "No, believe HALF of what you see."Lancaster changed pace once more by doing a straight dramatic part in 1952's Come Back, Little Sheba, based on a Broadway hit, with Shirley Booth, produced by Wallis and directed by Daniel Mann.
Alternating with adventure films, he went into South Sea Woman in 1952 at Warners. Part of the Norma-Warners contract was that Lancaster had to appear in some non-Norma films, of which this was one.
File:Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity trailer.jpg|thumb|With Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity, 1953
In 1954, for his own company, Lancaster produced and starred in His Majesty O'Keefe, a South Sea island tale shot in Fiji. It was co-written by James Hill, who would soon become a part of the Hecht-Lancaster partnership.