Few Hollywood careers are more impressive than that of Burt Lancaster, the subject of a retrospective at Turner Classic Movies to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth.
For 48 busy years, Lancaster alternated blockbusters with more artistic films, many from his own production company. When I interviewed him in 1986, Lancaster claimed he made a lot of mediocre films for the money (“I had five kids, none of them working’’), but that assessment certainly isn’t supported by the selection being shown this month on TCM.
His personal favorite of his films was “The Leopard,’’ where he was cast as a 19th-century nobleman by Luchino Visconti.
“Visconti got a lot of criticism for choosing an American actor to play a Sicilian prince,’’ said Lancaster with his famous smile. “And I was concerned — all I had going for me was that I grew up in a Little Italy, on 106th Street in East Harlem. I felt I understood the Italian character. And I wanted to do something I was not sure I could do. Somewhere where I really had to act.’’
By comparison, his Oscar-winning preacher in “Elmer Gantry’’ was “a breeze — this was me, the way I acted as a kid on the streets.’’
Lancaster was amused that so many people liked him as a ruthless Broadway columnist in “Sweet Smell of Success.’’
“We lost a million and a half dollars on that picture,’’ he said. “Now it’s a cult film. There’s even a following for ‘The Swimmer,’ which I don’t think is very good at all.’’
The TCM tribute includes several films he made with Kirk Douglas, including “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.’’
Douglas, who I interviewed separately back in 1986, recalled that when his production company was planning to make “Seven Days in May,’’ director John Frankenheimer resisted casting Lancaster, whom he had directed as a prisoner-turned-ornithologist in “Birdman of Alcatraz.’’
“Frankenheimer said Burt at one point had picked him up, carried him across the room and told him, ‘The camera goes there,’ ’’ Douglas recalled. “I said, ‘Why did you take that instead of walking off the set? You’re a schmuck.’ So Frankenheimer did ‘Seven Days’ and by the end of the picture he and Burt were such pals they went off and did [the World War II thriller] ‘The Train’ together.”
Douglas explained Lancaster’s work ethic: “He’s unpredictable. We come from the old school, making two or three pictures a year. Not like stars today who make one picture every two or three years.’’
Lancaster put his prodigious output this way: “I remember working with Montgomery Clift on ‘From Here to Eternity.’ He hadn’t done a picture in a couple of years, waiting for something good to come along. I told him that while I tried to be reasonably selective, I had to keep working at my craft on a regular basis.’’
He went from “From Here to Eternity,’’ which won the Best Picture Oscar, into “Come Back, Little Sheba,’’ an adaptation of a William Inge play about alcoholism.
“My agent said, ‘What do you want to do that for?’’ I said, “I wanted to do something I wasn’t sure I could do.’ ’’
A former circus acrobat who showed off his physical panache in the best swashbuckler of the 1950s (“The Crimson Pirate’’), Lancaster still had a regal bearing as an old man, speaking in a low, musical voice that helped establish him as an actor of uncommon sensitivity.
“I don’t know how I got old,’’ he told me. “I was 35 years old yesterday. Oh, the aches. My feet. My back. And things I won’t get into. But I’m 72 now, I’m not going to live much longer. I’d like to be choosy about what I do, but I want to live well, everything first class.’’
Lancaster made four TV films, a pair of miniseries and four theatrical features after that — including a haunting semi-farewell as a long-dead baseball player in “Field of Dreams,’’ which is part of the TCM series. He died in October 1994, mourned as one of the giants.
BURT LANCASTER NOVEMBER TRIBUTE
NOV. 6
THE KILLERS 8 P.M.
COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA 10 P.M.
FROM HERE TO ETERNITY 11:45 P.M.
THE SWIMMER 2 A.M.
THE GYPSY MOTHS 4 A.M.
JIM THORPE — ALL AMERICAN 6 A.M.
THE FLAME AND THE ARROW 8 A.M.
APACHE 9:30 A.M.
NOV. 13
GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL 8 P.M.
SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS 10:15 P.M.
ELMER GANTRY 12:00 A.M.
SEVEN DAYS IN MAY 2:30 A.M.
HIS MAJESTY O’KEEFE 4:45 A.M.
THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE 6:30 A.M.
THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL 8 A.M.
NOV. 20
MISTER 880 8 P.M.
JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG 9:45 P.M.
BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ 1 A.M.
THE TRAIN 3:45 A.M.
A CHILD IS WAITING 6 A.M.
SOUTH SEA WOMAN 8 A.M.
TEN TALL MEN 9:45 A.M.
NOV. 27
FIELD OF DREAMS 8 P.M.
THE LEOPARD 10 P.M.
THE PROFESSIONALS 1:15 A.M.
THE CRIMSON PIRATE 3:30 A.M.
BRUTE FORCE 5:30 A.M.
THE YOUNG SAVAGES 7:15 A.M.
VENGEANCE VALLEY 9 A.M.