Lancaster, Burt

Lancaster, Burt (1913-1994), American actor, born Burton Stephen Lancaster in New York, who began his career as an acrobat in 1932 and became one of the most versatile and enduring stars of the 20th century. During World War II, Lancaster organized and performed in shows for American servicemen in Italy and North Africa. A part in a Broadway play, A Sound of Hunting (1945), led him to a film contract with Hal Wallis. Wallis loaned Lancaster to film producer Mark Hellinger, who offered him the leading role in The Killers (1946), directed by Robert Siodmak. After this triumph, Lancaster never looked back, establishing himself as a hero of underworld films such as Jules Dassin's Brute Force (1947) and Siodmak's Criss Cross (1949); he was, however, wise enough to avoid the tussle to inherit the action-hero mantle of Douglas Fairbanks, after starring in the admirable The Flame and the Arrow (1950), directed by Jacques Tourneur, in which he did his own circus stunts.

Straightforward adventure roles in Robert Aldrich's Apache (1954) and Vera Cruz (1954), with Gary Cooper, were offset by the more complex reformed alcoholic of Come Back, Little Sheba (1952), and a fine Sergeant Warden in From Here to Eternity (1953), which confirmed Lancaster as an actor capable of serious characterization, with gifts far exceeding his natural physical grace and drop-dead dazzling smile. An unsuccessful sortie into directing (The Kentuckian, 1955) was followed by a string of interesting performances in The Rainmaker (1956) and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957); an excursion to Bournemouth, England, for Separate Tables (1958); The Devil's Disciple (1959); and John Huston's The Unforgiven (1960), among other films. This intense phase of his career was crowned by an Academy Award for Best Actor, in Richard Brooks's wonderful Elmer Gantry (1960), where Lancaster brought off a tour de force as a charlatan travelling salesman touched by grace.

Lancaster now looked to Italy and Luchino Visconti to provide him with a new challenge for his middle years—the result was a masterly rendering of the Sicilian prince in Il Gattopardo (1963; The Leopard). In 1963 he caused a sensation by halting John Frankenheimer's super production of The Train (1964), in France, and returning to the United States to join the Civil Rights march in Washington “... because I had to”. As he advanced into and beyond his 50s, Lancaster gave preference to working with younger directors such as Frankenheimer, Sydney Pollack (The Scalphunters, 1968), Frank Perry (The Swimmer, 1968), and Michael Winner (Lawman, 1971), whose films he produced or co-produced. His later successes included Gruppo di Famiglia in un Interno (1975; Conversation Piece) with Visconti; Novecento (1976; 1900) with Bernardo Bertolucci; an interpretation of a CIA president in Sam Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend (1983); and the billionaire in Bill Forsyth's delightful Local Hero (1983).