Burt Lancaster

Fame came to Burt Lancaster (1913-1994) with his first film role, as the doomed Swede in Universal's The Killers (1946), but the former circus acrobat knew better than to leave his career in other hands. After less than two years in Hollywood, Lancaster formed his own production company and took the lead in such popular successes as the Technicolor swashbucklers The Flame and the Arrow (1950) and The Crimson Pirate (1952), and the Western Vera Cruz (1954). The athletic and handsome Lancaster remained a box office draw for 20 years, winning a 1961 Academy Award for playing the corrupt evangelist Elmer Gantry (1960). His best work through the next decades was often in European features like Luchino Visconti's Il gattopardo/The Leopard (1963) and Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece (1974), Novecento/1900 (1976), and Atlantic City (1980), which netted him an Oscar nomination.


Vintage postcard. Photo: A.L. 'Whitey' Schafer.


French postcard in the Collection Magie Noireby Éditions Hazan, Paris, 1990, no. 6231. Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner in The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946).


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 338. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for I Walk Alone (Byron Haskin, 1948).


Spanish postcard, no. 1218. Photo: Warner Bros.Burt Lancaster and Virginia Mayo in The Flame and the Arrow (Jacques Tourneur, 1950).


Swiss-German-British postcard by News Productions, Baulmes / Filmwelt Berlin, Bakede / News Productions, Stroud, no. 56551. Photo: Sam Shaw. Burt Lancaster on the Paris set of Trapeze (Carol Reed, 1956).


Vintage postcard by GM. Photo: Paramount.

Acrobat, nude model, and singing waiter

Burton Stephen Lancaster was born in East Harlem in New York City in 1914. He was one of the five children of Elizabeth (Roberts) and James Henry Lancaster, a postal clerk at Manhattan's General Post Office. All of his grandparents were immigrants from Northern Ireland. Burt was a tough street kid who took an early interest in gymnastics. Lancaster was accepted into New York University with an athletic scholarship but subsequently dropped out.

At the age of 19, Lancaster met Nick Cravat, with whom he continued to work throughout his life. Together they learned to act in local theatre productions and circus arts at Union Settlement, one of the city's oldest settlement houses. They formed the acrobat duo 'Lang and Cravat' and joined the Kay Brothers circus. In 1939, an injury forced Lancaster to give up the profession, with great regret.

He supported himself by working as a nude artist model by day and a singing waiter by night. In 1942, he joined the US Army during WW II and performed with the Twenty-First Special Services Division, organized to follow the troops on the ground and provide USO entertainment to keep up morale. He served with General Mark Clark's Fifth Army in Italy from 1943 to 1945.

After the war, he made his Broadway debut as Burton Lancaster in Harry Brown's wartime drama 'A Sound of Hunting', the source for the film Eight Iron Men (Edward Dmytryk, 1952). Though the production closed after 12 performances, Lancaster caught the eye of Hollywood agent Harold Hecht. Hecht provided Lancaster with an introduction to producer Hal Wallis.

Lancaster's debut was the Film Noir The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946) opposite Ava Gardner. Siodmak and cinematographer Elwood Bredell employed stark chiaroscuro lighting to offset Lancaster's angular face and chiselled physique. It made him an instant Hollywood star at the age of 32.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 304. Photo: International Pictures Corporation.


British postcard in The People series by Show Parade Picture Service, London, no. P. 1038. Photo: Universal International.


French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 399. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for The Flame and the Arrow (Jacques Tourneur, 1950).


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. D 79. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for The Crimson Pirate (Robert Siodmak, 1952).


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 1299. Photo: Hal Wallis / Paramount. Burt Lancaster in Come Back, Little Sheba (Daniel Mann, 1952).


German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 858. Photo: Columbia-Film. Publicity still for From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953).


German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-156. Photo: Sam Lévin.

His own production company

After his sensational debut, the tall, muscular Lancaster appeared in two more films the following year. He traded on his tough-guy image in Jules Dassin's Brute Force (1947) and I Walk Alone (Byron Haskin, 1948). He reunited with Robert Siodmak for another excellent Film Noir, Criss Cross (1949). He varied the image slightly, playing Barbara Stanwyck's cheating husband in Sorry, Wrong Number (Anatole Litvak, 1948) and Edward G. Robinson's conscience-bound son in All My Sons (Irving Reis, 1948), a personal project for which he took a $50,000 salary cut. Lancaster was a self-taught actor who learned the business as he went along.

Burt Lancaster impressed film audiences with his acrobatic prowess the Technicolor Swashbucklers The Flame and the Arrow (Jacques Tourneur, 1950), and The Crimson Pirate (Robert Siodmak, 1952). The films became his first major box-office successes. His friend from his circus years, Nick Cravat, played a key supporting role in both films. Lancaster played one of his best-remembered roles with Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953). Iconic is the scene in which he and Kerr make love on a Hawaiian beach amid the crashing waves.

In 1953, Lancaster started going in new directions, he later told film critic Roger Ebert: “That was when I went from From Here to Eternity to Come Back, Little Sheba. I always tried to do things that would expand me as an actor. You find out people don’t want you to do that. ‘Make another “Vera Cruz”,’ they say. ‘Make another picture like ‘Trapeze.’ Don’t do ‘The Leopard,’ for God’s sake’!” He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953). Lancaster won the 1960 Academy Award for Best Actor, a Golden Globe Award, and the New York Film Critics Award for his performance playing the corrupt evangelist in Elmer Gantry (Richard Brooks, 1960).

Burt Lancaster set up his own production company with Harold Hecht and James Hill, to direct his career. Their production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, produced such films as the Oscar winner Marty (Paddy Chayefsky, 1955), Trapeze (Carol Reed, 1956), Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957), and Separate Tables (Delbert Mann, 1958). Lancaster realised a long-held dream and directed his own film, The Kentuckian (1955). Reviews were negative, however, and he did not return to the director's chair for another two decades. In 1965, United Artists made a settlement with Lancaster to end its association with Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, which had financially floundered in the late 1950s due to a few flops and exorbitant spending and wound up operations in 1959.

His films often reflected his liberal political beliefs. In 1947 he signed a letter deploring the anti-communist witch hunts in Hollywood, and he was nearly blacklisted due to his political beliefs. The FBI kept a file detailing his activities. In 1963, he was one of the Hollywood stars, who participated in Martin Luther King's March on Washington. Later, Lancaster appeared prominently on President Richard Nixon's 'List of Enemies' due to his support for Senator George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election. In 1985, Lancaster joined the fight against AIDS after his close friend, Rock Hudson, contracted the disease. He campaigned for Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election.


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 3045.


German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel Filmpostkarten-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. W 1552. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for South Sea Woman (Arthur Lubin, 1953).


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf. Photo: Warner Bros. Burt Lancaster in His Majesty O'Keefe (Byron Haskin, 1954). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.


Spanish postcard by H. Burt Lancaster and Joan Rice in His Majesty O'Keefe (Byron Haskin, 1954). On the flipside is written that the actress is Ronda Fleming (sic).


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 39. Photo: MGM. Gary Cooper, Sara Montiel, Denise Darcel and Burt Lancaster in Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954).


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. T 828. Photo: Warner Bros.


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. C.D. 10.

Heart attack

During the latter part of his career, Burt Lancaster left adventure and acrobatic films behind and portrayed more distinguished characters. This period brought him to work on several European productions. Italian director Luchino Visconti wanted to cast Laurence Olivier in the title role of the Italian prince in Il gattopardo/The Leopard (1963) opposite Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, but his producer overruled him. The producer insisted on a box office star to justify the lavish production's high budget and essentially forced Visconti to accept Lancaster. Lancaster delivered one of the strongest performances of his career, and the film was a huge success in Europe. Visconti directed him again in Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti, 1974) with Silvana Mangano and Helmut Berger. In this film, Lancaster plays a reclusive professor who is brought face to face with his latent homosexuality.

Lancaster sought demanding roles, and if he liked a part or a director, he was prepared to work for much lower pay than he might have earned elsewhere. He even helped to finance movies whose artistic value he believed in. He also mentored directors such as Sydney Pollack and John Frankenheimer and appeared in several television films. He also appeared in European features like Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976) as Robert De Niro's autocratic grandfather, and as an ageing gangster in Atlantic City (Louis Malle, 1980), which earned him an Oscar nomination.

He tried to raise financing for four years for Hector Babenco's film Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), based on the novel by Manuel Puig, after Babenco gave him the novel in 1981 at the NY Film Critics Society Ceremony. Lancaster was to have played the role of Molina, the gay hairdresser who shares a cell with Valentin, a political prisoner. However, Lancaster had heart attacks in 1981 and 1983, and subsequently a quadruple-bypass operation, and at the age of 70, he was essentially uninsurable. The film was later made with William Hurt, who won the Best Actor Oscar as Molina.

In the 1980s Burt Lancaster appeared as a supporting player in several films, such as an American general in the Italian war drama La pelle/The Skin (Liliana Cavani, 1981), an astronomy-obsessed Texas oilman in Bill Forsythe's wry comedy Local Hero (1983). Lancaster's last feature film was Field of Dreams (Phil Alden Robinson, 1989) with Kevin Costner.

His acting career ended after he suffered a stroke in 1990 which left him partly paralysed and largely unable to speak. At 80, Burt Lancaster died in his Century City apartment in Los Angeles in 1994, the very same year as his long-time friend and circus partner Nick Cravat. Lancaster was married three times. He was married to acrobat June Ernst from 1935 to 1946, and to Norma Anderson from 1946 to 1969. His third marriage, to Susan Martin, was from September 1990 until he died in 1994. He and his second wife Norma had five children: James Stephen 'Jimmy' (1946), William 'Billy' (1947), Susan Elizabeth (1949), Joanna Mari (1951), and Sighle (1954).


French postcard by Editions Paris-Musées. Collection: Dominique Lebrun. Corinne Calvet and Burt Lancaster in Rope of Sand (William Dieterle, 1949). Sent by mail in 2009.


Yugoslavian postcard by IOM, Beograd. Photo: Sedmo Silo. Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953).


French postcard in the Collection Magie Noire by Éditions Hazan, Paris, 1995, no. 6478. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953).


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, G.m.b.H., Minden-Westf., no. 2180. Photo: Production Hecht-Lancaster. Burt Lancaster, Gina Lollobrigida and Tony Curtis in Trapeze (Carol Reed, 1956).


Italian postcard by Bromofoto, no. 957. Photo: Columbia C.E.I.A.D.


American postcard by Fotofolio, NY, NY, no. F 232. Photo: Phil Stern. Burt Lancaster in Separate Tables (Delbert Mann, 1958).


Czech collector card by Pressfoto, Praha, no. S 37.8. Burt Lancaster in Birdman of Alcatraz (John Frankenheimer, 1962).


Czech postcard by UPTF / Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), no. C 198, 1965. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale and Burt Lancaster in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Vintage card. Burt Lancaster in The Professionals (Richard Brooks, 1966).


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 523. Burt Lancaster in Ulzana's Raid (Robert Aldrich, 1972).


Vintage photo.

Sources: Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert.com), Richard Harland Smith (TCM - Page now defunct), Jason Ankeny (AllMovie - Page now defunct), Tony Fontana (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Il Gattopardo (1963)

On 18 August 2024, French film star Alain Delon (1935) died at the age of 88. The breathtakingly good-looking James Dean of European cinema in the late 1950s proved in such films as Plein soleil/Purple Noon (1960), Visconti's Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers (1960) and Antonioni's L'eclisse/The Eclipse (1962) that he was also a magnificent actor. Luchino Visconti also directed him in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (1963) which had extraordinary success and was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival of 1963. Recently, the film was shown in a large Visconti retrospective in Paris and again it amazed audiences as a timeless masterpiece.


Czech postcard by UPTF / Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), no. C 198, 1965. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale, and Burt Lancaster in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Czech postcard by UPTF / Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), no. C 199, 1965. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Czech postcard by UPTF / Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), no. C 200, 1965. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


American publicity photo. Photo: G.B. Poletto / Titanus / 20th Century Fox, used in Dutch cinemas (a Dutch censorship stamp is visible in the upper-right corner). Alain Delon in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


American publicity photo. Photo: G.B. Poletto / Titanus / 20th Century Fox, used in Dutch cinemas (a Dutch censorship stamp is visible in the upper-right corner). Alain Delon in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963). The man seen in the back may be Giuliano Gemma.

A ticket of admittance to the high-class soirées of the nobility

Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (1963) is based on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's 1958 bestseller 'Il Gattopardo' about an aristocratic Sicilian family's adjustment to a changing way of life during the Risorgimento. After the premiere, the long epic received mixed reviews but it is now seen as one of the greatest classics of Italian cinema.

In Sicily in 1860, Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina (Burt Lancaster) enjoys the customary comforts and privileges of an ancient and noble name. War has broken out between the armies of Francis II of the Two Sicilies and the insurgent volunteer redshirts of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Among the rebels is the Prince's remarkably handsome and dashing nephew, Tancredi (Alain Delon), with whose romantic politics the Prince shares some whimsical sympathy. Moved by the uprising, the Prince departs for nearby Palermo. Garibaldi's army conquers the city and Sicily from the Bourbons. The Prince muses upon the inevitability of change, with the middle class displacing the hereditary ruling class while on the surface everything remains the same.

Refusing to bend to the tide of necessity, the Prince departs for his summer palace at Donnafugata. A new national assembly has called a plebiscite which the nationalists win 512-0, thanks to the corruption of the town's leading citizen, Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa), who sees his daughter, the exquisitely beautiful Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), as a ticket of admittance to the high-class soirées of the nobility. Bringing her with him to the villa of the Salinas, he watches as both the Prince and Tancredi fall abjectly in love with her. Realising his chance, he effectively pimps his daughter to the aristocracy, and Tancredi offers his hand. The Prince sees the wisdom of the match because he knows his nephew's vaulting ambition and his need for ready cash, which Angelica's father, greedy for familial prestige, will happily make available. With the mutual blessing of the Prince of Salina and Don Calogero, Tancredi and Angelica become engaged.

A visitor from the constituent assembly comes to the villa. He begs the great scholar and nobleman to join the senate and help direct the ship of state; he hopes that the Prince's great compassion and wisdom will help alleviate the poverty and ignorance to be seen everywhere on the streets of Sicily. However, the Prince demurs and refuses this invitation, claiming that Sicily prefers its sleep to the agitations of modernity because its people are proud of who they are. He sees a future when the leopards and the lions, along with the sheep and the jackals, will all live according to the same law, but he does not want to be a part of this democratic vision. He notes that Tancredi has shifted allegiances from the insurgent Garibaldi to the king's army, and wistfully recognises that his nephew is the kind of opportunist and time-server who will flourish in the new Italy.

A great ball is held at the villa of a neighbouring Prince, and the Salinas and Tancredi attend. Afflicted by a combination of melancholia, the ridiculousness of the nouveau riche, and age, the Prince wanders forlornly from chamber to chamber, increasingly disaffected by the entire edifice of the society he so gallantly represents – until Angelica approaches and asks him to dance. Stirred and momentarily released from his cares, the Prince accepts, and once more he resembles the elegant and dashing figure of his past. Disenchanted, he leaves the ball alone, asks Tancredi to arrange a carriage for his family, and walks with a heavy heart to a dark alley that symbolises Italy's inordinate and fading past, which he inhabits.



Small Czech collectors card by Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), 1965, no. S 101/6. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Claudia Cardinale, Paolo Stoppa, and Alain Delon in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Vintage card. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Small Romanian collectors card. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Small Romanian collectors card. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Claudia Cardinale in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).

One of the most spectacular sequences in film history

For the leading role in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard, the producers chose Hollywood star Burt Lancaster without consulting director Luchino Visconti. This insulted the director and caused tension on the set. However, Visconti and Lancaster ended up working well together, and their resulting friendship lasted the rest of their lives.

The epic cost production company Titanus $5 million. Visconti's first cut was 205 minutes long and was shortened to 195 minutes for its 1963 Cannes Film Festival premiere, where it won the Golden Palm for best picture. Visconti then cut the film further to 185 minutes for its official release and considered this version to be his preferred one. The picture was subsequently distributed by 20th Century Fox in a poorly dubbed, 165-min. English-language version, using an inferior colour process.

The film was a box office hit in Italy and other European countries, but international critics were mixed about the film. The restored Italian-language version, supervised by cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, appeared in 1990. Through the years, more and more people started to love the film. Martin Scorsese considers the film to be one of the greatest ever made, and in 2010, his Film Heritage Foundation restored the film to its original splendour.

Yuri German at AllMovie: "The closing section, an almost hour-long ball, is often cited as one of the most spectacular sequences in film history. Burt Lancaster is magnificent in the first of his patriarchal roles, and the rest of the cast, especially Delon and Cardinale, become almost perfect incarnations of the novel's characters. Filmed in glorious Techniscope and rich in period detail, the film is a remarkable cinematic achievement in all departments."

Ivo Blom in 'Visconti and the Visual Arts': "In Il Gattopardo, painting performs an important part in the sets of the film. A famous example is the painting Don Fabrizio sees when entering a library during the ball to escape the crowd, a painting which reminds him of his own nearing death. A memento mori, so to say. The painting is a copy of Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s moralistic and sentimental work 'Le mauvais fils puni' (1778), today one of the masterpieces of the Louvre; a prodigal son returns too late, his father has died. (...)

Note also in Il Gattopardo the decaying old paintings in the attics of the palace, which Tancredi and Angelica see. They are not only indicators of the location but also comment on the protagonists. Angelica’s old rose dress, though a bit old-fashioned for the period, stands out against the faded enormous battle scene she sees. Lampedusa already indicates it in the novel as Arturo Corbera at the Battle of Antioch, a battle scene between Crusaders and Muslims, but the painting in the film — an imitation made by Mario Brondi — is clearly a variation on Rubens’ 'Battle of the Amazons'. The painting is emblematical of the situation. Old glories of the aristocracy fade away, and the freshness and sensuality of Angelica is what counts."

Roger Ebert on his website: "Finally the prince dances with Angelica. Watch them as they dance, each aware of the other in a way simultaneously sexual and political. Watch how they hold their heads. How they look without seeing. How they are seen and know they are seen. And sense that, for the prince, his dance is an acknowledgement of mortality. He could have had this woman, would have known what to do with her, would have made her his wife and the mother of his children and heard her cries of passion, if not for the accident of 25 years or so that slipped in between them. But he knows that, and she knows that. And yet of course, if they were the same age, he would not have married her, because he is Prince Don Fabrizio and she is the mayor's daughter. That Visconti can convey all of that in a ballroom scene is miraculous and emotionally devastating, and it is what his movie is about."


Romanian minicard. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon as Tancredi Falconieri in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard, (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Vintage film still by G.B. Poletto. Mario Girotti as Count Cavriaghi and Lucilla Morlacchi as Concetta in Il Gattopardo (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Source: Film Heritage Foundation (YouTube). A clip from Il Gattopardo/The Leopard, restored in association with Cineteca di Bologna, L'Immagine Ritrovata, The Film Foundation, Pathé, Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, Twentieth Century Fox and Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale - restoration funded by Gucci and the Film Foundation.


Cover of Ivo Blom's study 'Reframing Luchino Visconti'. Photo: Burt Lancaster in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).

Sources: Ivo Blom (Visconti and the Visual Arts), Roger Ebert, Yuri German (AllMovie), Julian Sanction (Vanity Fair), Sorrisi (Italian), Wikipedia, and IMDb.