Burt Lancaster

He was active for almost four decades, from the forties to the late eighties, developing one of the most fruitful careers that Hollywood has given.

The son of a humble postman and a housewife, Burton Stephen Lancaster was born on November 2, 1913, in New York. As a young man he took advantage of his exceptional physical condition to join the circus where his great friend Nick Cravat worked , and succeeded as a trapeze artist, learning the acrobatic numbers that would later come in handy for the action sequences of some movies. There he fell in love with his partner June Ernst, who would become his first wife. Although World War II caused a hiatus in his career, in the army he became fond of acting, in roles that served to boost the morale of his colleagues. When the war ended, he decided to dedicate himself to the cinema.

He could not have made a more successful debut, since his first film Outlaws , by Robert Siodmak , in which he shared the bill with Ava Gardner , is considered one of the pinnacles of film noir. After divorcing and remarrying actress Norma Anderson, he closed the 1940s with interesting titles such as El abrazo de la muerte , also by Siodmak. But it would be in the 50s when she became a great star based on mythical titles. Just remember From Here to Eternity , an intense drama that earned him his first Oscar nomination, but also Veracruz , The Tattooed Rose , Duel of the Titans and Torpedo .. Two of the quintessential adventure film classics remain in the memory, The Falcon and the Arrow and The Fearsome Mocker . “People tend to think that I am the typical adventurer who shaves with a machete, although in reality I am a bookish and boring,” he declared, contradicting the legend that he himself had created. At this time he was only told once that “you screwed up Burt Lancaster”, in the bad reviews he received for trying to pass as an Aryan Indian in Apache , by Robert Aldrich , which after all was not such a bad movie. He even gave him time to make his directorial debut with The Man from Kentucky.and to create his own production company, which would end up being called Hetch-Hill-Lancaster, the company responsible for the multi-oscar winner Marty .

And in the 1960s came the best Burt Lancaster, who reached the pinnacle of acting as Prince Salina, decadent aristocrat in Visconti’s The Leopard . He also won his only Oscar for The Fire and the Word , by Richard Brooks , and gave authentic recitals in Winners or Losers , The Professionals , and in his collaborations with John Frankenheimer , such as The Man from Alcatraz , Seven Days in May or The Train .

Of other actors it is possible to speak of some other stage of decadence, but not precisely of Lancaster, who retired from the cinema with some of his best works, read Novecento , and Atlantic City . His last film was Field of Dreams , and he then retired due to health problems, isolating himself in his native New York with his third and final wife, television producer Susan Martin. A heart attack ended his life in 1994.