Two of the most powerful actors ever to appear before Hollywood studio cameras, Humphrey Bogart and Burt Lancaster both hailed from Manhattan. But that’s where the similarities end. Bogart was a child of privilege on the Upper West Side while Lancaster grew up in working-class East Harlem. Bogart was shoved around by the old studio system while Lancaster entered the film business just as movie stars were starting to gain independence.
Film historian Max Alvarez examines the tough turbulence and brilliant dramatics of these towering screen talents.
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Burt Lancaster: Cinematic Legend
“I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You're a cookie full of arsenic” —Burt Lancaster as J.J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success
From the moment he first appeared on screen as a film noir protagonist in The Killers, Burt Lancaster dazzled audiences with his soft-spoken intensity and imposing charisma. His muscular good looks initially relegated him to crime sagas with such memorable titles as Brute Force, I Walk Alone, and Kiss the Blood Off My Hands. But Lancaster wanted more challenging dramatic roles. The screen adaptation of Arthur Miller’s play All My Sons was a game-changer for him. While still a bit green emoting as Edward G. Robinson’s anguished son, Lancaster’s confidence grew tenfold with every subsequent picture, and in a short time he was running an influential production company with agent Harold Hecht.
As the 1950s arrived, the acting strengths of this 6-foot-tall powerhouse could no longer be denied. There were swashbuckling acrobatics (Robert Siodmak’s The Crimson Pirate), rugged romantic parts (Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity), and more theatrical adaptations (Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo and Terence Rattigan’s Separate Tables). Lancaster went on to give searing performances as a shrewd manipulator (Alexander Mackendrick’s masterpiece Sweet Smell of Success), a troubled evangelist (Richard Brooks’ Elmer Gantry), a detached executive (Bill Forsythe’s cult Local Hero), aristocratic Italians (Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard and Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic 1900), an aging gangster (Louis Malle’s Atlantic City), and most chillingly, a military martinet (John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May).
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