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.
December 2 Dark Passages and Dead Reckonings: The Films of Humphrey Bogart
“I stick my neck out for nobody” — Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine in Casablanca
In his first 45 films, Humphrey Bogart (according to biographers Ann Sperber and Eric Lax) was “hanged or electrocuted eight times, sentenced to life in prison nine times, and riddled with bullets a dozen others—but more relevantly, he played people who have seen what the world has to offer and are not fooled by appearances.”
Whether playing villains Duke Mantee (The Petrified Forest), “Baby Face” Martin (Dead End), George Hally (The Roaring Twenties), Roy Earle (High Sierra) or such unforgettable anti-heroes as Rick Blaine, Fred C. Dobbs (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), and Dixon Steele (In a Lonely Place), “Bogie” was an ominous and intimidating screen figure. But this unforgettable tough guy also revealed a rugged heart of gold in his roles as gumshoes (The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep), a lawyer (Knock on Any Door), a fisherman (To Have and Have Not), and a crusading newspaper editor (Deadline U.S.A.)—not to mention an Oscar-winning turn as a gin-swilling steamboat captain (The African Queen).
Bogart entered the film industry in 1930, but Fox, Universal, and Columbia Pictures did not keep him under contract for very long. Even Warner Bros. relegated Bogart to sub-par roles throughout the ’30s until eventually acceding to the actor’s box-office strengths in the wake of Michael Curtiz’s immortal Casablanca in 1942.
December 9 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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