Burt Lancaster

Burton Stephen Lancaster was born on November 2, 1913, in New York City, at his parents' home at 209 East 106th Street. His father, James Lancaster, worked as a mailman, and his mother was Elizabeth Lancaster, née Roberts. Both parents were working-class Protestants whose grandparents had all emigrated from Ulster, Ireland, with Lancaster's maternal family originating from Belfast. Lancaster grew up in East Harlem, where he attended DeWitt Clinton High School, excelling in basketball and developing a strong aptitude for gymnastics. He was accepted to New York University on an athletic scholarship but did not complete his studies there.

At the age of nine, Lancaster met Nick Cravat, a partnership that would prove lifelong. The two trained together in circus arts and local theatre at Union Settlement, one of New York City's oldest settlement houses. By the 1930s, they had formed an acrobatic duo known as Lang and Cravat and joined the Kay Brothers circus. A professional injury in 1939 ended Lancaster's circus career, after which he worked as a salesman at Marshall Field's and as a singing waiter before the United States entered World War II. Lancaster enlisted in the United States Army in January 1943 and served with the 21st Special Services Division, providing USO entertainment to troops in the field. He was stationed with the Fifth Army in Italy under General Mark Clark from 1943 to 1945, and was discharged in October 1945 holding the rank of technician fifth grade.

Returning to New York after his discharge, Lancaster was initially reluctant to pursue acting. A chance encounter in an elevator — a producer spotted him while he was visiting his then-girlfriend at work — led to an audition for a Broadway play. The audition succeeded, and Lancaster was cast in Harry Brown's A Sound of Hunting in 1945. Though the production ran for only three weeks, his performance caught the attention of Hollywood agent Harold Hecht. Lancaster received multiple offers but accepted Hecht's, who promised him the opportunity to co-produce films within five years. Lancaster received the Theatre World Award in 1946 in recognition of his stage work. He also appeared on Broadway in the musical Knickerbocker Holiday, with his Broadway career spanning from 1945 to 1971.

Through Hecht, Lancaster was introduced to producer Hal B. Wallis, who signed him to a non-exclusive eight-picture contract. Lancaster relocated to Los Angeles, and his first filmed project for Wallis was Desert Fury in 1947, in which he was billed behind John Hodiak and Lizabeth Scott and which was directed by Lewis Allen. Prior to that film's release, however, producer Mark Hellinger cast Lancaster in the 1946 film noir The Killers, directed by Robert Siodmak and co-starring Ava Gardner. Completed and released before Desert Fury, it became both a commercial and critical success and launched Lancaster and Gardner to stardom. Hellinger then cast Lancaster in the 1947 prison drama Brute Force, written by Richard Brooks and directed by Jules Dassin, which was also well received. That same year, Lancaster appeared in I Walk Alone, a Wallis thriller co-starring Lizabeth Scott and a young Kirk Douglas, which Variety listed among the year's top grossers with earnings exceeding two million dollars.

In 1948, Lancaster appeared in the film adaptation of Arthur Miller's All My Sons at Universal Pictures alongside Edward G. Robinson, and then starred opposite Barbara Stanwyck in Sorry, Wrong Number, an adaptation in which he portrayed the husband to her bedridden character. That year, he and Hecht also formed their own production company, Norma Productions, striking a deal with Universal to produce Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, a thriller co-starring Joan Fontaine and directed by Norman Foster.

Lancaster's film career continued to expand through the 1950s. His production company, which evolved into Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, produced a string of notable films in which he starred, including Trapeze in 1956, for which he drew on his acrobatic background and won the Silver Bear for Best Actor; Sweet Smell of Success in 1957, a dark drama now regarded as a classic; Run Silent, Run Deep in 1958, a World War II submarine drama with Clark Gable; and Separate Tables in 1958, a hotel-set drama that received seven Academy Award nominations. He also starred in The Rainmaker in 1956 opposite Katharine Hepburn, earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor, and in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1957 alongside frequent co-star Kirk Douglas. His 1953 role as the illicit lover of Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity, a military drama that won eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, earned Lancaster his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

The early 1960s brought Lancaster a series of critically acclaimed performances in markedly different roles. His portrayal of a charismatic con-man religious revivalist in Elmer Gantry in 1960 earned him both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Actor. The following year he appeared in Judgment at Nuremberg, playing a Nazi war criminal in the all-star war crimes trial film. In 1962, his performance as a bird-expert prisoner in Birdman of Alcatraz brought him the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor and his third Oscar nomination. In 1963, Lancaster traveled to Italy to star as an Italian prince in Luchino Visconti's epic period drama The Leopard. He then played a US Air Force general attempting to overthrow the President in the 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May, with Kirk Douglas playing the opposing colonel, and in 1966 he portrayed an explosives expert in the western The Professionals.

Lancaster starred in the commercially successful air-disaster drama Airport in 1970, and in 1974 returned to work with Visconti in Conversation Piece. His career experienced a notable resurgence in 1980 with the crime-romance Atlantic City, which earned him the BAFTA Award for Best Actor and his fourth Academy Award nomination. Beginning in the late 1970s, he also appeared in television miniseries, among them the award-winning Separate but Equal alongside Sidney Poitier. His final film role was as Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams in 1989. A stroke in 1990 forced his retirement from acting, and Lancaster died of a heart attack on October 20, 1994. The American Film Institute ranked him nineteenth among the greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema, and over the course of his career he accumulated four Academy Award nominations with one win, two BAFTA Awards, one Golden Globe Award for Best Lead Actor, one Silver Bear, one Volpi Cup, and two David di Donatello awards.