Burt Lancaster

Starred review from February 28, 2000
At the height of the Hollywood blacklist, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover received a letter telling him to "check the moving picture Crimson Pirate because in it Burt Lancaster makes a speech about workers" that "sounds like a commie plug." Lancaster's decades-long political involvement with liberal causes (and his constant run-ins with the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s) are a central theme in this well-researched and engaging biography, which also details the artist's acting career, his turns as a producer and his personal life. Buford, a regular commentator on National Public Radio, has constructed a complex portrait of a man who was a noted womanizer, yet also engaged in sex with men; who was kind and generous, yet often resorted to violence in his personal relationships; who was a mainstream "megastar" (who was parodied in Mad magazine) before reinventing himself as a major figure in Italian art films; and who broke from the imprisoning studio system and revolutionized the industry by beginning an independent production company. By carefully contextualizing Lancaster's more than 50-year career--which began in the circus and included such film classics as From Here to Eternity and Elmer Gantry--within the tumultuous political and economic changes of the postwar years, Buford's finely detailed, sensitive biography ranks among the best of its genre.

November 1, 1999
Lancaster wanted no biographies during his lifetime, but National Public Radio commentator Buford managed to get the cooperation of his widow, friends, and colleagues for this work.

Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2000
There have been several books about Lancaster, one of the last bigger-than-life movie stars, since his 1994 death. Buford laudably concentrates on her subject's doings, which are the stuff of movies in their own right. Lancaster was born in Manhattan's East Harlem, a little less poor than most of the neighbors by virtue of his Irish family's ownership of the building where they lived. He attended a good high school but opted for work instead of college, partly because of the Depression and partly because of the restlessness he later incorporated into his screen portrayals. He chose to work as a small-time circus acrobat and barely eked out a living in the '30s. World War II found him in an army service unit, eventually helping entertain the troops. His good looks in uniform prompted a Broadway scout to recruit him for a war play. The play brought him Hollywood attention. No sooner did he hit the left coast than he met Harold Hecht, with whom he immediately began planning one of the industry's first independent production companies, Hecht-Lancaster (later Hecht-Hill-Lancaster). The rest is movie history, which Buford slogs through by recounting production stories about Lancaster's many high-profile flickers. She ignores what the finished films are like, relying on the odd critic's pronouncement or award citation to suggest a film's quality. Consequently, the book seems full of padding and overstatement as well as short on what it needs to make Lancaster interesting to nonstarstruck readers. Those who are starstruck, however, should enjoy, enjoy. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)