I've never really appreciated Burt Lancaster before, until now. Was he an athlete or circus performer when he was younger?
Burt Lancaster came of age in the depths of the Depression and, after a stint as a college student at NYU, worked as a circus acrobat in a series of small to mid-size rather careworn circuses, acquiring some of his canniness and that brashly intelligent glamour that he would later incorporate into his roles. Describing his flight from a life of familial responsibility to his mother and siblings in East Harlem during the Depression, he later characterized his choice as "running away to join the circus." An injury eventually forced him to give up the profession. During WWII, he joined the Army and performed in shows for the USO entertaining the soldiers with his athleticism and stage presence. Remarkably,
Lancaster only became a working "legitimate" actor by the time he was in his '30s.
When he arrived in Hollywood after the war, he said it "was nothing more than a big circus." For examples of his gifted athleticism on film you might enjoy
The Flame and the Arrow (1950),
Jim Thorpe, All American (1951),
The Crimson Pirate (1952),
Trapeze (1956),
The Train (1964),
The Swimmer (1968), and, believe it or not, Visconti's
The Leopard (1963). Or you might just want to watch him walk across a room in any of the movies he made in his prime.* He was one of the most graceful actors who ever stepped in front of the camera.
Btw, you might enjoy Kate Buford's bio of the actor,
Burt Lancaster: An American Life, which fills in many of the details of this fascinating period in the actor's life. One of the other legacies of his circus career was also the presence of little
Nick Cravat in several of his movies. Cravat and Lancaster had been friends since boyhood and appeared in a circus act together as "Lang & Cravat." Nick, a pint size ball of kinetic energy, was often a silent sidekick and appeared with Lancaster in movies from
The Flame and the Arrow (1950) to
The Island of Doctor Moreau (1977). Both men passed away within months of one another. You can read more about Lancaster, Cravat, and their circus days at
this website created by Nick's daughter.
Circus veterans Burt and Nick in
The Crimson Pirate.
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They don't make movie star primes like they used to: Burt Lancaster's lasted roughly from 1946-1968! Maybe that early physical conditioning (and becoming his own producer) helped.
