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Burt Lancaster was born in 1913, and was one of the last great "superstars". Yet he didn't make his first movie (The Killers) until he was 32, after working in a circus for years, and being in WWII. There has never been another actor like him, before or since! After a series of prison, crime, and swashbuckler movies (where he removed his shirt and showed his physical prowess often) he started taking "offbeat" roles (like in Mister 880, Come Back Little Sheba and The Rose Tattoo) and then, as his star grew and he had the clout to do so, he began taking more and more "different" roles, like in Sweet Smell of Success, Judgment at Nuremberg, Birdman Of Alcatraz (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film), A Child Is Waiting, The Leopard, Seven Days in May, The Swimmer, Elmer Gantry (winner of the Best Actor Academy Award for this film) and others, and if you haven't seen any of the above, I highly recommend them all! Of course he was also great in most of his "commercial" movies like Trapeze, Brute Force, From Here To Eternity (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral , Lawman, and many others! At 64 he played the lead in Go Tell the Spartans, a great anti-Vietnam War movie, and two years later he was a credible male romantic lead (at 66) in Atlantic City (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film). Two of his best supporting roles came at the end of his career, in Local Hero and in Field of Dreams. He is well remembered for his odd clipped speech (loved by impressionists) and for his supposed great friendship with Kirk Douglas, with whom he made 7 films (but he said, "Kirk would be the first to admit that he's difficult to work with - and I would be the second"! He seemed so much larger than life, and a giant of a man, but he was 6'1". He passed away in 1994 AND Kirk Douglas was born in New York in 1916. He was born Issur Danielovitch Demsky, to Russian Jews who had emigrated to New York, and he changed his name and began acting and later became a superstar. After some minor Broadway roles, he served in the Navy in WWII, and after the war, his first film was a leading role in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in 1946. He followed that up with an important role in Out of the Past, the classic film noir, and then I Walk Alone, where he again had a supporting role, this time with Burt Lancaster, with whom he would appear many times. Champion (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film) in 1949 made him a major star, and for the next years he played lots of lead roles in important movies, often playing someone mentally unstable, as he had in Champion. In 1952 he made The Bad and The Beautiful (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film), Lust For Life (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film) in 1956, and in 1957 he used his star power to see that Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory was made (he was the producer and star, and it likely would never been made but for Douglas, and it is to mind in the three or four finest movies ever made). He is well remembered for his starring role in Kubrick's Spartacus, as well as in Lonely are the Brave, and many others. As he grew older he took major supporting roles, opposite such stars as Lancaster (they made 7 movies together) and John Wayne. In 1963 he bought the rights to Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and he starred as McMurphy in a Broadway production. But he was heartbroken when he could not get a major studio to make a film version with him in the lead, and he gave the rights to his son Michael, who was finally able to get it filmed in 1975 (and while Nicholson was perfect, one can't help but wonder how the elder Douglas would have been!). Douglas is pretty indestructible! He survived a helicoptor crash and a major stroke, and I saw him at a retrospective a couple of years ago, and he looked better than ever. But I was struck when I read his fine autobiography "The Ragman's Son" just how haunted he was, and how he never escaped his difficult childhood. All through my growing up I heard that Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster were best friends. Apparently this was not at all true, and they mostly only had a professional relationship, and even that was strained. Lancaster was quoted as saying "Kirk would be the first to admit that he's difficult to work with - and I would be the second"! Few actors have ever given us nearly as many wonderful performances as Kirk Douglas (and his film selection was second to none), and yet he never won an acting Academy Award, a sad commentary on the method by which the Oscars are chosen. He is currently 100, and one of the very last of the great living Hollywood stars, truly a "living legend"!

Important Added Info: Note that this cool news photo shows these two great stars practicing their acrobatic act they performed for the charity event, "Night of 100 Stars"! Also note that this news photo measures 8" x 9 3/4" [20 x 25 cm].

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