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“Like many people I’m highly critical of the system [lights a cigarette] but I adored getting my Oscar.”

— The John Player Lecture with Burt Lancaster conducted by Joan Bakewell at the National Film Theatre, June 22, 1972.

#he’s a diva to me #the john player lecture #joan bakewell #1972 #1970s #quote #burt lancaster #interview

Watching Paul Newman, NFT Interview 1972

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BAKEWELL: You are still a fitness buff, aren't you?

LANCASTER: Well, frankly, I'm getting old and fat, if you want to know the truth.

BAKEWELL: But you're still running around Hyde Park.

LANCASTER: That's true, yes. It's one way of getting my heart started in the morning. Other people use masturbation.

— The John Player Lecture with Burt Lancaster conducted by Joan Bakewell at the National Film Theatre, June 22, 1972.

#the john player lecture #joan bakewell #1972 #1970s #interview

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Working with Visconti on The Leopard (Il gattopardo).

#the leopard #il gattopardo #luchino visconti #the john player lecture #joan bakewell #1972 #1970s #audio #burt lancaster #interview

LANCASTER: I had to walk into this room [in The Killers], I remember, for the first time before three or four hundred extras, and I had to walk up to a cigarette girl and say, “Hello, baby, let me have a cigarette. Keep the change,” give her twenty dollars and so forth. And, uh, I simply couldn’t do it. We shot it 28 times.

BAKEWELL: Was is it Ava Gardner who made you shy?

LANCASTER: No, it wasn’t Ava Gardner at all. [Laughing] Although, I was very much in love with Ava Gardner. But that had nothing to do with it. I was so embarrassed—suddenly coming out, taking center stage in front of all these people. [Laughing] It’s something I’ve gotten over, I must say. But, uh, I remember I came back, I was so angry, I was standing backstage waiting for them to roll the cameras and to come on again and I was so nervous and excited and upset with myself that I picked up a chair and I smashed it against the wall. And an old gentleman was standing there and he looked at me and said, he was one of the extras on the set, and he said, “Look, young man,” he says, “you’re gonna be fine, don’t worry about a thing. You’ve really got it.” And I went out and I finally got the take and later on I said to someone, “Who was that old gentleman?” And it was William Farnum, of movie fame, who was then working as an extra. But it took me a long time to be able to take command, as it were. Consequently, I found myself in the intimate scenes, either in a love scene or in a very intrapersonal scene, I was perfectly at home because I could forget about the camera and relate to the person I was talking to. If I had to play a love scene I was able to literally be in love. I could love that object it was quite simple and an important thing I was able to do because I could deal with my interior feelings and I didn't feel that the camera was there. But when I had to come out and take stage and be the grand seigneur, so to speak, I was very frightened. And even to this day it takes a great deal of will on my part to stand there and declaim, as it were, you see?

BAKEWELL: You still slightly dread those scenes the most, do you?

LANCASTER: That's true, yes.

— The John Player Lecture with Burt Lancaster, conducted by Joan Bakewell at the National Film Theatre on June 22, 1972.

#that connection between fear and anger #the john player lecture #joan bakewell #1972 #1970s #ill end up transcribing this whole fucking thing just wait

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Producing Sweet Smell of Success.

#the picture i used was taken at this lecture btw #sweet smell of success #the john player lecture #1972 #1970s #joan bakewell #audio #interview

BAKEWELL: The thing about your gymnastics, that you say was already a sort of obsession when you were younger—I mean, you've kept it up, haven't you? You've done stunts through all your movies, you've swashbuckled left, right, and center, you've uh— [Burt laughs] You've leapt from trains... you must get a great exhilaration out of that.

LANCASTER: Well, no, I'll tell you what the reason I have done—I suppose this part of it is a part of personal pride in what you do, the other is the fact that when you can do a certain kind of a scene that requires a certain athletic ability, if you will, or physical ability to handle it, the camera's in a position to cover it much more closely. Consequently, it does become realistic and the people share in the emotion of that scene. When I come up against scenes that I cannot really do I don't even try to do it. For instance, I'm a fairly good horseman, but I'm not an experienced man dealing with horses so when I work in a western I don't take the falls off the horses.

BAKEWELL: But Trapeze and The Flame and the Arrow, I mean, these were really—

LANCASTER: Well, these were things I did. I did these things professionally. I did the kind of acts you saw. The so-called stunts were things I was capable of doing. And of course they gave the whole film an enormous [unintelligible], joie de vivre, a quality about them, a kind of reality the audience could share.

— The John Player Lecture with Burt Lancaster conducted by Joan Bakewell at the National Film Theatre, June 22, 1972.

#i love this so much #you did your own stunts in trapeze!! i was a professional acrobat.#the john player lecture #joan bakewell #1972 #1970s #interview