#take 22

[burtlancster]

“I said to [Kirk Douglas] "You know what we've got to do with Wyatt and Doc? We're playing two pre-Freudian fags. We're in love with each other and we don't know how to express ourselves that way so we just kind of look at each other and grunt and don't say very much, but you know we love each other." I said, "If we can get that idea across we'll have a good film—because there's plenty of action in it."”

— excerpt from the transcript of Judith Crist’s interview with Burt Lancaster during one of her film weekends at the Tarrytown Conference Center, 1975.

[burtlancster]

AUDIENCE: That was my question—weren't you taking a real risk in that picture [Sweet Smell of Success] because of antagonizing Walter Winchell and people like that?

LANCASTER: We didn't care a thing about that. What was Walter Winchell going to do, shoot us? That wasn't the disturbing factor. The problem was, we were a young company and we were doing reasonably interesting work, we worked very independently, and this was a labor of love for us. We started out with a $600,000 budget and wound up with a film that cost $2,600,000. We paid Clifford Odets, before he got through with the script, a total of $300,000 that year. The film was a total disaster—it lost $3.5 million. It's one of those things. Yet I can't go anyplace in the world without people talking about how marvelous that picture was. When I tell them it lost money they're stunned, they can't believe it. But we didn't put our own money in it. United Artists put up the money.

CRIST: At the time, Sweet Smell of Success was considered an astounding, really daring art film, because of its grittiness.

LANCASTER: It had the special quality of that kind of life. The style of the language Odets used was very "in" New Yorkese, a special-world kind of talk. It's ironic, because we thought the film was going to be, perhaps not a huge success, but certainly a financial success, because Tony Curtis and I had just finished making a film called Trapeze and Trapeze, with Gina Lollobrigida, grossed $17 million the first time around. And if that means anything, you would think that the combination can be repeated.

CRIST: Maybe it was the difference between brawn and brains.

— Take 22: Moviemakers on Moviemaking, transcript of Judith Crist’s interview with Burt Lancaster during one of her film weekends at the Tarrytown Conference Center, 1975.

[burtlancster]

​please tell me there’s evidence of him also proud dad-ing the thing (1982) somewhere

[burtlancster]

crazy thing to say when you look this fine

[burtlancster]

FROM AUDIENCE: You mentioned Trapeze, and last night we saw The Crimson Pirate, and within the last few weeks I took my six-year-old daughter to see The Flame and The Arrow. I think you’ve cheated a whole generation by not making any more films like this—and the question is why?

LANCASTER: Because I’m a cheat! [laughter] You must understand that those films were a little avant-garde because they were not just swashbuckler films, they spoofed the whole idea…Not a lot of people understood what we were doing the first time around. Its ironic that these two are kind of an insurance policy for me. I happen to own both of them, and every year I rent them out—they go all over Europe.

— an excerpt from the transcript of Judith Crist’s interview with Burt Lancaster during one of her film weekends at the Tarrytown Conference Center, 1975.

[burtlancster]

FROM AUDIENCE: Why hasn't Arthur Kennedy gotten as far as you and many others? I remember being stunned by him in Death of a Salesman.

LANCASTER: I don't know what to say. Certainly Arthur is a very fine actor, very engaging, very attractive. There must be an answer to why someone emerges as a star—some underlying charisma. But maybe that isn't even true. I remember the first time I saw Tyrone Power, and it was clear that this beautiful human being, who was a capable and smooth actor, was going to be a star. He was a beautiful man. There's that aspect of it. Then there's someone like Jimmy Dean, with a unique personality. Brando is perhaps the prime example of someone who combines good looks, animal magnetism, and absolutely superb talent, so it was clear he would be a star. It was understood from the very beginning that Monty Clift was going to be a star. Arthur was a superb actor, but he didn't make it on that level—and I don't know why.

— an excerpt from the transcript of Judith Crist’s interview with Burt Lancaster during one of her film weekends at the Tarrytown Conference Center, 1975.

[burtlancster]

“I was furious with Sam Spiegel because he was over at Cannes playing gin with Anatole Litvak while he was doing The Night of the Generals. Sam had personally promised me, personally promised me to be there every single weekend to go over the film, because we had certain basic problems—the casting and so forth. He never showed up one time. I could have killed him, I was so angry with him. And finally Columbia pulled the plug on us. But we needed another day of shooting—so I paid for it. An audience really should just come in and look at a movie and either love it or hate it and go home. But sometimes you want to tell them, "If you only knew what we've been going through!"”

— Burt Lancaster on making The Swimmer (1968), excerpt from the transcript of Judith Crist’s interview with Burt Lancaster during one of her film weekends at the Tarrytown Conference Center, 1975.

[burtlancster]

FROM AUDIENCE: In Elmer Gantry Burt Lancaster was more wonderful than usual. I wonder if you got that Academy Award-winning performance out of him by letting him do his own thing—or by telling him Randolph Scott was meant to have that role?

BROOKS: No. . . Burt is a very inventive actor, extremely facile. And he was at the top of his form at that time. He understood the part very well, and what I did with him was show him as much material as I could find, aside from the script itself, on the man after whom he was modeled—much more than the character in the book. I'm talking about Billy Sunday. There are some old newsreels on Billy Sunday. So Burt watched the old films, and he put together a combination of thoughts and ideas and energies. That's how it came about…I'm not responsible for Burt's great performance—he is.

— excerpt from the transcript of Judith Crist’s interview with Richard Brooks during one of her film weekends at the Tarrytown Conference Center, April 16, 1982.