Enigmatic dreamboat

Sitting in a seminar at the San Francisco International Film Festiva l, Kate Buford, author of the new biography, "Burt Lancaster: An American Life," was asked if any contemporary actor has "a Lancasteresque quality" - if there's anyone who comes close to what Lancaster meant to American cinema for 45 years. She thought for a few seconds, sighed, and said, "No."

Lancaster's body of work, almost 80 films, starts with "The Killers" in 1946 and ends with a cameo from 1989's "Field of Dreams." "He lived a self-inventing life, assuming his own persona, on and off the screen," Buford said. "Luchino Visconti had that great quote, when he called Lancaster 'the most perfectly mysterious person' he ever knew."

Buford's book (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2000, $27.50) retains Lancaster's mystery. Badly hampered by the fact Buford did not interview Lancaster or any of his children - the only close look inside the actor's inner circle comes when he is already 70 years old - "Burt Lancaster" is still a fascinating, no-nonsense read.

"I tried to write a biography which just happened to be about a movie star," Buford told the festival audience. "I couldn't decide from one moment to the next whether I liked him or not and, in the end, I think that's a pretty realistic way of looking at him."

Drawing on a bibliography of 200 articles and books - including ones written by Kirk Douglas, Clifford Odets and Lauren Bacall - Buford has created an engaging portrait of Lancaster as a mix between gentleman and bully, a man who had little respect for women and government and total respect for the arts and the Bill of Rights.

Born and raised on East 106th Street in East Harlem, only blocks from some of the worst gangland shootings during Prohibition, Lancaster "ran off to the circus in 1933 and was still working in the kind of wicked happenings of the 1980s," said Buford. "His life basically traced the arc of American life in the last half of the 20th century."

Burt Lancaster - his real name - "was a tough street kid, a New Yorker through and through," Buford said. He stayed true to his roots, keeping childhood friend Nick Cravat on a lifetime payroll as personal trainer, even though Cravat lived on the other side of the country.

Buford's interest in a biography was kindled after she saw Lancaster spring out of bed in a scene from 1981's "Atlantic City," when he was 68 years old. "A man old enough to be my father didn't spring up like that unless he kept himself in shape," said Buford, who found that Lancaster ran regularly at UCLA, near his Century City home, and "rarely, if ever, used a (stunt) double."

Lancaster's stunt work in "The Train," when he was 50, is legendary. Four years later, in "The Swimmer," Lancaster appeared nearly nude, his still-youthful body a reminder "of the older JFK nobody ever got to see."

Buford plays the historical aspect of Lancaster's times to the hilt - making much of the arts in the Depression, unions, the anti-communist frenzy of the '50s, Vietnam, AIDS and the ACLU. Lancaster was strong on social issues, always a union booster, leery of government intervention, and was perhaps the biggest name to speak out early against Vietnam and in support of AIDS research.

But Lancaster could be a jerk, Buford said. Her third-person descriptions feature a man with a mean streak, ill-tempered tirades on the set and a Sinatralike demand for loyalty. When he married for the third time in 1990, at the age of 76, Lancaster had mellowed - but a stroke shortly after the wedding left him in a wheelchair and he died four years later, in October 1994.

What separated Lancaster from other stars of his generation, said Buford, was his willingness to take a chance, moving from the hulking Swede in "The Killers" to swashbuckler roles with "those Chicklets teeth and ice-blue eyes" to a series of weary, aging warriors. He was redefining himself each step of the way, said Buford - "He always said he had talent, not genius."

While the American public was still chewing on the young Lancaster as noir anti-hero, he gave them a double-dose of swashbuckler, leading director John Frankenheimer to say, "Nobody has ever looked like Burt Lancaster in 'The Crimson Pirate.'s" Even now, said Buford, she fights off the blues with periodic screenings of "The Flame and the Arrow."

Swashbuckler films like "Pirate" and "Arrow" were among Lancaster's favorites, said Buford, as was "Ulzana's Raid," and the role that eventually cost him the love of the American audience - the raw, crazed Manhattan columnist J.J. Hunsecker in "Sweet Smell of Success."

"He always said the scout in 'Ulzana's Raid' best mirrored his own view of life," said Buford. "And someone who plays J.J. Hunsecker is not going inspire the same affection as, say, a Gregory Peck, playing the lead in 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'s"

The roles Lancaster regretted not getting all his life, said Buford, both centered on Marlon Brando. He wanted the stage role of Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and, 20 years later, Brando's part in "The Godfather."

"He was really aggravated about not getting 'Godfather,'s" she said. "But he admired Brando enormously - he gave him credit for being the greatest actor of their generation."

It may not have worked for Lancaster, anyway, said Buford - "With his brittle, mannered flatness .s.s. Burt Lancaster did not make films. He made movies."

The independent release of "Sweet Smell of Success" in 1957 crippled Lancaster's popularity, built up with a string of money-makers that included "From Here to Eternity," "Apache," "Vera Cruz" and "Trapeze." Although Lancaster was the first Hollywood star to command a $1 million salary for a picture - "Judgment at Nuremberg" in 1961 - his movie-star status was already slipping.

"In 1962," wrote Buford, "he had come in 10th place in the Motion Picture Herald-Fame poll. In 1963, he was 18th. The next year he dropped off the industry popularity barometer forever."

Lancaster, who can list production of the Academy Award-winning "Marty" among his credits, could immerse himself completely in a role, including "Birdman of Alcatraz" in 1962. "Probably, of all the films he made, he poured the most of himself into that film," said Buford, adding that Lancaster had almost 30 more years of work left after "Birdman," including "Castle Keep," "Conversation Piece" and "Local Hero," with only modest success.

Addressing the issue of whether Lancaster was bisexual, Buford said, "It was like looking down a hall of mirrors. To get a firsthand account that was clearly reinforced was impossible.

"What I came up with was, he had so many gay friends, as anyone in the entertainment industry has .s.s. well, if anyone was going to say he was gay or bisexual, hey, go ahead - it didn't bother him."

Movie-star biographies tend to turn mawkish or cruel, but "Burt Lancaster" is straightforward and fair. At one point, Buford writes about the family's purchase of a Dutch colonial house above Bel-Air in 1948, saying, "The isolation fed the fantasy that he could keep one part of his life as it should be, a good island of the soul into which he could go at will and pretend that he was normal and that he had a normal life."

Lancaster's wife, an alcoholic, kept up appearances for 22 years before divorcing her husband, who lived openly with other women. The actor's children are described as "no-goodniks, and Burt knew it" - but, again, there are no scenes inside the family circle to underline that.

Unable to get a grip on Lancaster, Buford satisfies herself, too often, with a quick quote, historical anecdote or instructions to a family friend for taking care of the cat. In the end, the author is happy that Lancaster remains a mystery.

That's a good way of resolving the complexities of someone as well known and little understood as Lancaster. But it leaves too many questions behind. <