 Starring: Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, Thelma Ritter, Telly Savalas
Director: John Frankenheimer
Year Of Release:1962
Plot: Robert Stroud is in prison for murder and spends most of his time in solitary confinement because he can’t stay out of trouble. However when he rescues a baby sparrow and nurses it to adulthood he develops an all-consuming interest in birds, and over the years becomes an authority on the subject. However his fascination sparks an uneasy relationship with the prison authorities, especially when he starts writing about the problems with the entire federal penitentiary system. |
Birdman Of Alcatraz actor Burt Lancaster was not like other movie stars. For a start, he didn’t arrive in Hollywood until he was 33, and even then it was only after he’d pretty much fallen into acting. He’d initially trained as an acrobat, then became a basketball ace at NYU, before quitting and joining the circus as a trapeze artist, before being forced off the professional circuit by an injury (although he still kept up his acrobatic training long after he became a star). He then performed in USO shows during World War II and on his return to America, auditioned for a Broadway show and surprised himself by getting the part.
Hollywood agent Harold Hecht spotted him on the stage and brought him to Hollywood. In 1946 he got his first film role, which was the lead in The Killers. The film noir was a great success and established Lancaster as a star. At the time, the normal thing would have been for Lancaster and Hecht to then seek out the studio that was offering the best terms to hire Burt as a featured player, but despite the fact Lancaster was in a stronger position than most actors at the beginning of their screen career, they didn’t do this.
At the time, the studios were all powerful, and the general opinion was that if an actor had any hope of finding sustained success in the movies, they had to sign an exclusive contract with a major studio, which would then pretty much control their career. It was a system where virtually all the power was in the hands of the studio, and once an actor had signed to a particular company, they pretty much handed them control of their entire career. They would assign you roles, lend you out to other studios at their whim, decide what your public image would be (or even if you’d have one), often give you your stage name and generally control your life.
It was a system that pleased no one but the studios, with up and comers at the mercy of whether a studio decided to make them a star or not, while big movie stars struggled with the fact that even though they were major names, they still didn’t have much control over their own careers. The contracts were also difficult to get out of, and so except for the lucky few, it wasn’t even like you could cut loose and go off and try your luck elsewhere (it’s likely that if you tried to implement them nowadays, the contracts that studios made actors sign back then would now be seen as illegal and classed a indentured servitude). However the conventional wisdom said that because of the all-encompassing power of the studios in the 30s and 40s, being under contract and essentially giving up your freedom was a necessary evil if you wanted to act in the movies.
Burt Lancaster was fiercely independent though and refused to play Hollywood’s game its way. A lifelong leftist liberal, he wasn’t impressed by the authoritarian way the studios treated their actors, and so instead of signing with a studio, he and his agent, Harold Hecht, set up their own production company. Although it certainly wasn’t Hollywood’s first or only independent filmmaking company, it was pretty much the first time since Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford had set up United Artists that an actor had set up a company to oversee their own career and develop their own movies outside the studio system (at the time a few other successful actors –but no major stars – weren’t under contract and just went from job-to-job, but they didn’t find their own projects, but were instead brought in after a studio had decided to make a film).
It was a bold move by Burt that initially paid off. While Hollywood immediately wanted to typecast him as a heavy following The Killers, by staying independent Lancaster was able to score a varied array of roles, from fun but indulgent films that allowed him to show off his athletic prowess (often alongside his old trapeze partner, Nick Cravat), to smaller, more personal parts. He also quickly realised that staying independent meant he could hire himself out to studios at a better rate than if he’d been under contract, especially as by doing it through his own company, he got extra tax breaks. Lancaster is also often credited with inventing the idea of ‘profit participation’, where an actor got a slice of the box office, which has been part of a-list Hollywood pay deals ever since.
Burt also knew that by owning his own production company, it meant that if he really wanted to make a movie but the studios didn’t, he could go out and raise the funding himself and then release it through an independent distribution company, such as United Artists. In fact, United Artists eventually signed a contract to fund Lancaster’s films, giving Burt independence to develop his own projects, while they’d pay for and release them.
After he did this for a while, his company, which eventually came to be known as Hill-Hecht-Lancaster (after writer/producer James Hill joined the original founders), started expanding to make movies that didn’t star Burt. For example they made Marty in 1955, which won the Best Picture Oscar. As a result of its success, the company became a major force in promoting independent film, which was something that stayed close to Lancaster’s heart for the rest of his days. Hill-Hecht-Lancaster also became a powerful player in Hollywood, and in 1957 they almost took over the running of MGM, although eventually the shareholders decided against it.
While cracks were already showing in the studio system by the late-50s, it was Lancaster’s example that helped shape how things evolved. Seeing what he’d done with Hill-Hecht-Lancaster, the likes of Kirk Douglas also broke free of the studios and set up their own production companies. Some of these actors saw the financial rewards possible from being outside the studio system, especially after Burt became the first actor to be offered a million dollars for a single role. He was offered that much for playing the lead in 1959’s Ben-Hur (he turned it down), while the eventual star, Charlton Heston, got far less because despite being a bigger star than Burt, he was already under contract. Other actors were attracted by the thought that going independent meant they could make the movies they wanted to, rather than what the studios told them to.
Some actors tried to use Hill-Hecht-Lancaster itself to break away from the type of roles the studio was giving them. For example Tony Curtis wanted to play Sidney Falco in The Sweet Smell Of Success, but Universal didn’t want him to because it was so different to the actor’s previous nice-guy roles. However Lancaster, who was starring in and shepherding Sweet Smell to the screen through Hill-Hecht-Lancaster, championed Curtis for the part and eventually Universal caved in. Not long afterwards Curtis broke free of the studio system himself and set up his own production company.
Lancaster’s independent example provided the template for the direction Hollywood moved when the studio system crumbled, with actors taking the lead in getting projects off the ground, as well as being able to use their star power to command ever higher fees (it was because the studios knew the power that star actors would start to exert if given much independence, that they kept the contract system so rigid for so long, until they had no choice but to give up on it).
Hill-Hecht-Lancaster also foreshadowed the rise of the super-agent, who would package a star, script and director together before a studio even got a sniff at the project.
Unfortunately for Burt, he was also one of the first to taste the downside of actors’ newfound independence. Although the studio system gave actors little control, it did guarantee a regular paycheque and that they weren’t personally responsible for a film, other than to star in it. The same wasn’t true for Burt.
After some of his late 50s Hill-Hecht-Lancaster films went over-budget, a clause in his contract with United Artists kicked in, which meant he had to make four films for them at a severely reduced fee, as he was personally responsible for the previous overruns. One of these movies was Birdman Of Alcatraz, a film that was one of his greatest artistic successes (and scored him an Oscar nomination), allowing him to use filmmaking techniques and explore social messages the studios would have run a mile from. However he was paid less than a quarter of his usual fee, because his independence came with penalties if his gambles didn’t pay off (which is unlike most of the current star system, where actors now have great power to develop their own films, but while success brings them great reward, failure has few repercussions).
As a result of the ups and downs of the film industry, and the risks that came with Burt Lancaster’s fiercely independent approach, Hill-Hecht-Lancaster shut down in 1969. Even that became a lesson for other movie actors who were now outside the studio system, who made sure they found ways to use their star power to maintain as much control as possible, without assuming any of the financial risks.
While some have said that Lancaster was the one who broke the studio system, that’s not really true. The power of old Hollywood would almost inevitably have crumbled whether Burt was there or not, but he did lead the way and show that it was possible to maintain a successful movie star career outside the studio system, and his example certainly encouraged others to follow. It’s also true that the power shift towards actors and agents might not have been so great if it weren’t for his influence.
Although Lancaster couldn’t have foreseen both the positive and negative aspects of the star-powered era he helped usher in, his fight to remain independent in an age where it was almost unheard of, makes him one of the most fascinating figures in Hollywood history.
TIM ISAAC
PREVIOUS: The Big Trail - Or, the birth of widescreen and John Wayne
NEXT: The Birds - Or, what's Hitchcock's The Birds really about, and what's it got to do with Psycho?
CLICK HERE to see the index of 909 films and TV shows the Movie-A-Day Project will be covering
CLICK HERE to find out more about the idea behind The Movie-A-Day Project
CLICK HERE to follow Movie_A_Day on Twitter
