Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1953)

ril Bef {Continued from page 53) he became a star. On his first trip out of Hollywood with Mark Hellinger, the producer who discovered him, Burt arrived in San Francisco without so much as a tooth brush, let alone a change of suits. These days, he’s as conscientious about i' being well-dressed in public as he is about taking a fair, friendly attitude i toward autograph-hunters. It’s all part of 1; what he calls “the responsibilities of star* dom,” but it took him a while to begin ■'feeling these responsibilities — maybe, I ' figure, because he was the baby of the I family. We did have a daughter younger '^than Burt, but she died when she was two, so it was just Burt that Willie and Jim ! and Jane looked out for, fighting his ^fights. He had no reason then to develop ' the sense of responsibility he has now. I didn’t have much time to devote to the . children, with my post-office job in the ' daytime, and in the evening, repair work .^on a couple of small houses I owned and rented. I was a Sunday father — “a fun father,” Burt puts it. It was my pleasure to take the') kids over to Central Park on Sunday afternoons to play baseball, eat popcorn, visit the zoo and drink soda pop. My wife really brought up our family, and a wonderful job she did. Burt never argued with his mother. He [did try it once, and he couldn’t sit down for a week. Mostly, he’d charm his way out of getting a spanking. His big blue eyes normally had a devilish look, but boy! — how he could turn on the innocence jiwhen it served his purpose. He’d see his -mother coming after him with fire in her eye and a switch in her hand, and he’d start singing “When Irish Eyes Are Smil' ing” in his good Irish tenor. It usually worked. Or he’d throw his arms around his [mother’s neck, smile that beautiful smile of his ' and say, with more schmaltz than lyou’cy^hear in a Viennese waltz, “Mother dear, 'you don’t love me any more.” Mrs. Lancaster, I regret to say, would melt, while Willie and Jim, no charm boys, looked on in utter disgust. Burt still uses that ingratiating smile when he gets backed into a corner. I believe that boy could smile his way out of anything. But in some way his mother managed to keep him disciplined. My wife had a phobia about dishonesty. She was determined that our children grow up to be decent, law-abiding citizens. I recall one day when Burt was eight or nine. He came home from a grocery-store errand with sixteen cents when he should have had only eleven. First he got a cuffing for cheating the clerk; then he was sent straight back to the store to return the extra nickel. An incident when Burt was in high school made me proud to see how that lesson had stuck with him. Coming out of the Com Exchange Bank in our neighborhood, he saw a twenty -dollar bill on the sidewalk. His first impulse was to pick it up and run. But he didn’t. He covered it with his foot and leaned against a fireplug to wait. “If nobody comes along to claim it in twenty minutes,” he told himself, “it’s mine.” At the end of nineteen minutes a little old lady scampered up and asked plaintively whether he’d seen a twenty-dollar bill. Burt lifted his foot and gave her the money. Of course, he kind of ruined the story when he told it to me by adding, “I cursed myself all the way home for being such a dope.” Even as a youngster, Burt had a shrewd sense of money. Maybe that’s why he’s produced his own pictures successfully, while so many other actors have gone broke that way. He wasn’t much good at arithmetic problems in school, but when on Burt it came to genuine nickels and dimes he was real smart. One summer, he decided he wasn’t making enough money on his paper route, so he went into the shoeshine business. “I set up my stand outside Macy’s on the Thirty-fifth Street side. Dad,” he told me. “It’s the most profitable spot in town. That’s where the shoe salesmen go in and come out. They have to have a shine twice a day, and I catch ’em coming and going!” Burt’s generally very cautious with his money now, except that he’s a soft touch for the old has-beens of show business. He won’t talk about this, and I’d get in wrong with him if I went into detail, but plenty of hard-up actors and circus people know the facts. His interest in show business developed early in life. You might say he inherited it. When I was a young nian, I used to win prizes on amateur nights at the local theatres for my song and dance routine called “The Broadway Swell and the Bowery Bum.” I played the accordion and the harmonica, too. Burt got his acting start at the nondenominational Church of the Son of Man and the Union Settlement House, in our neighborhood. I remember his opening line well — too well! When he was three years old, he played a shepherd (wearing a burlap potato sack) in a Nativity pageant. Needless to say, he wasn’t ' assigned any dialogue. In the midst of the performance, he discovered he had chewing gum stuck to one shoe. So he sat down center stage and proceeded to pull it off. After much exasperated pulling, he snarled at the top of his little voice, “How’d this damn gum get on my shoe?” Mrs. Lancaster was not amused. She couldn’t wait to get her youngest off the stage. But his career wasn’t ruined. In fact, he finally got promoted; for years, the Lancaster boys played the Three Wise Men in the Christmas pageant. It became a sort of tradition. Willie and Jim weren’t too keen about acting, but Burt got a big kick out of it. He was a movie fan, and at seven his great idol was Douglas Fairbanks. When “The Mark of Zorro” played the Atlas Theatre in our neighborhood, Burt was there when the doors opened at eleven. He was still there at eleven that night, forgetting all about lunch and dinner. Naturally, his mother was in a tizzy. “Willie,” I said, “go get Burt. Bring him home even if you have to use force.” “Aw, ■ Dad,” Willie complained, “all I ever do around .'here is retrieve Burt.” But he went and t' got Burt, and he used force, all right. This time. Mom didn’t have to administer a licking; Willie had beaten her to it. All the same, Burt wasn’t the slightest bit discouraged. He’d go around the house jumping over everything in sight, trying to imitate the Fairbanks feats. It never occurred to me then that he’d eventually become an athlete; he was quite small as a child, and we figured he was going to be the runt of the family. Suddenly, at thirteen, he seemed * to begin shooting up overnight, and turned out to be the tallest of the boys. (He’s six feet, two now, weighs 185 pounds and has a forty-one inch chest.) Burt started on his way toward being a second Doug Fairbanks when he met an Australian fellow named Curley Brent, a neighbor of ours who taught him how’ to do a few stunts on the horizontal bars. This taste for acrobatics got my boy and his pal Nick Cravat so excited that they decided to build bars of their own. Burt borrowed money from me; Nick got some from his mother; and soon the two of them, the husky blond kid and the wirv OPPORTUNITIES FOR EVtRYRODY For adverlhersi Wrtte to Pvbllthert Ctauifled Dept., 9 S. Clinton St., Chicago 6, (Jan. Women) EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES Tactical nursing— L^ARN Easily at Home. spare Time. Big demand, good earnings. High School not necessary. Write for free facts. Wayne School, Dept. AW-3. 2525 Sheffield, Cfiicago 14, 111. MAKE UP TO S55 Weeh as a Practical Nurse. Learn quickly at home. Booklet free. Chicago School of Nursing, Dept. PW~11 Chicago. 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