Now in paperback, here is the critically acclaimed, best-selling biography of one of Hollywood's legendary stars. Burt Lancaster is known to audiences around the world as the electrifying performer of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, From Here to Eternity, and Birdman of Alcatraz, among many others. Kate Buford brings to life his vivid, memorable on-screen presence as well as the off-screen life he kept intensely private. The first writer to win cooperation from Lancaster's widow and close friends, Buford has written the intimate story of one of the last great unexamined Hollywood lives, capturing both the golden boy and the husband, philanderer, and sometime bisexual. Buford's portrait is compelling, comprehensive, intelligent—and definitive. Kate Buford is a commentator for Public Radio International's "Marketplace" and has written for publications including the New York Times and Architectural Digest . She lives in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. Burt Lancaster An American Life By Kate Buford Da Capo Press Copyright © 2001 Kate Buford All right reserved. ISBN: 9780306810190 Chapter One New York City Boy The story of Burt Lancaster begins with the idea of America, with the beliefthat you can journey to another place and become another person. His ancestorscrossed to England from France in the Norman invasion of 1066 and took the namede Lancastre. Most likely concocted from the Roman word castra (legionarycamp) and the river Lune whose name may come from the Gaelic slan (healthy, salubrious), Lancaster came to mean simply one who comes fromLancaster, the county town of Lancashire. Blond hair and blue eyes would persistover a millennium as a characteristic of Norman or Teutonic origin, showing upin odd places like Sicily. The coats of arms of several Lancaster familiesfeature golden lions but at least one has a leopard, rampant. His immediate ancestors left England for Ireland, easily accessible across theIrish Sea. Later, eager publicists would claim that he was a descendant of Johnof Gaunt and his father would tell a tale of lost House of Lancaster fortunesconfiscated by Oliver Cromwell, but Lancaster dismissed such stories. Not muchwould survive of his Irishness except two instinctive responses: a reverence forthe single human singing voice and a belief that the declamatory persuasion oflive drama, theater, could change the world. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the Lancasters and the Robertsfamily, his mother's Belfast people ? working-class Northern Irish Protestants-- were poor and trapped by the island's limitations. His paternal grandfatherJames emigrated to New York in the mid-1860s, more than a decade after theGreat Famine, part of the human migration to America that provided labor for thevast technological changes that swept the country after the Civil War. James hadtwo key advantages as an Irish Protestant: he was educated enough to read and hewas a skilled worker, a cooper, having served a five-to-six-year apprenticeshipbefore landing in America. He settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, at40 Essex Street. In the twisting streets and dark brick buildings lived harnessmakers, peddlers, grocers, bakers, carpenters, and barbers, Germans fromHesse-Darmstadt and Bavaria, Russians, Austrians, and thousands of Irish ? oneof the most horrific concentrations of tenement-jammed humanity in the world. By 1880 the next great wave of immigration filled New York's Tenth Ward aroundEssex Street with Eastern European Jews fleeing pogroms and starvation. Jamesmarried Susannah Murray, another Irish immigrant five years his senior, and theyhad five children, including James Henry (Jim), Burt's father, born December 6,1876. James Sr. moved the family uptown to 619 First Avenue between EastThirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets. Perched on the edge of the island next tothe East River, just south of today's Queens-Midtown Tunnel, the Lancasterssettled amid a new mix of midtown working-class neighbors ? butchers,machinists, florists, and varnishers. Up the East Coast in the busy seaport town of Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1880,four-year-old Elizabeth "Lizzie" Roberts, Lancaster's mother, was living at 194Main Street and developing the dominating traits of the firstborn. In additionto her father, James, 35, and her mother, Jennie Smith Roberts, 28, plus babybrother, George, the house was filled with members of the extended Robertsfamily. Her parents had emigrated from Belfast around 1875; Lizzie was born inNorwalk on May 13, 1876. James was a shoemaker and the family lived surroundedby neighbors ? carriage makers and hat trimmers ? whose skills catered to arefined clientele. The family proudly claimed to be related to Frederick Sleigh Roberts, theBritish field marshal who was later named the 1st Earl Roberts of Kandahar,Pretoria, and Waterford. The last person to hold the title of commander in chiefof the British Army, Earl Roberts was from 1857 until his death in 1914 ano