Burt Reynolds: The last of the Hollywood hunks
Bette Davis once informed Burt Reynolds that ‘unless you’re known as a monster, you’re not a star!’ A fine sentiment, but Bette was my auntie, so that’ll be her Welsh side coming out. In reality, she was rather reserved – as Burt noticed when he encountered her in Hollywood. ‘Every Friday night Bette threw a party for the crew ... and she could tip ’em back. She was wound so tight, I think alcohol relaxed her and eased her shyness.’
Burt doesn’t seem shy, or monstrous. He emerges from But Enough About Me as affable, forthright and with an enormous, sympathetic intelligence. These days, aged nearly 80, he runs the Burt Reynolds Institute for Film and Theatre, and gives masterclasses on the art of drama, screening the classics and getting his students to examine the work and style of the legends of yesteryear – celebrities whom Burt knew.
My auntie, so tough and indomitable ‘she smoked even in the dentist’s chair,’ looms large in Burt’s pantheon: ‘Bette wasn’t afraid to play unattractive characters, parts other actresses wouldn’t touch, parts that were dangerous and hard to bring off.’ Burt also salutes George Hamilton, Fred Astaire, John Wayne, and Robert Mitchum. ‘I’m not an actor,’ said Mitchum. ‘I have two emotions. On a horse and off a horse.’
Not true, of course. Mitchum was infinitely subtle, especially in his presentation of evil scheming.
But Burt always admires art that conceals art – the power and suggestiveness of Spencer Tracy, say, or Gene Hackman and Lee Marvin.
Outside of a gay club (I imagine – I have no direct evidence) you’d not easily find rugged he-men like Burt and his heroes today. Thick moustaches, chest hair, a rumbling voice, construction worker boots – personalities that are nicotine-stained and whiskey infused. This kind of unabashed masculinity, fashionable 40 or 50 years ago, has been banished by transgender politics and feminism. Men have to be somewhere on the ‘spectrum’ – hence Johnny Depp instead of Clark Gable, Tom Hanks instead of James Stewart.
Which all makes Burt the last of his virile breed, yet back in the Seventies he spent five years solid as Number One at the box office – with films like Deliverance (‘the best movie I’ve ever been in’), where he played a ‘macho survivalist’, plunging in the rapids, climbing rocks and shooting arrows; comic road pictures such as Smokey And The Bandit and The Cannonball Run; Mel Brooks’ hysterical Silent Movie; and about 80 other pictures and 50 TV shows.
Burt grew up in Florida, ‘a wild kid who got my share of whippings from my dad’. He played American football at college until his knee was wrenched out of its socket. He drove a Buick, crashed, and ‘when I got to my feet I coughed up blood and blacked out’. He regained consciousness to find a dozen surgical sutures and was lucky only to have lost his spleen. While recuperating, ‘I met a teacher who changed my life’ – Professor Watson B Duncan, who ‘didn’t just recite the words of Milton and Shakespeare; he breathed life into them with his booming voice’.
Professor Duncan encouraged Burt to become an actor, and at the end of his sophomore year, he won a Florida State Drama Award, a scholarship that got him to New York, where he encountered Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, played poker with Elvis, and was insulted by Gore Vidal.
He was chatted up by a lady of mature years with noticeable breasts who turned out to be Greta Garbo.
Burt shared a cold-water flat with Rip Torn, and ‘to survive in New York I had the usual actor jobs: washing dishes, waiting tables, making deliveries’. He caught the eye of Tennessee Williams: ‘Young man, I’m going to write a play for you,’ but I don’t think he did. When Burt was finally cast in a show, it closed after three nights. So he went to Hollywood, where he was offered Batman and Bond, and fell in love with Dinah Shore.
Dinah, 20 years his senior, ‘taught me about music, art, food and wine; she taught me which fork to use; she taught me how to dress’. In other words, Burt learned how to behave like a star – without being a monster. Though he saw plenty of nastiness, for example from Frank Sinatra, a sadistic lunatic who
‘He was once chatted up by a mature lady with noticeable breasts - she was Greta Garbo’
said to Shirley MacLaine, ‘I wish someone would hurt you, so I could kill them for you.’ Burt was a popular guest on Johnny Carson’s chatshow, where he could send himself up as ‘Burt Reynolds... a swinging bachelor having a ball being rich and famous.’ He proved to be a genius at self-parody. ‘I’m gonna walk up and down Broadway trying to get recognised,’ he said when asked about his future plans.
Then he fell ill with a rare dental disorder that affected the joints and hinges of the jaw. ‘It messes with your balance and sensory perception,’ he explains. Rumours flew around that Burt was dying from Aids, such was his dramatic weight loss. He rallied, however, to give a first-rate nuanced performance in Boogie Nights. Marriage to Loni Anderson was a less successful move. ‘The truth is,’ he now admits, ‘I never did like her.’ She spent all his money and gained custody of their son.
Undaunted, Burt concludes, ‘I may not be the best actor in the world, but I’m the best Burt Reynolds in the world.’