A lengthy biography of a movie star is not my typical book to read. But having gotten this new biography of Burt Lancaster for this assignment, I soon was struck by how much I did not know about him and how interesting his career — and life — was.

Buford subtitles her work An American Life, but in truth, Lancaster’s life was unlike most of ours.

He is one kid who really did run away to join the circus, spending several years as an acrobat. At one point he made $11,000 a week with the Cole Bros. Show, at that time second only to Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey. That was the highest salary paid to any circus performer, eclipsing the $10,000 per week Tom Mix had gotten.

Lancaster’s circus days gave him the upper body physique that made him the envy of many men (and gave rise to whispered rumors of homosexuality) and also a stage presence that helped as he attempted to learn acting on the job.

His first film was The Killers, for Universal-International, based on an Ernest Hemingway short story, in 1946. Buford’s "filmography" lists 71 additional feature films in which he performed, seven feature films produced by the production company he co-owned with Harold Hecht in which he did not perform, 13 television movies and mini-series, and three stage plays, all over the next 45 years.

Some of the credits are legendary: Sorry, Wrong Number; Jim Thorpe — All American; Come Back, Little Sheba; From Here to Eternity; The Rainmaker; Elmer Gantry; Judgment at Nuremberg; Birdman of Alcatraz; Atlantic City, and on and on and on.

His television work included Victory at Entebbe, On Wings of Eagles, Barnum, and Separate But Equal, his last appearance before us.

Lancaster had the kind of troubled personal life that we have come to associate with many Hollywood stars, with several marriages, estrangement from children, non-discreet affairs, public disagreements with the studios. And yet Buford paints a sympathetic picture of someone who did not want to hurt people and who tried to make things right as best he could.

In 1990, Lancaster drove to see a friend at an Alzheimer’s center and while there suffered a massive stroke. He was 77 but the hospital staff, who initially didn’t know who he was, said he had the body of a 60-year-old man that was so strong that it kept him alive. Against all odds, he lived another four years, but in seclusion. Despite upbeat press reports issued by the family, his body was slowly betraying him and he was restricted to a wheelchair. While his mind remained sharp, he was unable to make himself understood by anyone except Susie, his last wife. When they had married, he toasted her by saying "I hope my remaining years will be spent with this woman, who gives me warmth, joy, friendliness — she’s a friend, a good friend — all the things a man could hope for at this stage of my life. She makes me young, fills me with ambition to do things. I’m just a lucky fellah."

In 1991, the Screen Actors Guild presented Susie, for Burt, an award honoring both his career and a range of humanitarian activities. His daughter Joanna said her father had grown up unafraid, thanks in part to the Union Settlement House, and had spent the rest of his life as "an enemy of anything that would erode the human spirit," devoted to causes that would help others to be unafraid. "I’ve always seen him," she said, "as a compassionate anarchist."

And the American Museum of the Moving Image presented a Lancaster retrospective in which museum curator Richard Koszarski said, "Unlike … most of the other screen tough guys who generally toe the conservative line, Burt Lancaster’s films frequently criticize big business, hint at government conspiracies, sympathize with Indians, convicts, and revolutionaries, and generally look askance at corporate power and individual acquisitiveness — as an exemplar of screen masculinity, he is clearly unique." Buford says, "It was an assessment that would have pleased him."