Every so often, we do one of these posts about memorable (to me, at least!) costars and their roles. Anyone who's dipped a toe into The Underworld knows that
Airport (1970) is a
top ten favorite film of mine. One of its many story threads concerns the unraveling marriage of the airport's general manager, played by Burt Lancaster. As a snowstorm has engulfed the place and one of the airliners is threatened by an unbalanced, bomb-wielding passenger, he must also contend with his demanding wife Dana Wynter.
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Lancaster is already having a particularly trying night,
with picketers over airplane noise, the snowstorm and a jet that's stuck
in the snowy ground when Wynter calls to remind him of their engagement
that evening. Exasperated, he abruptly ends the call.
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He later takes a moment to call her back, after chatting with their daughters for a moment, but now she is seething. "You hung up on me... don't ever do that again."
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Her rendition of a compromise is for him to meet her at the event instead of coming home first!
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During their argumentative phone conversation, we're shown a variety of vignettes depicting their turbulent marriage.
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His boredom at her social-climbing charity events...
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...disagreements over his choice of occupation...
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...and ruined family dinners as their squabbling affects the children. (Tellingly, though Wynter is ever-unsatisfied with their station in life, a housekeeper is shown behind a swinging door and she is always bedecked in jewelry and Edith Head gowns.)
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If he thinks he's off the hook after this second rough phone call, he's got another think coming. Ultimately, she shows up at the airport for another round.
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By now the mad bomber scenario has reached a crisis point, but so has his marriage. I remember the first time I saw this movie I could hardly believe how callous and shallow Wynter was in the face of Lancaster's hardships. But women like this do exist, trust me on that one!
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Amazingly enough, though, Wynter is able to bring about some shadings to the role which indicate that she isn't a complete monster. The two wind up in a sad, but less volatile, state than the one in which the evening began. Anyway, he has pert widow Jean Seberg waiting at the next gate for him!
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Wynter has her very own tribute here. I loved her voice and her genteel manner. For me, even playing a shrew, she was the picture of elegance in Airport. She's really best known, though, for the exemplary 1956 sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
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Lancaster was quite the dreamboat in his youth and enjoyed a stellar career as a movie actor. He was something of a role model for me in that back in my 20s when I still wondered about pursuing acting as a real career, he had become a huge star after having made his movie debut at the ripe age of 33!
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In a way, one could say that Lancaster and Wynter had appeared together in The List of Adrian Messenger (1963) seven years prior to Airport, but as it turns out, Lancaster's heralded, disguised cameo as a picketing woman wound up not even being he! Director John Huston cheated by showing Lancaster unveiling himself at the end while not actually having done the part in the film proper. (And while Wynter's character was around for the scene in question, they shared no screen time anyway.) Frank Sinatra also didn't film his "cameo" either... just the gimmicky "unveiling" at the end. What shit.
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Anyway, one must go further back in time to discover when Lancaster and Wynter were first united on screen. Here we see a typically boisterous Lancaster in the prologue for the 1952 swashbuckler The Crimson Pirate.
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On board a sailing vessel, a sneering Baron (Leslie Bradley) is entertaining a well-heeled lady-friend played by Wynter in one of her earliest roles.
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She is bored to tears by him and his boat. But not for long!
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In a flash, Lancaster has dropped in!
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He's soon followed, natch, by his li'l partner in crime Nick Cravat.
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Wynter thinks she might pull one over on Lancaster and begins to unearth a small pistol covered with a handkerchief.
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But he isn't having it...
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After wrestling it out of her grasp...
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He plants a kiss on the glamorous lady (who's no longer bored, anyway!)
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Lancaster show Wynter the business end of his gun.
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Bradley gets a taste of it, too.
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There's no bloodshed, though. The movie is generally filled with devil-may-care, frolicsome fun.
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Lancaster takes over the ship and that's the last he sees of Ms. Wynter (until 18 years later in Airport!)
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As I've noted in past posts, Cravat was Lancaster's acrobatic partner back in their days of live performance. He appears in many movies which starred Lancaster and even pops up as a passenger in Airport. Lancaster never truly lost his New York accent, but Cravat's must have been even thicker because his character here was depicted as mute in order to prevent his true voice from upsetting the verisimilitude!
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The two of them frolic around with a notable lack of clothing.
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"Whattya think of my basket?"
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They even have one sequence in drag! Take THAT Adrian Messenger.
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At this stage, pushing 40, Lancaster was nonetheless a bronzed, athletically-impressive god of the silver screen.
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Note how in the prologue, filmed after the rest of the movie, his hair was back to it's natural dishwater brown.
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In one sequence of Pirate, he had the chance to doll up in period finery and flash that infectious grin.
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As Truvy said, "Time marches on..." and the intervening years had taken their cruel toll by 1970. (He probably should have ditched the big hair by this point.)
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I greatly preferred the closer-cropped look he was sporting in The Swimmer (1968), a terrific little film, just two years prior.
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In any case, I hope you enjoyed this little stream-of consciousness post connecting the dots between these two performers.
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And now we're setting sail for the long Independence Day weekend. Till next time, mateys!
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