Burt Lancaster was the first, and the biggest, of the new crop of post-World War II stars and the last great survivor of Hollywood's golden era. In a career that began late and lasted some 40 years, the former circus acrobat matured from handsome and famously smiling athletic hunk to dignified elder statesman, bowing neither to time nor changing fashion. In his early films there was an almost disturbing disjunction between the tough, grim, often doomed characters he played and his own extraordinary beauty, but over the years his screen image—uniquely for a major box-office star of the time—constantly shifted. Lancaster's formidable determination enabled him to outlast the studio system to whose demise, as the first major producer-star of the modern era, he contributed. He was also a complex and contradictory character who gave many indifferent performances in poor films, amidst his fine...