The late Burt Lancaster was an American actor with a reputation of being a ladies' man who played in almost 100 films during his long career. He died of a heart attack in his home in Los Angeles on October 24, 1994, when he was eighty years old. He was cremated and his ashes now rest at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

Born on November 2, 1913, in New York City as Burton Stephen Lancaster, to parents James Henry Lancaster and Elizabeth Roberts, Burt Lancaster was one of five children. His family didn’t have a lot of money and Lancaster grew up as a tough street kid.

Early in life he became interested in gymnastics. At one time he even had dreams of becoming a gym teacher, but decided to quit school instead to join the circus. He worked as a circus acrobat for several years until an injury forced him to give up the profession.

Lancaster joined the United States Army and worked with the United Service Organizations (USO), a volunteer organization that provided morale and recreational services to uniformed military personnel, including arranging dances and social events for the troops.

After the army he decided to audition for a Broadway play. His audition was half-hearted since he wasn’t too enthusiastic about acting, but he still managed to land the role. The play was unsuccessful. It did, however, get him noticed by a Hollywood agent who cast him in his first movie, 1946’s The Killers.

After The Killers, he landed roles in a variety of movies with a special focus on dramas, thrillers, military, and adventure films. In several of his movies, like The Flame and the Arrow and The Crimson Pirate, he impressed audiences with his acrobatic skills.

Lancaster was over six feet tall and in superb physical shape. He was also a bit of a show off. It’s been said that he showed up to a Hollywood Oscar party in the late 1950s wearing nothing but a g-string and gold spray paint so that he would look like an Academy Award statuette.

In 1960 he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, a Golden Globe Award, and the New York Film Critics Award for his performance as Gantry in the movie Elmer Gantry. Nine years later, in 1969, Lancaster made his first television appearance as a guest on Sesame Street where he recited the alphabet. He also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Lancaster suffered from two minor heart attacks and had to have emergency quadruple heart bypass surgery in 1983. He didn’t do much acting after that, and the only significant role he played was as Dr. Archibald "Moonlight" Graham in Field of Dreams in 1989. He became wheelchair bound a year later due to a massive cerebral stroke.

Although Lancaster preferred to keep his personal life private, it is known that he was married three times and had five children with his second wife. His last marriage was to Susan Martin whom he married on September 10, 1990. The two remained married until his death in 1994.

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