Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,655

This is the grave of Burt Reynolds.

Born in 1936 in Lansing, Michigan, Reynolds grew up all over the place because his father was in the Army. Eventually, his father left the military and became a police chief in Florida, which where Reynolds went to high school. There, he was a football star. He went to Florida State to play running back, where his freshman roommate was Lee Corso. But injuries destroyed his football career. He was excellent as a freshman, but hurt his knee his first game as a sophomore and then had a nasty car accident that cost him his spleen and hurt his other knee. He actually took two years off from college entirely before coming back to Florida State for the 1957 season. He took a lot of heat for playing poorly in a loss to North Carolina State, quit the team, and that was that.

While he was taking time off from Florida State, he took classes at a local community college to stay academically eligible. While there, he took a drama class and he really enjoyed acting. He won a scholarship for a theater camp in Hyde Park, New York. While there, he impressed Joanne Woodward, who mentored him and got him in touch with an agent. He got some theater roles, even was on Broadway. He took it seriously too and enrolled in a lot of acting classes. Among his classmates were Red Buttons and another former football player named Frank Gifford who was transitioning into a new career, although he ended up in broadcasting instead.

Now it doesn’t seem anyone thought Reynolds was a very good actor. But they did think he looked like a Hollywood star and maybe he was a good enough actor to get by. And in fact, that was a pretty good analysis of what Reynolds would become. He went to Hollywood on the advice of a director in 1957 and started getting small TV roles shortly after. Lew Wasserman got him signed to Universal and said, “I don’t care whether he can act or not. “Anyone who has this effect on women deserves a break.”

Reynolds got a big break when he got second lead, with Darren McGavin, in Riverboat in 1959. Reynolds hated McGavin and only lasted 20 episodes. He nearly destroyed his career right there. Who did this kid think he was to quit a TV series? He spent the next few years in purgatory, back to spot appearances and small roles in bad movies. In 1962, he was cast to replace to Dennis Weaver on Gunsmoke after publicly pledging to not leave the show until it ended. He didn’t quite mean that and he left in 1965, but that was because he did so well on the show that he was moving up into real stardom. Or so he thought. It really did take awhile. He was cast as a Native American in a cop show called Hawk, where he played the role. Hmmmm…..He was in a lot of not great movies in the late 60s. He turned down the lead as Hawkeye Pierce in MASH, big error and it helped Tom Skerritt’s career instead.

As the 70s began, Reynolds was probably known for being a great looking guy and for being a witty talk show guest than he was for any work he had done. Evidently, there was a lot of support for him to play Sonny Corelone in The Godfather but Coppola really wanted James Caan and also Marlon Brando didn’t like him. I honestly cannot imagine Reynolds in that role. Brando was said to think that Reynolds was a cheap impersonator of him, but in any case, Reynolds later discussed that Brando really really hated him and he never understood why.

What finally sent Reynolds into the stratosphere was Deliverance. That was 1972, the same year he did his famous nude modeling in Cosmopolitan, one of the iconic photo shoots of the 70s and its over the top ridiculousness. But still, no one really took Reynolds seriously as an actor. What made him a solid staple of the 70s was southern exploitation films, starting with Deliverance and then extending to any number of car chase and light comedy-drama films. White Lightning from 1973 is perhaps best remembered for Laura Dern’s film debut. It’s bad but fun. Then Robert Aldrich directed him in The Longest Yard. He actually directed Gator, a follow up to White Lightning, in 1976.

Oh, and he also made a country album in 1973 titled Ask Me What I Am, which is evidently terrible. Don’t know whether it is worse than Terry Bradshaw’s country albums, but this was truly the era of manly white male stars cutting novelty country albums.

But let’s be honest–the reason we care about Reynolds is 1977’s Smoky and the Bandit. The film is completely ridiculous, the cast is nuts, and it was a gargantuan hit that spawned two sequels. The thing was filmed for $4.3 million. It made $300 million. So let’s just say that whatever eyerolling about Reynolds still existed in the film industry up to that time ended pretty quickly. He followed that with Semi-Tough, with Kris Kristofferson and Jill Clayburgh, another film of iconic 70s ridiculousness. There were other movies in there, but who cares until we get to Cannonball Run in 1981, which might as well have been a Smoky and the Bandit sequel with a slightly different story. That film also has an utterly insane cast (Dom DeLuise, Roger Moore, Farrah Fawcett, Jackie Chan, Dean Martin) that one identifies with that time in film history.

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas from 1982 was another really successful Reynolds film from the early 80s. But after that, things slipped. He turned down the supporting role in Terms of Endearment that Jack Nicholson won Best Supporting Actor for and he knew he blew it. There were a bunch of flops, he directed a few more films that were all bad, and there was some bad TV too.

Reynolds had something of a late career renaissance by returning to TV for Evening Shade, which was pretty popular in the first half of the 90s. This was also when we was in a well-publicized Hollywood marriage to Loni Anderson. He build on that for some good supporting work in good films, including Citizen Ruth and of course the porn auteur in Boogie Nights, which is in fact a great fucking role and probably the best work of his career. He actually got a Best Supporting Actor nomination for that. Paul Thomas Anderson actually wanted Reynolds in Magnolia too, but Reynolds not only declined but told the public how much he hated Anderson. Reynolds was an asshole, there’s little question about that. He burned so many bridges over his career, total firestarter.

There was a lot of work all the way to the end, but none of it was very good. He was actually cast in the role of the old man on the ranch taken over by the Manson family in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but he died of a heart attack just before shooting, in 2018. He was 82 years old. Bruce Dern replaced Reynolds in the role and was awesome in that small part.

Unlike everyone else in this series except for Howard Zinn (who I shared a very kind email conversation with), I actually have a Burt Reynolds story. I lived in Santa Fe from 2003-05. I had walked over the Lensic Theater to get tickets to the see the Flatlanders. I got the tickets, started walking back, turned the corner and nearly plowed over Burt Reynolds, who was walking the other way. We said the usual “excuse me” and then I was like, wait a minute, that was Burt!!!!! As it turns out, he was in town filming that bad sequel to The Longest Yard at the New Mexico State Prison. A few observations–ridiculously tanned, wore a lot of gold, and was definitely shorter than you’d think. I have very few celebrity stories, but this is one of them.

Burt Reynolds is buried in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, California.

Can we talk about Burt’s grave for a minute? I gotta say, I freaking love it. Pure late 70s Burt face for the centuries to come!

If you would like this series to visit other stars of Smoky and the Bandit, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Jackie Gleason is in Miami (god, that would be a great post) and Jerry Reed is in Nashville. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.