Memorial Page for Burt Reynolds (née Burton Leon Reynolds, Jr.)

Burt Reynolds (born Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. on 11 February 1936 in Lansing, Michigan; died 6 September 2018 in Jupiter, Florida) was an American actor and director. From 1978 to 1982 America's cinema owners voted him the number 1 box-office star 5 years running. He was Lewis Medlock in Deliverance, the Bandit in the black Trans Am and, late in his career, Jack Horner in Boogie Nights, the role that brought him his only Oscar nomination. He won an Emmy and 2 Golden Globes, built a theatre and a school for young actors in Florida, and never quite stopped being the football player he had wanted to be. In Germany the title of his most famous comedy became his nickname: das ausgekochte Schlitzohr.

Roots and Football

He was the son of Burton Milo Reynolds Sr. and Fern Reynolds, née Miller. The family was living in Lansing when his father was drafted into the Army; Reynolds himself confirmed the Michigan birthplace only in his 2015 memoir, But Enough About Me. In 1946 the family settled in Riviera Beach, Florida, where his father became chief of police and the boy was given the name his friends used for the rest of his life: "Buddy".

Football was the plan. He took a football scholarship to Florida State University, where he shared a room with Lee Corso; the two stayed friends for 64 years and last spoke 2 weeks before Reynolds died. In the 1954 season, at 18, he earned his first start at right halfback in FSU's first win of the year.

"He had a dream of playing in the NFL. He loved football." — Lee Corso

The dream ended in 1955, when he tore the cartilage in his right knee in preseason training. "I knew then I was finished as a football player," he later told the Palm Beach Post. A car accident 2 months later left him critically injured. He tried once more in 1957, as a backup halfback, and after the game against North Carolina State on 12 October he told his teammates he was done.

The Unknown Years

What took football's place began in an English class. In the spring of 1956, at Palm Beach Junior College, his English teacher Watson B. Duncan III heard him read Shakespeare aloud and cast him in the lead of the play he was directing, Sutton Vane's Outward Bound. The performance won Reynolds the 1956 Florida State Drama Award and a scholarship to the Hyde Park Playhouse in New York State, where Joanne Woodward helped him find an agent. In his memoir he called Duncan his mentor and the most influential person in his life, and in 1976 he gave him a cameo in Gator, the first film he directed.

Television guest roles followed, and on 13 September 1959 NBC's Riverboat premiered with Reynolds as Ben Frazer, the pilot at Darren McGavin's side and his first regular series role. Then came Gunsmoke: when Dennis Weaver wanted to leave the series, then one of the country's top-rated shows, in 1962, the producers created the blacksmith Quint Asper and chose Reynolds over 300 other actors. He played the part until 1965 and later called those years "the happiest period of my life". In 1963 he married the English actress Judy Carne; the marriage ended in 1965.

Dan August (1970–71) earned him his first Golden Globe nomination, but what finally opened the door was a talk show. Reynolds proved a quick, self-mocking guest with Merv Griffin and Johnny Carson. "The best thing that ever happened to me," he said. It was a talk-show appearance that persuaded the director John Boorman to cast him in Deliverance.

The Breakthrough

Deliverance opened on 30 July 1972: 4 men from Atlanta on a canoe trip down a wild river that is about to be dammed, and Reynolds, as Lewis Medlock, did the fall over the waterfall himself. Made for 2 million dollars, the film earned more than 46 million, was the year's 4th-highest-grossing film in the United States and was nominated for 3 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. "I've waited 15 years to do a really good movie," he told the New York Times, and he called it the best film he was ever in. In Germany it opened on 10 October as Beim Sterben ist jeder der Erste.

At 36, after 13 years of television, he was a movie star. His most profitable ground lay in car-chase pictures set in the South: White Lightning (1973), then Robert Aldrich's football comedy The Longest Yard (1974), which brought him another Golden Globe nomination. From 1973 to 1984 he was never out of the exhibitors' annual top ten.

The Biggest Star in the World

Hal Needham, a stuntman who had doubled for Reynolds since they met on Riverboat, had written a screenplay, and Reynolds gave him the chance to direct it. Smokey and the Bandit premiered on 19 May 1977: the Bandit has 28 hours to run 400 cases of Coors beer from Texarkana to Atlanta in a black Pontiac Trans Am, with Sally Field, Jackie Gleason and Jerry Reed. Made for 4.3 million dollars, it took 126.7 million in North America. In the United States in 1977 only Star Wars did better, with Harrison Ford in the part Reynolds had passed on.

The years that followed brought Hooper (1978), Smokey and the Bandit II (1980) and The Cannonball Run (1981), with Reynolds as J.J. McClure heading an all-star cast. In The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) he played Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd opposite Dolly Parton, and the film finished among the 10 biggest hits of the year.

Every year the Quigley poll asked America's cinema owners which stars had brought in the most money. Reynolds came first in 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981 and 1982. Only Bing Crosby, from 1944 to 1948, had held the top spot 5 years in a row before him.

In Jupiter, Florida, he founded, built and ran the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre, which opened in 1979, and under the same roof the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training, where more than 100 apprentices learned from visiting stars and from Reynolds himself. He once told Johnny Carson he would rather have played in the NFL than win an Oscar.

The Bandit in Germany

German audiences met him under a name of their own. Smokey and the Bandit opened in West German cinemas on 10 February 1978 as Ein ausgekochtes Schlitzohr, and the title stuck to the man. The Cannonball Run, released on 2 October 1981 as Auf dem Highway ist die Hölle los, drew 4,838,000 admissions, the 3rd most-attended film of 1981 in West Germany; in 1985 both Highway films received the Goldene Leinwand. Ein ausgekochtes Schlitzohr is still shown on German-language television to this day. In the German dubs of the Schlitzohr and Highway films he was voiced by Christian Brückner; his regular German voice was Norbert Langer.

The Man Who Said No

Reynolds also became known for the roles he turned down. In the early 1970s Albert R. Broccoli offered him James Bond after Sean Connery; he declined. "An American can't play James Bond," he said. "It just can't be done." He turned down Han Solo and admitted it only late in life: "I just didn't want to play that kind of role at the time," he told Business Insider in 2016. "Now I regret it."

The refusal he regretted most came with Terms of Endearment (1983). James L. Brooks had written the astronaut Garrett Breedlove for him, but Reynolds had given Hal Needham his word for Stroker Ace and kept it. Jack Nicholson took the part and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

"I regret that one most of all because it was a real acting part." — Burt Reynolds

The Late Yes

From the mid-1980s his film career stalled. Television brought him back. In Evening Shade (CBS, 1990–94) he played Wood Newton, a former Pittsburgh Steelers player, for 4 seasons; the role won him the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 1991 and a Golden Globe in 1992. In 1988 he had married the actress Loni Anderson, and that year the couple adopted a son, Quinton; the marriage ended in 1994.

Then came the script he kept refusing. Paul Thomas Anderson wanted him for Jack Horner in Boogie Nights. Reynolds said no 7 times; the picture "just wasn't my kind of film," he told Conan O'Brien in 2018. Asked an 8th time, he said yes, and Boogie Nights (1997) became his comeback. The performance won him a string of critics' prizes and the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, and on 10 February 1998, at 61, his first and only Oscar nomination.

Later Years and Farewell

He spent his later years in Florida and went on teaching at the acting institute that bore his name. His first autobiography, My Life, had appeared in 1994; in 2015, written with Jon Winokur, came But Enough About Me. That August he sat on stage at the Wizard World Comic Con in Chicago, talking with his audience.

How much the Oscar had meant, he admitted in the memoir with a joke at his own expense — the Heisman Trophy being the highest honour in college football.

"I once said that I'd rather have a Heisman Trophy than an Oscar. I lied." — Burt Reynolds, 2015

In May 2018, at 82, Quentin Tarantino cast him as George Spahn in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Reynolds came to the script reading with the cast. "I'm officially the last role he played," Tarantino said later, "because he came to the script reading." The last evening of his life he spent running lines with his assistant. Burt Reynolds died on 6 September 2018 in Jupiter, Florida, at the age of 82. Tarantino called it "sad and beautiful at the same time". "He was definitely happy."

Dolly Parton wrote that same day:

"You will always be my favorite sheriff, rest in peace my little buddy. I will always love you, Dolly."

In Germany the dpa report of 7 September 2018 put the title before his name: "'Ein ausgekochtes Schlitzohr': US actor Burt Reynolds has died." Florida State's players wore a helmet decal 2 days after his death: "BAN ONE", the Bandit's licence plate. Loni Anderson and Quinton held a private memorial service in North Palm Beach on 20 September 2018. On 11 February 2021, which would have been his 85th birthday, he was laid to rest at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, beside a palm tree and close to the water, a spot chosen in memory of his Florida. A bronze bust unveiled at the grave on 20 September 2021 shows him with his moustache and the cowboy hat from Smokey and the Bandit.

Legacy

What remains is more than a run of hits: Deliverance, preserved in the National Film Registry since 2008; the Bandit, the black Trans Am and a comedy only Star Wars could beat; an Emmy, 2 Golden Globes and the Oscar nomination that came, at 61, for the role he had said no to 7 times; and a school in Florida where more than 100 young actors trained. He stayed close to his audience into old age: in October 2014 he visited Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi and signed a film poster there.

• 1978: star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
• 1978–1982: number 1 in the Quigley "Top Ten Money Making Stars" poll 5 years in a row
• 1981: honorary doctorate from Florida State University
• 1991: Primetime Emmy, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series (Evening Shade)
• 1992: Golden Globe, Best Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy (Evening Shade)
• 1998: Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and Academy Award nomination (Boogie Nights)
• 2015: Richard "Diamond" Farnsworth Award of the Stuntmen's Association of Motion Pictures
• Florida Artists Hall of Fame

Jupiter keeps his name in Burt Reynolds Park, and his niece Nancy Lee Hess told his story in the 2020 documentary I Am Burt Reynolds. Lee Corso said it most simply: he became the world's biggest movie star and never forgot his old teammates. The boy his friends called Buddy said no to James Bond and Han Solo and yes, at last, to the part that mattered, and he could laugh about both.