Burt Reynolds - A Football Life
September 6th will mark the three year anniversary of Burt Reynolds’ death. In the aftermath of his passing, much was made about Burt’s career as an actor and as a sex symbol, a vintage mid century man that personified a Hollywood that no longer exists. He was both an action and comedy star with a devil may care attitude and a capable dramatic actor that never attached his profession or his performances with any cultural significance.
Pauline Kael, famed film critic for New Yorker magazine, once wrote about the actor’s style and persona in 1974:
"He had been acting in theater and on television since the late fifties and had appeared in a dozen movies without creating much of a stir but when, in 1971, he began to appear on talk shows, other guests laughed nervously at hearing behind-the-scenes smart talk in public. But the TV audience enjoyed the dropping of barriers, and Reynolds was on his way. He showed an amazingly fast put-down wit, but he also showed something else, which the TV public was probably ready for: he made a joke of his profession. He came on as a man who had no higher values than the buck and the pleasures of the flesh—exactly what people in the audience had always believed stardom was about. His message was that stars are just bums, and that he himself was an honest, funny, bum—too smart and gamy to give much of a damn about anything except having a good time, and too cocky to lie about it. His message was that he was having a ball being a stud celebrity. The belief is now widespread that the price of success is the loss of privacy, and that the successful person who fights this isn't playing fair. And there's a concurrent belief, almost as widely held, probably, that those rich, lucky people who have become stars—whether of sports, politics, entertainment, or anything else—are out for themselves. Reynolds not only accepted those terms but carried them further. His fun-loving "frankness" seemed the show-business truth, and when he was around, any earnestness looked a solemn fraud. His charm is that of a cheap crook who ingratiates himself by saying, "Look, we're all cheap crooks—why lie about it?"
The “stud celebrity” image that Kael writes to describe Reynolds was perfectly suitable for the changing times, as his stardom in many respects ushered in a new brand of cool to Hollywood movies. The masculine archetype found in the clean shaven, morally incorruptible men like Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper dressed in fedoras and three piece suits in post war Hollywood was later reimagined as self interested men that had nonchalant personalities and long, shaggy hair to compliment their beards and mustaches. In an age when television had found its way into nearly every America household and when Hollywood movies told bold, ambiguous stories that cared not primarily about messaging and ideology, but rather spectacle and aesthetics, Burt Reynolds was the macho man of his era, shooting, fighting and womanizing his way to becoming box office magic, while also living the star driven life that blurred the line between him and his characters.
But acting was not always on the mind of Reynolds. In fact, he never had much appreciation for the arts growing up, rather focusing on finding belonging in his junior high days in Riviera Beach, Florida through his athleticism.
Having initially been ridiculed and excluded by his peers, Reynolds became a popular student when he won a footrace against the fastest athlete at the school, Vernon “Flash” Rollins. His achievement won him the attention of a fellow classmate and football player, Richard Dalton “Peanut” Howser, who suggested that he’d join the football team. Reynolds accepted the invitation, and though he had no idea how to put his pads on correctly, or knew if the numbers on his jersey were supposed be on the front or back, he exhibited great confidence in his ability to learn the game quickly, studying other players and having “chalk talks” with his teammates to get his bearings down. He wore number 22 in honor of Detroit Lions quarterback Bobby Lane, a man that Burt said, “was a rebel, and I wanted to be just like him,” and earned the nickname, “Buddy.”
His career at Palm Beach High earned him First Team All State and All Southern Honorable Mention honors. During the recruiting process, he received interest from a variety of Division I coaches, most notably University of Alabama head coach Bear Bryant. Though he dreamed of playing for the University of Miami, Burt would join his teammate Peanut Howser at Florida State University, where head coach Tom Nuget, credited as the possible originator of the I Formation, sold Burt on the school by telling him the girl to guy ratio at FSU was 7 to 1.
Reynolds started three games at halfback his freshman season, a year in which FSU would face nationally respected opponents like the Alabama Crimson Tide and the University of Georgia Bulldogs. Going into his sophomore year, he was named the starting left halfback and performed well in the opening game, but suffered a knee injury on the first play of the second game, forcing him to undergo a knee operation that sidelined him for the remainder of the season. Matters would only get worse for Burt when he got into a car accident that injured his other knee and forced him to undergo surgery to remove his spleen. Nuget offered to keep Reynolds on his scholarship if he worked as a team manager, but Burt quickly discovered it wasn’t for him, and eventually dropped out of FSU.
“I’ve often wondered what kind of four years I would have had at FSU if I hadn’t been injured,” Burt said. “I’ll never know, of course, but I think I could’ve made it to the NFL. I had the speed and the moves, and there were things I did that a lot of running backs have no stomach for. I loved to run over people and I actually enjoyed blocking because I love knocking guys in their ass. After that, I almost certainly would have been a coach.”
Though Burt’s dreams of playing professional football were shattered, he found a new calling while attending Palm Beach Junior College when English professor and theatre director, Watson B. Duncan III, encouraged him to audition for the school play. Burt got the leading role, and won accolades for his performance, inspiring him to pursue acting as a career.
Throughout the remainder of the 1950s, Burt continued acting on stage before getting roles on various crime, western and anthology television shows, most notably Riverboat, Zane Grey Theater and M Squad. His big break through came in 1962 as a recurring villain in the hit series, Gunsmoke, which opened doors for him to appear in studio films. Though still relatively unknown in the film world, Reynolds continued to find consistent work in many action and westerns films, along with various short lived television shows as the leading man.
But as mentioned earlier, Burt’s persona was created in the realm of late night television, where his energy, confidence and charm gave directors a look at how much of a presence he really was. John Boorman was the first to recognize this, and sent him a script the movie that would give him his breakthrough role; Deliverance. The box office success of this 1972 thriller cemented him as a star, and more attractive scripts were his to turn down.
One such script was the iconic football film, The Longest Yard. Directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Burt Reynolds in the leading role, the film follows the prison sentence of Paul Crewe, a one time great professional quarterback arrested for drunken driving, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest, who ends up forming a team of convicts to play a football game against a team of prison guards. The film equally achieved success for Aldrich’s ability to create a mainstream studio movie (and a movie out of his typical genre) that maintained his themes and conventions, and for Burt Reynolds to showcase his debonair style of acting that made for a fun movie for both football and film fans alike.
Burt’s next football film came in 1977, an adaptation of Dan Jenkins’ novel, Semi-Tough, a comedy about two pro football players in Miami, Florida who room with the owner’s daughter, stirring up a love triangle that could put a crack in their friendship. Though the film is, at best, a middle of the road star driven buddy comedy that gets bogged down by filler scenes and sudden introspective character development half way through the movie, it’s still a prime example of Reynolds’ trademark quality as a movie star; a quick witted, uncomplicated leading man with a propensity for narcissism, while also being able to go with the flow to take the attention off himself.
These two movies would be Burt’s only films for him to be the football player he always believed he could be. At a time in the 1980s when his career as a leading man had fizzled out, Burt returned to television in the sitcom Evening Shade that follows a former Pittsburgh Steeler turned high school football coach in his home state of Arkansas. After a career resurgence following the 1997 film, Boogie Nights, Reynolds found plenty of work as both a leading man and as a character actor, and was a supporting actor in the 2005 remake of The Longest Yard.
Prior to Reynolds returning to on-screen prominence, however, he was also a minority partner in the United States Football League franchise, the Tampa Bay Bandits, named after the popular Reynold’s film, Smokey and the Bandit. The Bandits, led by former Florida Gator head coach Steve Spurrier, was one of the most electrifying teams in the league, using a wide open attack that was just as much unpredictable as it was unorthodox at the time. Furthermore , the Bandits were giving the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers a run for their money in the publicity battle, primarily because of Reynold’s celebrity status.
When speaking with author Dennis Crawford, Bandits marketing executive Jim McVay said of Reynolds:
Burt Reynolds back then was more popular than Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt and George Clooney combined. He was by far number one at the box office with the Smokey and the Bandit stuff. This guy was huge and he was a football guy and a Florida guy. He would fly in loads of people: Ernest Borgnine, Ester Williams, Robby Benson, John Candy, Loni Anderson, Robert Urich, Charles Nelson Reilly and Dom DeLuise. People used to stand in front of the owner’s box and just watch all the people come through. Those guys really created a buzz.
Following the demise of the United States Football League after the internal yet heavily publicized bout between Bandits majority owner Jon Bassett and New Jersey Generals owner Donald Trump, Reynolds continued to show his passion for football and, specifically, FSU. Being one of the primary boosters for the Florida State Seminoles football program, Reynolds never failed to demonstrate his support for the Garnet and Gold. Rob Willson, Associate Athletic Director of Communications for FSU, wrote in an article written after Reynolds’ passing about the actor’s fandom:
Reynolds became a television and movie sensation just as Florida State’s budding athletics program needed a boost on the national stage. He hung FSU pennants on the sets of his movies and constantly sung the praises of the Seminoles.
He put his arm around Bobby Bowden like he never wanted to let go, and palled around with then FSU President Bernie Sliger.
After watching FSU’s fantastic 1979 and ‘80 football teams play Oklahoma in back-to-back Orange Bowls, Reynolds decided that the Seminoles’ uniforms weren’t flashy enough for television.
He went to a costume designer friend in Hollywood, and together they designed all gold pants and tweaks to the game jersey. He then had entire uniforms made for the whole team and shipped them, unannounced, to Tallahassee. The crates arrived at the football locker room with a note addressed to Bobby Bowden from Burt that read…”If you like ‘em, wear ‘em.” And FSU did.
Gestures like this were just some of the ways Reynolds’ displayed his lifelong passion for football and for his Florida State Seminoles. And though he never accomplished his original goal of playing in the pros, his life, career and legacy truly was as exciting as any touchdown he would’ve scored in the big times.