Burt Reynolds, the Florida State football player turned actor and self-deprecating matinee idol whose second act included a late-career Oscar nomination and an ongoing role as a mentor to two generations of Palm Beach County theater students, died Thursday at Jupiter Medical Center. He was 82.
Emotions in the South Florida theater community were raw in the hours after Reynolds’ death was announced.
Andrew Kato, producing artistic director at the Maltz Jupiter Theater, worked his way through high school and college in the same building more than three decades ago when it was known as the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater. Kato said Reynolds’ legacy can be found in hundreds of students he touched over the years.
“Burt was about giving opportunities to people. Burt would want to be remembered … I’m sorry,” Kato said, stifling tears. “He would want to be remembered as a teacher rather than the superstar that he was.”
Reynolds’ passing prompted a wave of appreciation from stars across the entertainment spectrum as well as local friends and colleagues in the film and theater business.
“There are times in your life that are so indelible, they never fade away,” Sally Field, his onetime girlfriend and “Smokey and the Bandit” co-star, said in a statement. “They stay alive, even 40 years later. My years with Burt never leave my mind. He will be in my history and my heart, for as long as I live. Rest, Buddy.”
A Palm Beach High School graduate whose father was the police chief in Riviera Beach, Reynolds began his acting career on the stage in New York before a breakout TV role on “Gunsmoke.”
His rugged good looks — famously exposed in a 1972 Cosmopolitan magazine centerfold — and the disarming sense of humor that made him one of Johnny Carson’s favorite “Tonight Show” guests turned Reynolds into a pop-culture icon.
Leading-man roles in “The Longest Yard,” “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Semi-Tough” made Reynolds a star, and he was the No. 1 box office draw in the five years that followed, 1978 to 1982, a period of uneven movies such as “Hooper,” “Starting Over,” “The End,” “Sharky’s Machine” and “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”
But it was his work in ensemble casts that Reynolds was most proud of, including his role as Lewis Medlock in John Boorman’s harrowing 1972 thriller “Deliverance.” He got high marks for his turn in the filmed-in-South-Florida romp “Striptease,” and Reynolds was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar in the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed 1997 drama “Boogie Nights.”
It was a career that encouraged the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival to give Reynolds two lifetime achievement awards, including the salute at last year’s festival, where he appeared with the film “Dog Years.”
In an interview before his red-carpet arrival at FLIFF in 2017, Reynolds said that he hoped his melancholy role in “Dog Years,” a bittersweet comedy about an actor in the twilight of his career, would encourage reassessment of his acting skills.
“I think it’s certainly changing, yes. I’m happy it is,” he said. “Before they throw dirt in my face, I hope they say that the guy’s got some chops, and he can act.”
It was at the peak of his “Smokey and the Bandit” fame 40 years ago that Reynolds began making an indelible mark on South Florida, bringing celebrity friends to the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater beginning in 1979, then the popular Burt & Jack’s Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale and the Burt Reynolds Institute for Film and Theatre in North Palm Beach.
“It is such a sad day for all of us, and we’re having a hard time wrapping our minds around it all,” said Donna Carbone, managing director at the Burt Reynolds Institute. “We are in pain.”
Longtime South Florida theater producer Jan McArt had known Reynolds since the two began working to establish top-notch professional theater in Palm Beach County 40 years ago, calling him “a terrific actor” who loved the theater and teaching future actors and directors.
“We’ve lost a real advocate,” said McArt, director of Theatre Arts Program Development at Lynn University in Boca Raton. “He just opened up the whole area, starting with the theater in Jupiter. Palm Beach County owes Burt Reynolds a lot.”
“Without question an era has ended,” Reynolds’ restaurant partner Jack Jackson said. “Burt was at the tail end of the movie star system in Hollywood. He was kind of a rebel. Once he gained power and influence, he tried to use it to help his beloved home state of Florida. He tried to get every movie he did made here.”
“I’ve been kind of reminiscing the last hour [since hearing of Reynolds’ passing], thinking about all the good times and how my life would be different if I had never met him,” Jackson said. “Before Burt & Jack’s opened, I was known within my little circle, but since 1984, I’ve been known as Burt Reynolds’ partner. It opened a lot of doors for me.”
Jackson has fond memories of traveling with Reynolds to Florida State football games, where Jackson’s daughter was a student.
“We used to fly up to games on a private jet, get an escort from the airport, get whisked to the stadium and then straight up to [head coach] Bobby Bowden’s office,” Jackson recalled. “Burt and Bobby would just shoot the breeze, talk and talk, and then there’d be a knock on the door. One of Bowden’s assistants: ‘Hey, Bobby — the game is about to begin.’ ”
Jackson said the restaurant partnership came about when Reynolds was in Fort Lauderdale filming the movie “Stick” (an adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel) and Reynolds’ helicopter flew over the spit of land with a shuttered restaurant at Port Everglades that Jackson was developing. Reynolds loved the property and got in touch with Jackson through a mutual friend. They met at Reynolds’ home in Jupiter. “He said, ‘I don’t know if you’re interested in having a partner, but if you are I’d like to be it,’ ” Jackson remembered.
He said Reynolds had 30 of his Hollywood friends fly in for the opening night (May 19, 1984) on the Caesars Palace private jet, but the actor’s local guest list for the opening was small, “just two or three people.” Among them: young Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino (who brought a date named Claire, the first date for a couple that would go on to wed) and H. Wayne Huizenga.
Burt got felled by a kidney-stone attack that evening and did not make it to the opening, staying at his Pier 66 hotel room with future wife Loni Anderson. “Everyone was crushed that Burt didn’t make it, but Ricardo Montalban did his best ‘Corinthian leather’ bit and had everyone in stitches.”
Over the next 18 years, until the restaurant closed in 2002 after Port security stiffened and revenue dwindled following the 9/11 attacks, Reynolds was a steady presence at the restaurant with celebrity friends.
Jackson said he and Reynolds were “Christmas card friends” in later years, rarely seeing each other. But they “had a real nice time catching up” during their final visit last year, when Reynolds came to the Fort Lauderdale film festival to get an award.
“He told me that no matter where he traveled in the world people would come up to him and say how much they loved Burt & Jack’s. Burt was a movie star and known for his movies,” Jackson said, “but it never ceased to amaze him how many people had been to the restaurant.”
Staff writers Michael Mayo and Tonya Alanez contributed to this story.
.ss-blurb-fblike{
padding-left:10px;
}
.ss-blurb-fblike-heading {
font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;
font-weight: bold;
}
Like us on Facebook
(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.10&appId=422247564509322”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
