Editing Burt Lancaster (section)

===Marriages and relationships===
Lancaster guarded his personal life and attempted to keep it private despite his stardom. He was married three times and had five children.

His first marriage was to June Ernst, a [[trapeze]] acrobat. Ernst was the daughter of a renowned female aerialist and an accomplished acrobat herself. After they were married, he performed with her family and her until their separation in the late 1930s. When they divorced is unclear. Contemporary reports listed 1940, but subsequent biographers have suggested dates as late as 1946, delaying his marriage to his second wife.<ref name="auto">Buford 2008.</ref>

He met second wife Norma Anderson (1917–1988) when the stenographer substituted for an ill actress in a USO production for the troops in Italy. Reportedly, on seeing Lancaster in the crowd on her way to town from the airport, she turned to an officer and asked, "Who is that good-looking officer and is he married?" The officer set up a blind date between the two for that evening.<ref name="auto"/> They married in 1946. Norma was active in political causes with an entire room in their Bel Air home devoted to her major interest, the League of Woman Voters, crammed with printing presses and all the necessary supplies for mass mailings.<ref name="auto"/>

She was a life-long member of the [[NAACP]]. The couple held a fundraiser for [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] and the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]] ahead of the 1963 [[March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom|March on Washington]].<ref>{{Cite book | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=3QDbDgAAQBAJ&q=nomra+lancaster+nAACP&pg=PT75 | title = Nothing but Love in God's Water: Volume 2: Black Sacred Music from Sit-Ins to Resurrection City | isbn = 978-0271080123 | last1 = Darden | first1 = Robert | date = 2016| publisher = Penn State Press }}</ref> All five of his children were with Anderson: [[Bill Lancaster|Bill]] (who became an actor and screenwriter), James, Susan, Joanna (who worked as a film producer), and Sighle (pronounced "Sheila"). It was a troubled marriage. The pair separated in 1966, and divorced in 1969.

In 1966, Lancaster began a long-term relationship with hairdresser Jackie Bone, who worked on ''[[The Professionals (1966 film)|The Professionals]]''. The relationship was tempestuous, with Bone once smashing a wine bottle over Lancaster's head at a dinner with [[Sydney Pollack]] and [[Peter Falk]]. Reportedly, they eventually split up after her religious conversion, which Lancaster believed he could not share with her.<ref name="auto"/>

His third marriage, to Susan Martin, lasted from September 1990 until his death in 1994.

According to biographer Kate Buford in ''[[Burt Lancaster: An American Life]]'', Lancaster was devotedly loyal to his friends and family. Old friends from his childhood remained his friends for life.<ref>{{cite book | first = Kate | last = Buford | title = Burt Lancaster: An American Life | publisher = Knopf | date = 2000 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=fTCFAAAAQBAJ | isbn = 978-0679446033}}{{page needed|date=October 2017}}</ref>

====Possible affairs====
Some media outlets and authors have written that Lancaster was bisexual, and had relationships with both men and women.<ref name="hiffmanbi">{{cite book |last1=Hoffmann |first1=Henryk |title=The Careers of Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas as Referenced in Literature: A Study in Film Perception |date=5 January 2021 |publisher=Vernon Press |isbn=978-1-64889-084-0 |page=20 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0n_7DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA20 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="bufordbi">{{cite book |last1=Buford |first1=Kate |title=Burt Lancaster: An American Life |date=8 July 2013 |publisher=Aurum |isbn=978-1-78131-200-1 |page=13 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HjrLAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT13 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="marin-bi">{{cite web |last1=Marin |first1=Rick |title=FILM; Burt Lancaster's Brawny Melancholy |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/07/movies/film-burt-lancaster-s-brawny-melancholy.html |website=The New York Times |access-date=8 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101115235758/https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/07/movies/film-burt-lancaster-s-brawny-melancholy.html |archive-date=15 November 2010 |date=7 May 2000 |url-status=live}}</ref> Friends said he claimed he was romantically involved with [[Deborah Kerr]] during the filming of ''From Here to Eternity'' in 1953.<ref>Buford 2008, pp. 127–30.</ref> However, Kerr stated that while there was a spark of attraction,<ref name="affairs">{{cite news |title=East Harlem's Burton Stephen "Burt" Lancaster |url=https://www.harlemworldmagazine.com/east-harlems-%EF%BB%BFburton-stephen-burt-lancaster/ |website=Harlem World Magazine |date=March 25, 2017 |access-date=October 26, 2022 |last1=Magazine |first1=Harlem World }}</ref> nothing ever happened. He reportedly had an affair with [[Joan Blondell]].<ref>{{cite book | title = Their Stars Shone Brightly | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=vU_3DAAAQBAJ&q=joan%20blondell | last = Goldbeck, MD | first = Larry O. | publisher = Xlibris | date = 2016 | isbn = 978-1524532154 | access-date = October 18, 2017}}</ref>

In her 1980 autobiography, [[Shelley Winters]] claimed to have had a two-year affair with him, during which time he was considering separation from his wife. In his Hollywood memoirs, friend [[Farley Granger]] recalled an incident when Lancaster and he had to come to Winters' rescue one evening when she had inadvertently overdosed on alcohol and sleeping pills.<ref>{{Cite book | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=tXCQxD6u584C&q=include+me+out+burt+lancaster&pg=PT156 | title = Include Me Out: My Life from Goldwyn to Broadway | isbn = 978-1429945448 | last1 = Granger | first1 = Farley | last2 = Calhoun | first2 = Robert | date = 2007| publisher = St. Martin's Publishing }}</ref> She broke up with him for "cheating on her with his wife" after she heard reports of his wife's third or fourth pregnancy.<ref>Winters 1980, p. 259.</ref>