Burt Reynolds was appealing primarily because one always knew what to expect from him: sex appeal, charm, humor, and a manly warmth that permeated every part he played.

Burt Reynolds in a promo photo for “Smokey and the Bandit.”

By Peg Aloi

Born in 1936, Burt Reynolds started his acting career in the late ’50s and quickly amassed a long list of television roles, including a recurring role on the popular Gunsmoke, and titular characters in two shows featuring detectives: Hawk (1966) and Dan August (1970-’71). Then 1972 brought what most critics consider his breakout role (despite his having worked steadily for the decade and a half prior) in English director John Boorman’s Deliverance. The film portrays the traumatic experience of four men with vastly different temperaments, friends who go on a wilderness excursion with terrifying and tragic results. John Voight, Ronny Cox, and Ned Beatty all give powerful performances, but it was Reynolds and his swaggering masculine presence that lends sharp irony to the group’s transformation into hapless victims.

That same year, Reynolds had a small cameo in the popular Woody Allen comedy Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). He is one of several crew members manning what looks like a space ship that is a sort of command center for sperm about to enter a uterus during sex (one of a number of fantastical segments that make up the film, which is based on the popular nonfiction book of the time). Casting Reynolds in the role, a cheeky nod to his sex symbol status, marked the upward trajectory of a high profile career that flourished in the ’70s. Also in 1972 came a career milestone — much celebrated and criticized at the time. He posed nearly nude for a “centerfold” in Cosmopolitan magazine, a strong statement on female desire and pleasure during a time when women’s equality was still a nascent concept. The iconic moustache, the dark hair that seemed to cover him artfully from head to toe, the strong but trim body, was part of a virility that was softened by a winning smile that had just a hint of self-deprecating smirk. That photo, and Reynolds’ smoldering sex appeal, were fondly remembered yet again this week, after the actor died at the age of 82 from cardiac arrest

The remainder of the ’70s saw Reynolds taking on some of his most famous roles: in westerns, crime thrillers, sports dramas, and capers that generally give him room to develop his familiar, lovable persona; part good old boy, part Southern charmer, and part Hollywood hunk. These movies include The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, W. W. and the Dixie Dance Kings, The Longest Yard, Hustle, Gator, and the popular CB radio action flick Smoky and the Bandit. I recall seeing him in a strange but oddly appealing musical by Peter Bogdanovich when I was a teenager: 1975’s At Long Last Love, which also starred Cybill Shepherd, Madeline Kahn, Duilio Del Prete, and Eileen Brennan. Neither Reynolds nor his co-star Shepherd sang very well, but it didn’t seem to matter: the two had star power to spare and the spectacle of them singing and dancing to Cole Porter songs in dapper white suits and gowns was delightful.

Burt Reynolds in “Boogie Nights” Photo: New Line/REX/Shutterstock.

1977’s wildly popular Smoky and the Bandit (co-starring ’70s darling Sally Field) was followed by a much less successful sequel in 1980; immediately afterward Reynolds revived his Dan August character for three TV movies. This may have seemed like a career death knell, but some more hits followed for Reynolds, like The Cannonball Run, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and Hooper. He tired his hand at directing a number of times, with Sharky’s Machine and in the ’90s the TV series Evening Shade, which lasted for four seasons. Reynolds’ oeuvre was solidly established by then: funny, sexy, masculine roles in which he was in charge, whether he was enforcing the law or on the wrong side of it. He didn’t appear in any of the non-mainstream works of the ’70s, apart from Deliverance, but he never seemed to lack offers for juicy roles.

The ’80s and the ’90s continued to be a fairly busy time for Reynolds: there were more sequels, a memorable cameo on The Golden Girls, and another short-lived titular series (B.L. Stryker) that he also did some directing work on. He started doing more voice work, and landed a number of parts where he merely played himself (the sure sign of a Hollywood legend, no?). Not a year went by that Reynolds didn’t have several television and film roles. But it was his lead in the film Boogie Nights, as porn producer and director Jack Horner, that many critics saw as a comeback for a star who had really never gone away. A quintessential silver fox, still fit, and still sexy as hell (his partner was a porn actress played by the stunning Julianne Moore), Reynolds played the character as an artist who loved and appreciated women, whose porn films were as sleek, sophisticated, and sexy as their creator. Watching Horner react to the industry’s transformations over the years, seeing the crushing disappointment when his experimental live sex excursions didn’t turn out to be the artful stories he’d envisioned, made us realize that our own relationship to sex on screen had changed as well. What Reynolds once represented was not only no longer tangible — in truth, it was no longer appreciated. It was not his appeal or vitality that had lessened, but the culture’s capacity to value it. The film offers astute, if not always subtle, commentary on a number of the era’s touchstones. Reynolds shines as a benevolent patriarch who endures it all and rolls with the punches.

The actor continued working every year up until his death, doing several TV series, many films, and some small but fun voice roles on popular animated shows like King of the Hill, American Dad, and Archer. His last film, a Canadian comedy called Defining Moments, was finished in 2018. In researching this piece, I found that Reynolds had 186 acting credits to his name. This is a rich and varied legacy, to be sure, but for me Reynolds was appealing primarily because one always knew what to expect from him: sex appeal, charm, humor, and a manly warmth that permeated every part he played.

Peg Aloi is a former film critic for The Boston Phoenix. She taught film and TV studies for ten years at Emerson College. Her reviews also appear regularly online for The Orlando Weekly, Crooked Marquee, and Diabolique. Her long-running media blog “The Witching Hour” can be found at at themediawitch.com.