Burt Lancaster could hardly advise Sydney Pollack to go into directing on the set of The Scalphunters; Pollack was directing the film (it's a great semi-funny, semi-serious western). In point of fact, Pollack started directing television in the early 60's and made his feature-film debut with 1965's The Slender Thread. Lancaster first met Pollack on the set of John Frankenheimer's 1961 film The Young Savages, where he was working as an acting coach with the younger actors in the cast. As director, Pollack worked again with Lancaster on the John Cheever adaptation The Swimmer (uncredited; the official director was Frank Perry) and Castle Keep, an extremely odd little war drama.

Yes, the "Scalphunters" gaffe was unfortunate, but on the whole, this is a far better remembrance than that other thing -- a reprint of an attack on Pollack.

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I did not know your insightful trivia, so I'll see you, if not raise you:

In the early 60's, famous director Alfred Hitchcock took to picking new young actresses or models and putting them on personal contract for use in movies or, more likely, on his TV show.

Three were most notable:

Tippi Hedren, who ended up in two Hitchcock movies ("The Birds" and "Marnie")

Joanna Moore, who was briefly married to Ryan O'Neal and the mother of Tatum,

and Claire Griswold, who did a Hitchcock TV show or two, auditioned for "Marnie," and...

...ultimately married a young director of "Alfred Hitchcock Hour" episodes named: Sydney Pollack.

She retired soon thereafter from acting. I do believe that Sydney and Claire remained married until his death this week.

I remember reading about Ms. Griswold being under contract briefly to Alfred Hitchcock, I didn't know that she married Sydney Pollack (thanks for your insightful trivia).

I agree, though, that it was nice to see a favorable article about Pollack. Even if he only directed Tootsie, I'd consider him a really good director (that is, flat out, one of the funniest movies I've ever seen). Even better, as Ms. Stevens noted, he made good movies out of bad scripts (let's be honest, even if you adore Streisand and Redford--I don't, personally--the script for The Way We Were is gooey and annoying beyond belief--this was not Arthur Laurents' finest hour). He even took the mess that was the screenplay for The Shoot Horses, Don't They and made a reasonably coherent film of it (and led Jane Fonda to a truly extraordinary performance--and Michael Sarazin, Gig Young, and Red Buttons were nothing to sneeze at, either).