The Klansman (also known as Burning Cross) is a 1974 American drama film based on the 1967 novel of the same name by William Bradford Huie. It was directed by Terence Young and starred Lee Marvin, Richard Burton, Cameron Mitchell, Lola Falana, Luciana Paluzzi, David Huddleston, Linda Evans and O. J. Simpson in his feature film debut.
Film rights were bought by a black film producer, William D. Alexander, who formed a company, The Movie People, to make the film said he put the film together. The first draft of the script was done by Fuller, and it was rewritten by Millard Kaufman. Schiffrin says Kaufman "distorted" much of what the former wrote. "I wanted Fuller", he said.
Alexander obtained a $1 million guarantee from Paramount. The rest was raised from various banks and tax shelters in the US and Europe.
Filming took place in Oroville, California, "It's enchanting here", Burton told the press during filming. "It reminds me of my old valley in Wales." Burton later said that he could not remember making the film. Simpson said "There would be times when he couldn't move." Marvin was also a heavy drinker at this time, to the point where Burton claimed in a 1977 interview that when the two men ran into each other at a party years later neither could remember working together. At the time of the film, Burton was suffering from depression and sciatica, both debilitating conditions. He later credited Marvin with saving his life. "I wouldn't have survived without Marvin," he told the actor and writer Michael Munn. Lee Marvin saw that Burton "was drinking not for pleasure of it but because he had a great need, and I doubt he knew what that was himself. Maybe it was for Elizabeth. But whatever it was, he was in pain, and he drank to kill that pain. I used to do it too."
Burton gave a young woman in town, Kim Dinucci, a $450 diamond ring and arranged for her to get a small walk-on part in the film as Bascomb (Marvin)'s daughter. This made national news.
During Breck Stancill (Burton)'s death scene, he was lying on the set when the director Young said that the make-up artist had prepared him well for the scene, only for the artist to remark that he had not done anything. Young brought a doctor in to examine him when it was determined that he was dying. He was rushed to St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica with a temperature of and both kidneys on the point of collapse. He was suffering from influenza and tracheo-bronchitis. He would remain in the hospital for six weeks. Burton went to the hospital after filming and was treated for bronchitis. While he was staying there it was announced Burton and Taylor would be getting divorced.
Walter Schiffrin later said Burton should not have been paid "at all considering the performance he gave. He was... drinking three quarts a day. He didn't know what town he was in, let alone what film" (3 US quarts is about 2.8 liters). Schiffrin says that, in contrast, Marvin "was highly helpful throughout the shooting".
While the film was being edited at Samuel Goldwyn Studio, the building caught fire.
At the last minute, one of the investors failed to come up with the money so Marvin and Burton were not paid their full salary and Paramount put a lien on the film. Arthur D. Murphy of Variety declared it "a perfect example of screen trash that almost invites derision ... There's not a shred of quality, dignity, relevance or impact in this yahoo-oriented bunk". Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one star out of four and called it "a tawdry rip-off of a half-dozen films: In the Heat of the Night, The Liberation of L.B. Jones, tick ... tick ... tick ... what's amazing about this drivel is that Lee Marvin and Richard Burton lent their talents to it. They must have been offered a very sweet deal, because The Klansman is pure demagogery". Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times slammed the film as "one of those sleazy, exploitative, incompetent pieces of motion picture waste which makes you suddenly unsure that film reviewing is a fit occupation for a grown man ... If any frame of the film carried a convincing sense of the real tensions, fears, hatreds and tempers of the rural American South you might be able to forgive some of the rest. But the acting is so amateurish in the lesser roles as to be comical and the dialogue in the major roles is unplayable." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it "the sort of film that raises only academic questions. Could the original source, a novel by William Bradford Huie, have been as terrible as the movie? Probably not, but it must have given the screenwriters, Millard Kaufman and Sam Fuller, a few ugly situations to kick around, like a castration and a pair of interracial rapes and a shootout with the Ku Klux Klan, and they've proceeded to kick them around like champion Hollywood hacks, leaning hard on the exploitation elements and reducing characterization and social analysis, if there were any, to a bare minimum".
Alexander, Young and Burton were meant to make a film with Robert Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling called Jackpot but it was never finished.