Good Morning, Gratuitous Burt Reynolds

When we posted that awesome old magazine cover with Burt Reynolds on it last week we should have checked to see if his birthday was coming up so something proper could've been done -- alas, disorganization is my middle name. (It's spelled like "Andrew" but it's pronounced like "Disorganization.") Because here we are and Burt is turning 80 today! He was in the news some last fall since he put out his autobiography But Enough About Me -- did anybody read it? Any good gossip? Did he cornhole Jerry Reed in an outhouse on the set of Smokey and the Bandit II or what?

That clip is from a 1968 TV movie called Fade-In (aka Iron Cowboy, which is a much better title), which IMDB says is about "a sophisticated Hollywood film editor, on location for a film she is working on, [who] falls for a local cowboy who is hired to work on the film."You can just hear the sneer in the way they say "sophisticated" -- Burt Reynolds built a career on sneering at that word. But it was fun, sometimes! And sexy sometimes, too.

That's a delightful poster. I would so hang that on my wall. Anyway we've done several gratuitous post for Burt before -- click here for one, click here for another -- but we managed this morning to dig up a few new pictures. (Is two dozen a few?) So hit the jump and luxuriate in Burt...