The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  DECEMBER

  Sunday 1st, Plaza Athenee [Paris] I really must keep this diary up every day. It's hell to start up again once you've missed a few days.

  Gaston's youngest brother was killed yesterday in a road accident which completes a splendid ten days. This has been a terrible year so far. Our films have done less well than usual. There was my fracas with Tony Richardson over Laughter in the Dark.158 There was André's suicide. There was and is Ivor's paralysis. There was E's operation which she's still suffering the side effects from. There was her father's death last week. I shan't be sorry when those wild bells ring out the old and ring in the new.159 And there is a month to go!

  The week has been a mixed nightmare. It has taken us both until today to partially recover from the two murderous flights over the Poles. The flight going was long in time – it took about 12 hours – but it was smooth. The flight back was shorter, about ten hours, but the seat belts were on practically all the way. What frightening drunken bores those long flights are. I shall never do one again unless it's, as it was last weekend, a matter of life and death.

  We worked well enough last week and are either on or ahead of schedule so I'm told. Rex is a bit worrying latterly. He's become much less queer. In fact he's hardly queer at all – he's almost professor Higgins.160 However his natural lightness will probably carry him through.

  People have been very kind to Sara and Elizabeth about Francis's death. Hundreds of letters telegrams wreaths for the funeral and flowers for suite etc. (Francis received short but good obits in most of the papers.) A notable exception was Frank Sinatra. What a petulant little sod he is. Edie Goetz says that he was annoyed because E had called him on Mia's behalf!161 ‘Bleah,’ as Peanuts would say.162

  However, there was some good news even if it was only professional. It appears that Where Eagles Dare, a film I made earlier this year is a thrilling film and is likely to be a huge grosser. The few people who've seen it are enraptured. It's a Boy's Own Paper fantasy with a vengeance. I kill half the German Army.

  [...] My brother who had flown over as a representative of the family who had a whip-round for the purpose, was a tower of strength, fetching and carrying and doing a lot of the dirty work and occasionally having to hold me down.

  Ron Berkeley and Valerie too were enormously helpful, particularly the former. [...]

  The funeral was well managed though my gums ached to get hold of the Bible when the old lady whose teeth kept on dropping was reading from it. And the family behaved beautifully. E was dewy-eyed but in control. That old bastard of an Uncle Howard Young, who's been using and robbing Francis all his life was weeping worse than anybody163 He's 92 and perhaps could feel death's icy hands. He told me later over the funeral baked meats that he had $25,000,000. I hope you're going to leave it to the family, I said. ‘No,’ he explained, ‘You have made your name and Elizabeth hers but I will be forgotten unless I leave my money to an Institution with my name on it.’ ‘Good luck,’ I said with a smile like a death's head. Later Howard, of all people, said he felt sorry for the old robber, and in the car on the way home Eliz said the same thing. Now all these years I've been hearing what a mean monster this Howard Young is, so in my inimitable way I blew my top. Irastosably so. Every four-letter word in the book and some that aren't. I do, of course, choose my moments well to shout at my wife, like after her father's funeral. Ah well!

  [...] We had Thanksgiving Dinner on Thursday night given by E. It went very well it appears, but we left early, me taken out by the ear by E, as we were still living half on California time and half European. Niven was there, smooth urbane witty and nice. [...]

  Monday 2nd Yesterday I awoke fairly earlyish and mucked around with the diary. I showered and shaved and reheated yesterday's soup for breakfast. Over the weekend, having started and put it down after a few chapters I finished My Life by Osbert Sitwell.164 It is a fascinating account of the political idiocy that was going on in my childhood. And what a brilliant egomaniac it was who could so delude himself about the temper of the naturally conservative British that he could preach Pacifism as his creed on one hand and dress his followers in blackshirts and uniforms, himself included, on the other. The latter to the suspicious and uneducated masses was symbolic of the thing they dreaded most, militancy and war. To add to the fear that everyone in my childhood suffered from, the fool allowed himself to be seen with Mussolini on the balcony of the Piazza Venezia taking the fascist salute in a march-past of the ‘might’ of the pathetic Italian Army. He let it be known that he had had many interviews with Hitler. But the maniac, and there is no question about it that the man was a little touched, if he'd remained in the Labour Party and become very remotely its leader, if he'd preached the same Pacifism from the by now reasonably staid Labour Platform with no Nazi and Fascist salutes and no private black-shirted army to frighten the ordinary bloke into ridicule, he might quite easily have swept the Tories out of power in 1935. And everything might have been very different. Some of his condescension about my class, the class that I knew so well, is pathetic and a perfect example of the total lack of understanding of the aristocrat of the then-called working class. I think in the end that though he was capable of a dazzling turn of phrase, he was essentially humourless. And the humourless man is in deadly danger, more than any other, of deluding himself. Hitler (1889–1945) and Mussolini (1883–1945), especially the latter with his posturing and his violin, obviously didn't have a grain. And they both deluded themselves cosmically. [...]

  Tuesday 3rd, Paris This is an entry just for the sake of an entry. Yesterday was desperate. I began alright but suddenly a drunken maudlin Rachel Harrison appeared with a drunk but not maudlin Elizabeth Harris. They both looked battered and both had very cheap looking dyed blonde hair. They both looked like tarts. I fled from them to my room where I found Hebe Dorsey who stayed for four hours. Shortly afterwards Hugh French arrived and both of them plus Bob Wilson proceeded to get drunk. Bob asked me what I was going to do about Ron if I decided to holiday for the next six months. This in front of a journalist. Ron very quietly told him to shut up. During this time I was drinkless. How dumb and boring people are when they're drunk and you're sober. How dumb and boring I must have been for the greater part of my life. Finally in desperation I had a drink which only succeeded in making me cold and nasty. [...] I arrived home to find milady playing cards with Caroline. I sat down sullenly to read JBS – an autobiography, correction, biography of Haldane of those initials.165 Fascinating. [...] I felt nicely tired and went to bed about eleven o'clock. At midnight or a little later I was awoken by E who asked me if I wanted a sleeping pill! I nearly went mad. It turned out that I was talking in my sleep and she thought I was awake, but even so she knows I wouldn't take a sleeping pill anyway. Well after shouting at each other for a bit E went and made herself some soup while I continued to read Haldane. We turned out the lights about 2.30 or 3.00. This time I had difficulty in going to sleep but made it around 4.00 I would guess and slept like a log until 10.00. We made it up as, thank God, we invariably do and we cwched and cuddled.166

  Rex gave me a hard time during the scene. He, in the course of the scene, has to give me artificial respiration and slap my face to bring me round. He is however so uncoordinated that he was really belting me. Since, as usual we had to do it many times, I felt at the end of the day that my jaw was unhinged. [...]

  I have to see Joe Losey and John Heyman tomorrow about Man from Nowhere and I'm going to have to tell them that E is too ill for me to do the film. This will be a nasty blow. [...]

  Wednesday 4th, Studio Billancourt, Paris A relatively easy day saying goodbye to Rex as he leaves for his trial.167 No face-slapping, no artificial respiration and only a couple of lines or so. We are now rapidly coming to the end of the picture which with a bit of luck from the weather in England, we should finish ahead of schedule. [...]

  E cooked supper last night and then cut my hair for the Ball given by Guy and Marie-Hélène tonight at Ferrières. I s
aid we would go only if we could stay the night. Hopefully, I or we might be able to sneak upstairs in the middle of the festivities and tuck into bed with a warm book. Elizabeth has a magnificent frock made for her by Marc Bohan, glittering all over.168 She will be the belle I suppose as usual. If not I shall be furious. [...]

  I continued to read the book about Haldane. Extraordinary how he could be taken in by any ideology when he obviously possessed a mind of such brilliance and common sense. Even I as a child in the valleys knew there was something not quite right about Communism. Mind you, the inertia of the so-called democracies between the wars was likely to drive anybody bonkers. But I would have thought that pure science was above mere politics. He thought differently.

  [...] It seems that I shall have to fly to Washington to speak at a fund-raising dinner for the Kennedys and in memory of Bobby. I sort of wrote the speech in my head yesterday afternoon between shots and will put it down on paper the first chance I have. I'll base it all on Henry V I think and the idea of patriotism in its finest flower and the awful responsibilities of Kingship, and what after all is the office of President of the United States except the possession, even if only for a time of the most powerful Kingship that the world has ever known.

  ‘Upon the King let us our lives our debts our careful wives our children and our sins lay on the King. We must bear all.’ Etc.169

  Thursday 5th, Paris [...] It was not, in fact, a good idea to stay the night at Ferrières, because I found myself bidding everybody goodbye and I hope you had a nice time with all the desperation of a lost host. I thought that the Rothschilds had gone to bed, but I am assured by Elizabeth that they were simply in another room. Finally, at about 5 in the morning, having ushered everybody on his or her way to Paris, I managed to crawl my way to bed, wishing that the bed, with E in it, was crawling towards me. Anyway mutually we made it ensemble. I talked to so many people, endlessly, that I shall have to devote another issue to their confessions. Grace of Monaco and her husband, the Duchess of Windsor, Lady Caroline O'Connor, Rich man, Poor man, Beggar-man thief and Lili who has had a massive cerebral stroke, but who of course was not there but in hospital. We must go and see her tomorrow.

  Friday 6th Tonight we are entraining for Montreux and then Gstaad by car.170 I am very excited at the thought of going home and seeing the two girls in their various plays. I wonder if Mrs Trench will let them stay the night with us.171 Perhaps it's not a good idea as it might break school discipline.

  Guy and Marie Helene have very kindly asked us to stay with them over Xmas but as E and I agreed, there are too many of us – the four children Simmy and her boy-friend, Sara and Caroline. So we are going to suggest that we would be delighted just to come down for the lunch. That will save us the trouble of ordering Turkey and all its trimmings from the Hilton. Also it will be lovely to go for a stroll after lunch in the forest. I hope it snows.

  Among other people we met at the Rothschilds’ was the writer Romain Gary. He, recently divorced or separated from his actress wife, Jean Seberg, seemed rather sad.172 We are going to have dinner with him when [...] I get back from London. It's going to be very strange without Elizabeth. It will be the first time I've left her for several years. She has had to leave me a couple of times: when her father had his stroke and when Gaston's son was killed in Paris when we were in Dublin. Only death in effect has kept us apart. I went to Geneva because of the suicide of my gardener and left her in a hospital in London. But apart from those few occasions we are constantly together. Fortunately I shall have the boys with me on Wednesday I think and they will stay with me until I return to my baby.

  At the Rothschilds’ La Baronne Thierry de Zuylen asked me which writer I considered to be the greatest of this century.173 I said ‘James Joyce.’ She said: ‘You really are the most perverse man, because when I last talked to you of James Joyce you said he was a phony, and that Finnegans Wake was a wake only for James Joyce.‘174 I said: ‘Try me again next time and I'll attack him again with liberal quotations.’ She is very beautiful and is married to a most engaging man, splendidly broken-nosed. They are some connection of the Rothschilds I think. Dutch.

  Grace told me that the party was the first private party she and Rainier had ever been to in Paris. Everything else she said was state stuff, receptions charity balls etc. She seemed much more relaxed than usual and nicer, [...] The Duchess of Windsor was in splendid form and got nicely tiddly. Elizabeth has [been] a great success with all these people. I am very proud of her and may marry her one of these days.

  I dread work today. [...] Afterwards we are to be presented with two golden boats or something because we have won, for the second year running apparently, the Parisien award for the most popular actor and actress of the year. Then to see Lili in hospital and then to Gstaad on the sleeper 11.50. [...]

  Saturday 7th, Gstaad We arrived from Paris this morning [...]. We dropped off at Montreux. Simone was waiting for us and we were driven the rest of the way to Gstaad. [...] There was a very light covering of snow on the lower slopes, hardly more than a suggestion of a heavy frost. How antiseptic La Suisse looks, everything made to order, the streets clean as a table, the mountains in perfect order, everything in careful cautious step. The people all look thoroughly scrubbed, apple-polished, and a bit homely.

  The house was as clean as a spitless whistle. How comfy-beautiful it is, and as quiet as a whisper. [...]

  This is a new typewriter which I bought this morning as I was assured by Jane Swanson that there was a typewriter here. I said there wasn't and I was proved right. So I nipped down to the toy-shop, papeterie, in the village and bought this one. The letters seem very big after the other one.

  [...] Last night after work I went to E's studio where we were presented with awards. E was the most popular actress in France for 1968, and I was the equivalent male. I wonder if we'd have won if we hadn't been so conveniently in Paris. Two horrid little gilt plaques.

  I have a record on of ‘five thousand Welsh voices’ singing ‘Mae d'eisiau di bob awr.’ Enough to drive you daft with nostalgia. I need you every hour. Oh yes boys.175

  [...] Christ this hymn is driving me melancholy mad. This is the tenth time I've played it. The dead stand up in rows before my bloodshot eyes. Sod it all. Sod death. Sod age. Sod grief. Sod loneliness. ‘Gad i'm teimlo awel o Galfaria fryn.‘176

  Sunday 8th Well then yesterday we went to the school performance. As we walked into the cinema I saw, to my astonishment, Barry Norman of the Daily Mail. ‘What,’ I said, ‘in the name of God are you doing here?’ ‘You have to cover 1st nights,’ he said. Then a man from European Radio, we noticed with a stick microphone, was only recording when Liza was on. Obviously they thought that being E's daughter she was like her mother, starting early and was likely to become as great a star as her mother. Can one believe the Press to be as long-looking as this, and as venal. It was a lovely afternoon. When they spoke Shakespeare in American accents it was as much as I could do not to cry, as it was all done with the dreadful authority of innocence. Liza's vehemence against Shylock was murderously good acting. Did she let him have it. ‘Oh learned judge.‘177

  And then there were two girls, one negress, and one Chinese doing the French-Language scene from Henry V, before the King arrives, elbows, bilbows, fingers, [...] who had to be heard to be believed so enchanting.178 [...]

  Monday 9th, Dorchester [Hotel]179 Another alien typewriter. Jane assumed that I would bring the one from Gstaad.

  [...] We helicoptered from Gstaad to Geneva despite the protests of the pilot, who said it was too late and too dark to fly. I forced him to anyway, and the flight was thrilling. To creep over an alp at two hundred feet is a sight indeed.

  Little Liza was very tearful when we left. So was her mother. How those two love each other. I quite fancy them myself.

  We flew from Geneva to Paris, dropped E and C off and I continued onto London with Jim Benton and Bob Wilson. We used a ‘Lear’ jet. It is very small and not comparable with
the HS 125.180 No lavatory. No bar. However for such short journeys it doesn't matter I suppose.

  I became very drunk and abused people a great deal and insulted E a lot on the telephone when I arrived. One might call the last few days ‘The Diary of a Dipsomaniac.’

  I miss Elizabeth terribly already. I wish I didn't love people. And I wish I didn't shout at people.

  [...] I wrote a letter to Mrs Trench saying how much we'd enjoyed the show. She is very like Phil Burton. She said, as a result of the over-attention paid by the press and radio to Liza and E and myself, ‘I suppose nobody cares that I'm the one who's responsible for the excellence of this performance. Some of us must always live in the shade.’ Phil to the life. [...]

  I feel dazed and hurt, though all I did yesterday was daze and hurt other creatures. Oh bugger it. After all I shall see Ivor tonight.

  Thursday 12th We've shot everyday in the unbelievable dreariness of the English weather. If ever I need reminding that I never ever want to live here again, I must turn up this page in the diary. It, the weather, is not dramatically bad, no winds, no tempests, no howling blizzard but simply a low grey cloud that squeezes the spirit like a vice. And the cold is no colder than Paris or Gstaad but it is damp and seems to penetrate the very pith of one's fibres. The French people with us find it difficult to credit the English for wanting to live here. I tell them that some of the Saes actually like it, but that the vast percentage of them have no choice.181 And again the ordinary people in the street look so pinched and puny and mean. Only the occasional young girl mini-skirted and swinging her bum and breasts give any pleasure. It is rare for me to be made uncomfortable by low temperatures, but [...] I found myself between shots running back to the trailer to warm myself in front of the gas fire. [...] And on top of everything there is no E here to share my discontent and bear the burden of my complaints. I didn't think it possible to miss anybody so much. We talk to each other half a dozen times a day on the blower but it's agony all the same. I miss her like food.