The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  We filmed in Windsor the first two days but it was so dark that we only achieved one shot the first day.182 It was lucky that there was a warm little pub nearby which is where I spent most of my time. Yesterday we worked at a very gloomy house on the outskirts of a village called East Horsley.183 [...] It was freezing but the people who worked there (it has been converted into a training college for engineers or something) didn't seem to be affected by the cold at all. Mind you, I think that deep down, atavistically, I loathe the English. They are an admirably lucky lot of clods, that's all. They were lucky, I should say. And they are immeasurably snob-ridden and conceited. All classes.

  Today we work somewhere near Kensington Gardens in a moving bus. It should at least be warm as they will have to have lights inside the thing. [...]

  The two boys arrived from School yesterday and since I wasn't here they went to [...] Norma Heyman's. I thought Mike looked very thin and pale and after about 1/4 hour he fell asleep on the sofa [...]. About an hour later perhaps I saw bubbles come out of his mouth and then, still asleep, he began to vomit. Everything he'd had for days seemed to come up but as Ron and I tried to wake him – it is possible after all to choke on your own puke – and clean him up at the same time we recognized the unmistakeable bouquet of red wine. He was stoned. I was so relieved that it was merely booze. I thought at one time he was having one of his father's epileptic fits which is something E and I have had a secret dread of for years. Finally I rubbed ice on his forehead and half carried him into the bathroom where he was sick again. He was terribly apologetic. I told him that everything was alright but that he should learn how to handle booze. [...]

  Chris has a girl-friend! He took her to dinner last night. So that's another worry over, I hope. He's not going to be queer. He's still, despite his age, he is nearly fourteen, a little boy.

  I am not very impressed with Millfield. Craig, Ron's son, was wearing pyjamas under his suit and had a big tear in the seat of his trousers, Michael had a big rip in the knee of his and all three boys were absolutely filthy.184 Their hair was dirty and they'd obviously not changed their underwear or shirts for weeks. I wish I could get them into Eton or Harrow where cleanliness is insisted on.185 And they would look splendid in Eton collars etc. instead of these bloody Edwardian clothes they wear now, which could of course look marvellous, but not when they're stinking dirty. [...] I wish all children stopped at the age of ten and then vaulted to the age of 21. Puberty and adolescence, smelly sex, wet dreams, ambition and agony and calf-love, fear and examinations and not knowing what you're going to do. A loathsome time.

  Saturday 14th, Paris A most extraordinary thing happened yesterday. In the script it says that Charlie and Harry ride on their motor-scooter past Buck House ‘while a platoon of Horse Guards canters by’.186 And it happened. The Horse Guards actually appeared on the dot. How lucky can Donen get!

  [...] After shooting which was over by 11.30 I sought sanctuary at the Dorchester where I was joined by Rex, Jim, Vicky, Elizabeth Harris, a girl-friend of hers, Tony Pellissier, Hugh French, Sheran, Norma, Bob Wilson, and the two boys.187 It turned into a party. We left for Gatwick Airport about 3 and got there about 5. The customs man was Welsh and spoke the language. So that was alright. The flight to Le Bourget was smooth and uneventful and took 32 minutes.188 [...]

  E seems in great agony. Sara was here when I arrived with Graham and his wife Hilary. Graham and I took the dog Jacob for a walk and stopped in a bistro for 1/2 dozen oysters for me and 1/2 dozen snails for Graham. When we returned Ringo Starr and Maureen, his wife, were here.189 I was rightly stoned.

  Elizabeth is in such pain that I fancy she's going to end up in a wheelchair. So I'll have my two favourite people in the world, E and Ivor, tottering around on crutches. Quelle Vie.

  We dine tonight with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at a bistro. I've just read an extraordinary and compelling story about me in the Telegraph’s Magazine. It's not me at all but I'd like to meet the man he writes about. I sound idiotically listenable. Which of course I am!

  Friday 20th Almost a week since I've written in this. Don't know why. Simply couldn't get round to it.

  We did indeed get around to having dinner with the Duke and Duchess. At one point I felt so friendly that I found myself, to my horror, calling His Nibs ‘David,’ which wasn't well received. There I went again.

  [...] For the last three days I've been ‘dubbing the film. It's my most unfavourite aspect of the job I think. Donen and the cutter who is patently a homosexual, had little giggles between the takes.190 Sick-making. [...] But somehow or other I kept my temper and got through all they asked of me [...].

  Yesterday morning at 9.30 I saw Where Eagles Dare. It is in parts the most hair-raising film I've ever seen. Some of it made me shake even though I knew what was coming. The children adored it and went back to see it a second time. And that presumably will be our main audience. [...]

  I am very worried about E. She is so totally undisciplined about her physical life. The MDs all say she should lie flat on her back for at least a month. The film people have very generously stopped shooting on the film for her to have a rest, and I've yet to see her rest on her back for more than an hour except when asleep. Also she says that the Docs say it's alright for her to drink, but it can't be alright for her to drink and take the doses of drugs that Caroline is forever pumping into her. As a result of the complete lack of auto-care I get impatient when she hobbles around in pain. At this rate her malady will never never get better. And talking to her about it is like talking to the wall. I don't care what the medics say. They've virtually killed her a couple of times, and actually did kill my mother out of sheer neglect. How many really good actors do you get out of a thousand? If you're lucky, about five. The rest are out of work. The same proportion applies to doctors but none of them are out of work – they're all busy somewhere prescribing the wrong drugs, misdiagnosing or butchering some poor unconscious etherized bastard. Oh I could tell you tales that would freeze and harrow.191

  The children are all here now. Chris is still very handsome and Liza has slimmed down and looks adorable. Mike, as he has now for a couple of years, looks as if he's just crawled through several hedges and got mud in his hair. Maria had her hair cut by someone in Gstaad and looks demented. But they're all very engaging kids, though where it used to be Maria who would never stop talking, now the chatterbox is Liza. Blabbing all day long.

  I am delighted the film is over. I was dissipating myself into an early death but when the work is over I don't need artificial stimulants. In fact I don't want them. I plan to get reasonably fit in the next few months, something I haven't been for a long time. I just lighted a cigarette and hastily and guiltily put it out. I'm longing to see and be in Gstaad. I might take up ice-skating again when we have a sufficiently long stay there. I think skiing especially with my recklessness, showing off and long neglect will break me a leg. Which is all I need.

  We are worried about Maria. [...] Please don't let her be a simpleton. What does one do with her if she turns out so. I am not a very patient person with intelligent children let alone sub-normal ones. Almost all children, including my own, bore me after a time. Maybe I'm basically selfish.

  Saturday 21st We're off to Gstaad today until the 5th of January. We have chartered a large plane, I'm not quite sure what it is but it seats about 16 and is a turbo-jet. The reason is that we have so many people coming with us: Sara, Michael, Chris, Liza, Maria, Caroline, John Something-or-other who is Simmy's boy-friend from Hawaii, and our two bad selves. Otherwise it's going to be one of those quiet, pipe-smoking, slippered, log-fired Xmasses with a well-loved and well-remembered volume of Dickens. It's going to be a screaming mad-house. I shall lock myself in the bedroom for three days and sneak out for walks in the woods when nobody's looking. Maybe I can read A Christmas Carol before the log fire in our bedroom.192 And do all the Xmas puzzles. I forgot to mention that we are also taking four dogs a cat and a canary. I think I'm going to sugg
est in future that the family en masse travel without me and I'll go it alone. How lovely it must be to take just the one passport, one bag, a briefcase and a typewriter. And ride in a slow train at night and wake up to cowbells and Swiss chalets. Instead of ‘Liza, get a move on for Christ's sake and stop patting that stray dog. Maria, sit down, SIT DOWN. Chris will you for God's sake stop lighting matches all over the bloody airport. Mike get your feet off the pilot's back. He's trying to drive the plane. Watch out for Fatso. Catch the cat. Clean up Jacob's shit somebody. Get that bloody cat's claws out of the canary's cage. Will somebody for the sake of sanity stop Oh Fie from cocking his leg against the navigator's ditto. Oh bugger it, where's the parachute? I'm getting out of here.’ I should have said five dogs, I'd forgotten Jacob.

  Yesterday, after work, I came straight home and settled in the spare bedroom to read for the rest of the day. [...] I read three thrillers, one of which I'd read before but couldn't remember I had until the last few chapters. And then a chunk of a book called The Bible as History.193 Fascinating, the last.

  There's a photo today in the Express of E kissing the Duke of Windsor, with Sara on the side and the Duke and myself in the background (hullo?) the caption saying. ‘The extraordinary breadth of the Windsors’ acquaintances.’

  Sunday 22nd, Gstaad We arrived yesterday in furious fettle. Dick Hanley had ordered a 35 seat aeroplane to carry us to Geneva. I didn't really mind until I discovered from Pierre Alain, who was travelling with us, that there was no bed on the plane for Eliz. Why not? I asked. ‘Because nobody asked for one, they asked for a bigger plane for the extra luggage.’ Well now. It was a turbo-jet built for tourists so the seats would not even slide back. The result being that today E is a cripple again. The old adage applies: if you want something properly done, you have to do it yourself. A 35 seater plane for 9 people and 32 small bags. Hopeless. [...]

  We helicoptered from Geneva to Gstaad and it was thrilling as ever. I was in one of my absolutely unstoppably filthy moods, insulting everybody right left and centre. Nobody except Caroline took any notice. Elizabeth screamed a bit. I accused her of being a hypochondriac, and that she was ill only when she chose to be. How odd, I said, that when you were in Paris and had to work you were unable to move, but once here in Gstaad you're gambolling around like a spring lamb etc. etc. And I couldn't keep away from the subject. It's like a bloke who nearly kills a child in his car and smacks it for frightening him. I shout at E out of fear for her health. I rarely think of anything else. I miss the days when she was able to move around. Tonight for instance I'm going down to the village to take all the children to dinner without Elizabeth. Inconceivable a month or two ago.

  Eventually I went to bed sulking at about 9.30 with Schlesinger's 1000 Days with Jack Kennedy.194 I read until 5ish and slept until 1 o'clock after noon. [...]

  Now for the long bore of Christmas.

  Tuesday 24th [...] Yesterday I went shopping. How I loathe the latter. Put me in a foul mood for the rest of the day. However I just walked around Cadonau's and bought about twenty things in about ten minutes.195 I may if they're good enough get a ruby or two for Eliz. They sent to Geneva or Zurich or both for all I know, for a selection for me yesterday and they've just phoned to say that they've arrived. So I shall pop down to the village after I've finished this and make my choice, if any. To match the diamonds and the emeralds they have to be pretty good.

  There are three men on their way to the moon. Americans. What a hell of a time to send men to the moon.196 Two of them have ‘flu’ and one of them is vomiting and has the Tripoli Trots. What a lovely place to have the Aztec Two-Step. I've forgotten what they do with excrement in outer space. Can they jettison it?

  Simmy and her boy-friend John Gross announced their engagement last night. He is an extraordinary chap and very likeable. I hope they both know what they're doing. Elisheba came for a drink around 6.30. She's very brittle. We are to have Xmas dinner with them tomorrow night. She said three times that her former husband is an American Jew and that she hoped I would be nice to him.197 Why the devil shouldn't I? Some of my best friends are Princesses. [...]

  Tuesday 31st The last day of the year and I'm not sorry. It's been an upsiddy-downy year, mostly down than up. The list of calamities I've recounted before. There is however one bit of news to welcome in the New Year which I hope will prove to be propitious. Ivor in the last ten days has been able to stand up three times and has also been swimming three times. Always with assistance of course but at least it's a sign. Give us more signs Oh Lord! I have a bad chest nose and throat cold which I cannot shake off. I seem to be having colds much more frequently of late. I've stopped drinking and cut down on smoking to try and clear it up as it makes me, a cold I mean, very irritable and impatient and vile with everybody. I stayed in the bedroom all day yesterday and read or rather re-read Schlesinger's massive tome on JFK. I must have read without interruption including mealtimes and visits to the lavatory for about 16 hours. The result being that this morning my right eye was bright red. It's the legacy of that fight outside Paddington Station some seven years ago when my eye was so badly kicked by a winkle-pickered boot that I lost the conjunctiva and nearly lost the eye. In middle age those things begin to tell. The base of my spine too gives me hell sometimes, a result of the same fight but perhaps not of the same winkle-picker. There were six of these little monsters against Ivor and myself.198

  Three days ago we went to Curt Jurgens’ house in Saanen for drinks and dinner. It was horrible, full of Germans. I cannot like the latter, much as I try. I feel fine about them for a time and then I meet them en masse or in a group and the old hatred returns. Fortunately David Niven was there and Caroline, Elisheba and of course my E. Everybody became thickly drunk except us and Niven at about midnight took me into the bedroom and said that it would be a good idea to get all my party out of there as he suspected that some sort of exhibitionism or orgy was going to start up any minute. I told him I had the same feeling myself and so we all scarpered fairly rapidly. However, I was now in a drinking mood having only had some very indifferent wine at Curt's, and so we stopped off at the Palace for a night-cap which in my case lasted until 8.15 in the morning. E was furious – she having gone home about 3.30. There was one hysterical interlude when we were joined by four of the squarest Americans I've ever met. The questions they asked were beyond belief. I replied with such seriousness but without their knowing it and for Mike's and Elisheba's benefit with such innuendo and nuance that M and Sheba laughed for about four hours. I spoke Hamlet Macbeth Antony and Cleopatra Richard II and III all deliberately tongue in cheek. Finally the father of the Americans turned on Elisheba when I'd left the room for a moment and roundly condemned her for giggling when I was speaking this immortal verse with this immortal voice! [...]

  My chief worry for the New Year among the usual worries about children etc is E's health. It is getting no better and she does maddeningly little to help it. [...] If she survives this film she is not going to work for a long time. And if she continues to be in trouble with sciatica I'll insist that she never works again. It's not fair to her and certainly not to the film companies who employ her. I stayed in bed all day yesterday for instance while she spent the entire day until well after midnight sitting in the main room gossiping etc. And of course inevitably sipping away at the drinks. I dread it at night when she has had her shots etc. of drugs and is only semi articulate. In addition to all this she is being given cortisone which apparently bloats you up and therefore you have to go on a fairly stringent salt free diet to combat it. She lasted two days on the diet. [...] The most frightening thing is that as a result of E's total self-indulgence that when she moans and groans in agony I simply become bored. And what is more frightening is she has become bored with everything in life. She never reads a book, at least not more than a couple of pages at a time. It took her over a month to read a cheap thriller by Carter Brown that I could have read in an hour.199 She hasn't asked to read this diary, to which she has
free access and which normally gave her a giggle, for nearly two months. I have always been a heavy drinker but now as a result of this half-life we're leading I am drinking twice as much. The upshot will be that I'll die of drink while she'll go blithely on in her half world. Don't be so depressed Rich, the World will be new tomorrow. I am just praying now that she gets through this film relatively easily. After this one, and if by chance it turns out to be only moderately successful, she'll find it very hard for anybody to pay her a $million a picture again. [...]

  1968

  Richard ceased making entries in his 1967 diary in early November, and did not start his 1968 diary until late July. During this period he played the part of Mephisto in Candy, filmed in Rome at the end of 1967. He then travelled to Austria and back to the United Kingdom, working on the adventure movie Where Eagles Dare. During studio shooting in London Burton and Taylor stayed on a yacht, the Beatriz of Bolivia, moored at Tower Pier, which they were renting while the Kalizma was being refitted. Early in February they flew to New York for the American premiere of Doctor Faustus, attended by Robert and Ethel Kennedy, and later that month they attended the opening of the Paris boutique co-owned by their friend Vicky Tiel, in which they had invested. Elizabeth started work at Elstree Studios in March 1968 for Secret Ceremony, other scenes being shot on location in London and in the Netherlands.

  In May 1968 Richard purchased the 33.19 carat Krupp diamond for Elizabeth, at a price of $305,000, when it was auctioned in New York. Late that month Boom! was released, to poor reviews.