The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  I am hovering around 176lbs in weight and it feels splendid but will try for 172 before I leave for New York next week. E is 127lbs. Lithe and limber we both are with murderous games of ping-pong to keep us that way.

  Cocktail-time approaches, the fire roars, it is cold as cold can be outside.

  Friday 12th Today we received a telegram from Ed Henry of Universal Pics saying that Anne of the Thousand Days has been shown to the press in NY and LA and the reaction is ‘nothing short of sensational’. And ‘superior to Man for all Seasons and Lion in Winter’.271 We shall see Mr Henry, we shall see. It would be rather nice if it was a blockbuster as I have a hefty percentage of the gross. And rings and farthingales and things and hospital wings could be bought. It would be a good thing if Gin Bujold won an Oscar which, since she's unknown and if the film is as successful as Universal believe it's going to be and if she keeps her trap shut about how horrible a place Hollywood is, she is quite likely to do. If she does, or even if she doesn't come to think of it, I'd hate to be her next director or leading man. I think she firmly believes herself to be the legitimate heir to Rachelle and Bernhardt and Duse. She has all the power of a gnat. A dying one. I could whisper louder than her screams.

  [...] We leave for New York in five days and I dread the journey or journeys involved. We go from there to LA, and from there to Hawaii. I long to see Hawaii but I loathe the means of getting there. It means in my case an entirely lost week before I have been able to re-adjust myself so I'm likely to be a moron through Xmas. I'll keep quiet and sleep in the sun, if any, and hide in corners with a bad book.

  1970

  [Richard ceased making entries in his 1969 diary in mid-December. He did not begin his 1970 diary until late March.]

  MARCH

  Tuesday 24th, Puerto Vallarta It's a long time since I wrote in this thing. I fell by the wayside at the Sinatra house.1 It must be confessed that he is a very unhappy man – apart from his fundamental moroseness he was at the time plagued by writs etc. by the State of New Jersey [...] about complicity with local gangsters. I believe Sinatra to be right that he was in no way implicated and we have read since that he finally appeared in New Jersey without the necessity of extradition or whatever they call it between state and state, and has been clean-slated.2 So that's alright. His house is a kind of super motel in shape and idea. A series of very elaborate suites with every possible modern gadget included, vaguely surround a small swimming pool. There is what is known as the rumpus room which contains a pool table and a magnificent toy train set given to Frank by the manufacturers and which he has arranged to have transferred to some children's home or something. He is a very nice man in short doses but I imagine a bore to live with, especially now with the energy gone and where he is obviously watching his health. His library was quite extensive but ‘Prince’ Mike Romanoff told me that Frank had asked him to choose the books.3 That may have been of course Mike's intellectual conceit, but I did see lots of copies of Encounter around and I'm bloody sure Francis doesn't read that.4 Elizabeth made sheep's eyes at him the whole time, and sometimes he at her. I've never seen her behave like that before and apart from making me jealous – an emotion which I despise – I was furious that he didn't respond! We out-stayed our welcome and over-stayed it by three or four days, though I was longing to get away. Eventually we did and came back down here to Vallarta. We flew up to Palm Springs and back to LA in Sinatra's jet plane which is called a Gulf Stream jet or something like that. It's a lovely plane and E of course immediately wanted to buy a similar one. It costs no more than $31/4 m. That's all. What with that and a $1m hospital bill we'd be flat. And the world has changed – I mean our world. Nobody, but nobody, will pay us a million dollars a picture again for a long time. I've had two financial disasters Staircase and Boom!, and Elizabeth Boom! and Secret Ceremony. Anne is going steadily along and will more than make its money back. So is E's picture The Only Game but Anne only cost $31/2m whereas The Only Game cost $10 million so that one will never get its money back under twenty years. I'm afraid we are temporarily (I hope that it is only temporary) out in the cold and fallen stars. We haven't of course fallen very far – we could doubtless still pick up $750,000 a picture which ain't chicken-feed. What is remarkable is that we've stayed up there so long. Instance Julie Andrews who on the strength of one picture The Horrible Sound of Music has stayed up for about 5 years but now the lads in Hollywood tell me that as a result of two big failures she is really out.5 Not only that but she has had her head turned so it appears from her enormous initial success and winning the Oscar etc., turning up late or not at all and sometimes for days. Well she can always get Blake Edwards to write her a script and he can produce and direct it.6 How fast the moods change – two years ago she was the darling of America and now she's hardly ever talked about. She doesn't have our consistently antagonistic press and therefore the shocks are still to come.

  This is going to be a long entry presumably to be continued tomorrow. [...] I went into Hollywood Presbyterian hospital to have a complete check-up. And what a check-up! It took 24 hours which meant I had to stay the night in the hospital. By the time they had made me get into bed, taken what seemed like several pints of blood out of my [...] arm, [...] and Rex Kennamer, the doctor, assuring me just by feel that I unquestionably had an enlarged liver as a result of 30 years of excessive drinking. [...] Next day Kennamer came to see me and told me that I simply had to stop drinking for at least 3 months. Why, I asked? Because apparently, at my present rate of booze I would have sclerosis of the liver within about five years which would get progressively worse. Whether I drank or not. I mean after five more years. Very well, I said, I shall stop drinking totally. I have done so before for an occasional week and sometimes longer. This will be the longest time of the lot. This is my 10th day without booze of any kind and I must confess I feel immensely healthier. [...]

  Wednesday 25th We are going fishing today and stopping for lunch with a man who lives in an Indian village half way between here and Jalapa.7 He is a man called Richard Foot known to all as Don Ricardo. He is the only ‘gringo’ who lives in this particular village. He has reputedly built a school there and made a church. [...]

  Thursday 26th We left the house at 10.15 and boarded a fishing boat [...] towards Foot's village [...]. It is a small pueblo and all the houses are the usual palapa except his of course which has every mod con, [...] full of fascinating bits and pieces from various but almost entirely Asiatic places.8 Balinese, Japanese and Chinese and very fine copies of Spanish-Colonial cupboards and ‘Welsh-Dressers’ etc. with a garden, built on sand, which, were it not for the Bougainvillea could have been mistaken for an English garden in Kent. Beautiful roses etc. Much discussion on our return as to whether he was a genuinely good man, interested in the welfare, education etc. of his very backward village or whether he was merely playing God. He doesn't sound very intellectual and keeps on saying that he reads a great deal. I looked through his library which is small and contains very little that I haven't read and apart from a few pseudo-mystical books nothing that you wouldn't find in anybody's week-end cottage. On the table, opened and face down was a book called Famous Stories of Sherlock Holmes.9 [...] We had raw grated fish marinated in lime juice to start, followed by clam chowder followed by grilled sierra with a tomato and cucumber salad. The two Chrisses also had lasagna and finished with what they said was cheesecake of the best kind they'd ever had.10 [...] Elizabeth and Norma (Heyman that was), who has been staying with us for a couple of weeks escaping from her horrible lover [...] had had their ‘Vallartans’ which is the name we give to a drinking regime which means one drink before lunch and two before dinner. I am, of course, still not drinking anything at all except tea and occasionally coffee, which I don't normally drink except with brandy. [...] Since I stopped drinking I've become a bit of a gourmet myself, certainly were it not for stern self discipline, a gourmand. I have therefore formed the opinion that hard liquor in whatever form before eating is a taste-bud
killer, though a burgundy rich and deep with beef and port with a powerful cheese is delectable. So is a good very dry light white wine with fish. [...]

  Friday 27th Brook, Lillabette, and the three children – Liza, Maria and Liza's friend, Jennie, arrived last night 5 minutes before time. They all looked compared with us like suckling pigs or soft underbellies of slugs but today already they are beginning to redden up. [...] I received a [...] letter from Tony Quayle who has a smash hit for himself in a play by one of the Shaeffer brothers called Sleuth.11 [...]

  I have decided to [do] an intensive 10 day course – self taught – in Spanish. I have avoided it for years in case it interfered with my beloved Italian, but since it seems that we shall be spending more time in Mexico than in Italy for the next few years I thought I would at least acquire the rudiments of the language, ‘menu-Spanish’ as they say. There are 45 lessons in my little book called Madrigal's Magic Book of Spanish and I did 5 lessons yesterday in an hour and got all the answers right.12 [...]

  I have heard nothing more about doing The Defector Charles Collingwood's book but doubtless a great deal will happen when I arrive in LA a week from today.13 Peck and Elizabeth have agreed to do it. [...]

  Today or tomorrow will make it a fortnight without drinking – the longest since I played Camelot and I haven't missed it at all but had a severe time at a party given by a family called the Gunsbergs, surprise luncheon birthday party for dear Phil Ober.14 Everybody was stoned when we arrived, everybody was repetitious. I was vastly tempted to down a huge dollop of vodka and join the general boredom but desisted and smiled and smiled and hope for the best.

  Saturday 28th It's a sod of a world today. I am extremely unhappy and as melancholy as a Sankey and Moody hymn.15 My instinctive aversion and distrust of the human race is brought to a head periodically, drunk or sober. [...] The people around me in the house are all engaging but today, at least, I don't want to see any of them. I am writing this on the top private patio of the house wearing a Mexican hat, Mexican fashion over my nose because at the moment I could easily play Bardolph without any makeup.16 It is Norma's birthday and she cried because everybody here had remembered it and kissed everybody indiscriminately, and each additional present wetted her eyes. She is 32 years old and a mess. But then so am I. So is practically everybody I know. Why do people weep on their birthdays. I noticed Phil Ober did the same the other day. The odd thing is that they seem to wail not out of self-pity at the miraculous addition of another year or the fear of old age, but out of happiness at being remembered. I remember that Dylan Thomas was almost embarrassingly sentimental about his birthday as indeed he shows in ‘Poem in October’. ‘His tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.’ ‘The listening summertime of the dead.’ ‘It was my thirtieth year to heaven though the town below lay leaved with October blood.‘17 The trouble with total sobriety is that if you are a born misanthrope and if your base is an essential cynicism, and my birth and base are both, you do not see the world through a glass darkly (and in my case a glass of alcohol) but suddenly face to face. St Paul was talking about something on a slightly higher plane to put it mildly, he was looking for the face of God when he found the dark glass remove and the pure light of the love of God was revealed to him.18 So he says anyway, the self hypnotized phony. But I find that, alcoholess, I have become for me relatively silent. I do not as before tell incessant stories, most of the audience having heard them before, especially poor Elizabeth who has had to suffer them endlessly for 8 or 9 years. There was an outburst at lunch today. Norma said how marvellous I was looking since I gave up booze – it's only been a fortnight for God's sake – and that when she arrived I looked so awful that she burst into tears (which she didn't) and I am reputed to have said to her ‘It's only the booze love – I shall stop it.’ This she does with that irritating impersonation of what she fondly thinks is a Welsh accent and the way I speak. I said it costs me no effort except when I am so bored that I lust for a second or two for a whopper of a Martini to kill the pain and the waste of time. They had all had their ‘Vallartans’ and Elizabeth was busily making one of Ray's specials which consists of iced coffee and milk or cream or ice-cream and some mild (55 proof) sweet Kalua – a dash of – and some rum to titch it up, because it was Norma's birthday. And I said ‘there's someone who could never give up drink’ pointing at E. Whereupon she said she (E) hated my guts and further more disliked me savagely. ‘Ah,’ said little stirrer-up Norma, ‘but you do love him don't you? ‘No,’ said E, ‘and I wish to Christ he'd get out of my life. It's been growing on me for a long time.’ ‘Piss off out of my sight,’ she added. So like the Arab I picked up my tent and stole silently away up here – my tent being the type-writer, my sombrero and Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish. She has said all those things before and I to her, but never before, as I recall, when sober and in front of people. If, of course she was sober. Raymond makes extremely powerful drinks. She has had the above outburst so often recently – going back about a year I would say that it undoubtedly smacks of the truth. The eyes blaze with genuine hatred and contempt and her lovely face becomes ugly with loathing. This hasn't happened for a long time, but I didn't care about the other girl much so it had very little impact on my vast ego except relief. I have to face the fact that E may be going to take off one of these days and perhaps sooner than I expect. I have known it deep down for some time but have never allowed it to surface. Well perhaps when we have all come out of this slough of despond we can still make it work. Tomorrow is always a surprise. Our quarrel sounded like the quarrels one hears from the next room in a cheap hotel by two middle-aged people, 20 years married and bored witless by each other. A good shouting match is sometimes good for the soul, cathartic, emetic, but I can't be bothered to shout back when I'm sober. Pity.

  The woman who wrote Tim White's biography – and there was if you like a profound melancholic – wrote that he once said ‘If you are unhappy, learn something.‘19 So I will learn some Spanish from Madrigal's Magic Key to same, and screw everybody.

  Sunday 29th [...] I have now done 20 lecciones of the Madrigal Spanish. This morning [...] I shall revise and then take their examination, which is taken against time and is quite fun. So far according to the speed and accuracy which they deem average, above average, and superior, I am superior. It is a primitive grammar of course and the real work will start after I've finished the course, but I hear from other gringos around here who go to have Spanish lessons from a tutor that it takes them six months to do this particular book. [...]

  Louise, I'm told by Foot who is a great friend, so he says, of the Collingwoods, is a hopeless lush and is far far gone in the liver department. She is 50 or about to be and any minute now is going to look 70. She said she'd come on the waggon with me but, like Maureen Stapleton, it only lasted the night.20 She can't even stick to Vallartans like Elizabeth, though the latter exceeds her limit now and again.

  As for E and I there is a kind of armistice. Both sides are fully armed, the bombs are ready to go off but so far nobody has pressed the button. The first six months of the sabbatical have been completely wasted. Except when we were alone we have bickered and quarrelled incessantly, and we have hardly ever been alone. Hawaii was a nightmare, Ivor's paralysis was a nightmare, Palm Springs and Los Angeles was a nightmare and there is more to come. I mean more Los Angeles nightmares. Anyway back to work soon thank God. Perhaps Europe and the Kalizma will rest us up for a bit after seeing Nevill off – if he can come, which now seems unlikely as his brother Paddy is dying.21 And when The Defector starts [...] I am going to insist that everyone must come to see me. I must have a look at Vietnam, just to see what it looks like and maybe I can get near enough to the DMZ to have a look at the famous bridge, but that shouldn't take more than a week or ten days.22 Then a look at Taiwan and other places that supposedly look like, or near enough look like Vietnam. [...]

  Monday 30th [...] Things seem to be more congenial around the house, largely because I kept out of the
way of the family and guests practically all day. My teetotalism is inhibiting I can see. Every drink they take is almost apologetic which is silly. I am the one with the battered liver not they, though E will have to watch hers carefully by the time she's my age. [...] The dreaded trip to Los Angeles approaches fast. We leave on Friday and I present a prize to Army Archerd on Saturday at lunchtime.23 I have never done such a thing before and certainly not sober. I am followed by Bob Hope, not an easy man to precede with his vast experience as an international toastmaster.24 [...]

  APRIL

  Thursday 2nd [...] I did nothing all day except stare at the ocean and occasionally memorize some irregular Spanish verbs. I am well over half way through the Grammar at the moment and, given a little peace in LA I will have practically finished it by the time we return. I will then go through it again fast and translate the editorials from the most reputable Mexico City papers every day, in the meantime finding some intelligent bilingual Spaniard to make conversation with for an hour a day. The best man in town they say is a doctor who has already attended some members of the family and seems young and nice. David the Tutor goes to him and says he's not a good teacher and that his English is somewhat broken but I don't want a teacher, I want someone who will listen to me read to him and correct my accent and who will ask me questions in Spanish to which I shall give painfully slow but, I hope, grammatically correct replies.25 I am pretty sure that in another month I shall be reasonably fluent. [...]

  Another worry is that I have temporarily lost all sexual urge which is very frustrating for E. Presumably the terrific change in my body as a result of total abstinence for (now approaching) three weeks, after thirty years of steady and sometimes unsteady drinking is taking its time to re-assess itself. When it does come back it will be a vast explosion. If it does come back which it had better had.