The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  E had a good day, so much so that we decided to go out to dinner in the evening at a ‘Steak House’ but after ten minutes or so it was obvious that she was only barely hanging on and so I took her home and went back later to pick up Liz and a very drunken Brook. He had had a lot of Napa Valley claret during the ten minutes I was away – anyway, a huge jug of it was practically empty. He looks ugly when he's drunk, speaks very loudly and repeats himself a lot. Also he looks uncannily like Emlyn at such times and his mannerisms become absolutely and frighteningly the same. The rat-tat-tat nodding of the head before the witticism or the didactic finger-wag. The pursed lips. He went on and on about a British actor called Wilfred Hyde Whyte – who lives here in Palm Springs with his new and rich young wife – and what a swine he is to act with.118 A laugh-killer and up-stager etc. He sounds a nasty piece of work to work with. All this cut-throatedness done with ‘my dear boy’ bonhomie. Oddly enough I have always defeated such actors by giving them everything and ultimately stealing every march on them. Instance Rex in Staircase. Rex was so busy getting his face into the camera that he forgot to play the part as well as he could. On the stage it's even easier than on the screen to break the back of such petty performers. Just give them their heads and they chop themselves off. I've always found it so childish anyway. [...] Kate arrives tomorrow at 2.15 LA time at LA. I shall drive in to pick her up. Longing to see her. Watched Mexico play Belgium in soccer at Azteca Stadium, Mexico City. It's the world cup. Mexico won on a penalty.119 I wanted to have the Belgians win. Silly. Just because they were Europeans I suppose and had to put up with the mindless antagonism of 100,000 screaming Mexicans. There might be trouble down there on a big scale before this competition is over. International sport on that level brings out the most virulent hatreds. I wouldn't enter myself. Soccer fans seem particularly idiotic even in England. I myself become a nervous wreck when watching Wales play rugby, though it expresses itself in silent writings internally with an occasional roar of relief or arbitrary remarks to perfect strangers and lots of pulls at the flask of whiskey or brandy. I'd rather not go any more. I cannot even read the accounts of a Welsh loss!

  Saturday 13th [...] [Elizabeth] watched me in an old film last night – The Rains of Ranchipur – and said I was very handsome and sexy-looking and that the film was nothing like as bad as I said it was.120 Perhaps it's mellowed with age. [...]

  The LA Times today announce that Larry has been made a life peer [and] that Sybil Thorndike has been made a CH. Freddie Ashton the same. I am a CBE and David Frost an OBE.121 Nothing still for Emlyn and he could have done with one. Larry told me years ago that he was determined to be the first ‘actor-peer’. It was a reply to my asking him what worlds did he have left to conquer in our profession. He was in his cups and we were living together at Tower Road in Bev Hills and he was doing Spartacus and I was doing Ice Palace and neither of our careers were sparkling which is why we were doing such bad films.122 Larry was tearful because he couldn't get backing for a film of Macbeth which he lusted to do, and I was contemplating retirement from acting and writing instead – not for a living, not for money. I was already a dollar millionaire and with the inexpensive Syb could have lived like a prince for the rest of my life. I wanted to write because I sought for some kind of permanence, a cover-bound shot at immortality and not a rapidly dating film and acting to match.123 Well he's made his ambition to be a peer but not to film Macbeth. Perhaps one will follow the other now, but not if I can get in first. I'll be interested to see the reaction of the British Press to both Larry's peerage and my CBE. Larry's is so sensational an elevation that he might take the heat off my award and the stuff about me being a traitor to Britain for running away to Switzerland and not paying taxes. I remember being lumped with Chaplin and Noel and somebody else as instances of rats leaving a sinking ship and all that. If the press is quiet about this I might nip a knighthood one of these days. A couple of seasons at the Old Vic and a stint or two at Oxford and I could swing one fairly easily with a Labour government in power. We might however have all died of asphyxiation or world poison by then.

  Shall send a cable to Olivier today.124 It is a remarkable achievement considering that he has never been a ‘clubbable’ man in the Wolfit, Richardson or Guinness sense.125 He has remarkable stamina and it's about time they separated him from the herd.

  Sunday 14th Drove with Brook to LA yesterday to pick up Kate at the airport and it proved to be an eventful and very tiring journey. [...] At a place called Banning I was gonged down by a Highway Patrolman for exceeding the speed limit.126 He said I was doing 80mph in a 70 zone. I didn't argue because I was actually going faster than that. Unfortunately I had no licence and no means of identification at all. Nothing in my pockets at all except cigarettes a lighter and about $300 in cash. I was forced to tell him that ‘I'm quite a well-known actor, my name is Richard Burton.’ He recognized me and I did have Dick Hanley's car-hire form and explained that he was my secretary. The boy was very polite but gave me a ticket nevertheless. [...]

  Kate is already 5 ft 4 ins in height and is not yet 13 years old. She is as tall as Elizabeth. She is very white like all easterners and tells me to my surprise that she takes the sun very badly. Odd that, as both Syb and I take it very well. Throw-back to some funny gene somewhere.

  E had had a rough day what with Sisler sticking a finger up her behind and wiggling it about to make sure that the passage was kept open. She shouted, she tells me, a great deal. Glad I wasn't here.

  [...] Looks as if the film will start about the 25th–30th. Talk of P. Scofield playing the doctor.127 He's quite wrong for it but he will help to give it ‘class’ as they say here. Will again make it ‘a different ball of wax.’

  [...] Will try to do some Spanish. Kate is reading Jane Eyre and announced fifteen minutes ago ‘Rochester has just kissed Jane. Wow.‘128

  Monday 15th Have been up since 5.45 and for once was beaten to it by Kate and E and we all went to breakfast at the Dunes Hotel Coffee Shop driven by E in the golf-cart.129 [...]

  Have read through some of the entries in this thing. It is stupendously tedious. But If I didn't do it I would feel guilty of something or other. So will slog away even though it is unreadable. It's some sort of writing at least. Perhaps I should do a daily thing like this and then write a Sunday précis in proper and considered English. Leave it till the end of the year and then turn it into one large book for my eyes only. Then there would be some purpose to these meanderings. Perhaps write my recollections of the year from memory alone. And then write what this book says and compare the two. Compare the anger of the day after with the dispassion of a year after. Recollect like Aunty Wordsworth in tranquillity.130

  [...] I want to go to work for a time now, more than anything to find how I react in a sober way to the tedium of film-making. No drink to kill the pain. And an indifferent film to boot.

  Tuesday 16th 7.30 and out on the concrete beside the pool in bathing costume and back to the sun. [...] Kate asleep still therefore am writing on this notepaper as my diary is in her room. I sleep tremendously heavily nowadays since the booze is working or has worked perhaps out of my system. The sleep is not long – 5 hours or 7 at the very most – but it is very concentrated. No dreams or nightmares or at least none that I can remember. I wonder if death is like that? If so it won't be at all bad. [...] Shopped at the bookstore and bought mags and a French/English version of Rimbaud.131 Have never read him in the original. She [Kate] bought one for Jordan Xtoph Syb's husband.132 I suspect she calls him ‘Dad’. And feels guilty about it. I also suspect that he does not read poetry, though I may be wrong. Nobody has any opinion of the fellow at all, neither for nor against. He's nice and quiet, is about the only reaction I can get out of anybody. [...]

  Dr Sisler's son watched me on The David Frost Show and heard me say that I used to learn the major classics of Shakespeare's by heart when I was a small boy.133 Fired with ambition he has learned ‘To be or not to be’ or something and wishes to reci
te it to me. What can I say except yes? He is 12 years old. I shrink I flee I die but it has to be done. Marvellous what the public and press will persuade themselves of. I have this marvellous reputation as an actor of incredible potential who has lazed his talent away. A reputation which I enjoy, but which I acquired even when I was at the Old Vic those many years ago.

  And unless I go back to England or the National Theatre in Cardiff etc. and slog away at the classics for a decade, that is the reputation I shall die with. ‘Will you ever go back to your first love, the theatre?’ they ask all the time. ‘It's not my first love,’ I snap. The theatre, apart from the meretricious excitement of the first night and the sometimes interesting rehearsals has always bored me and reading scripts has always bored me. I haven't read Shakespeare for years, except an occasional dip into Lear and a glance at Macbeth, though I will speak him for your entertainment endlessly. I do not wish to compete with Olivier or Gielgud and Scofield and Redgrave etc. as they are too ‘actory’ for my liking. Apart from occasional performances, few and far between, I don't believe a word they say. Larry is the past-master of professional artificiality. A mass of affectations. So is Paul. John is always the same and when it fits the part he is very watchable, but when it doesn't it can only be described as regrettable. They have splendid presences and are very hard-working and genuinely love their jobs. I cannot match the two latter qualities. And do not wish to. [...]

  Wednesday 17th [...] Sisler's son came with mother and sister and Sisler himself and gave us his ‘To be or not to be’. Sweet little boy and he read the speech very intelligently though he obviously mis-read a line which I told him about. I spoke a speech for him too. Elizabeth, in a fine frenzy, did a bit of the Shrew. Shook me and the family when she screamed ‘Fie, Fie you s.o.b.‘134 Something like that. We all leapt a yard in the air. [...]

  E had her bottom examined yesterday in the morning and she was a shaking mess for a long time afterwards with great outbursts about how bored she was having to stay in the house all the time because it was too hot outside, she couldn't read a book, she was sick of watching TV, she was sick of hearing us splashing in the pool while she was confined etc. I comforted her as best I could but I'm not very good at those sorts of things. [...]

  Thursday 18th [...] Watched myself in old film called Prince of Players on TV last night. I had never seen it before. Can't think why it failed so badly when it came out in 1956 or whenever it was as it is more than averagely good.135 I was surprised at the speed at which I spoke and the very obvious Welsh intonation on occasions.136 Kate E and I watched it together in the bedroom and E said she thought it was a fine film and Kate said she was proud of me. I must be getting calloused in my latter days because I wasn't in my usual despair after watching myself. Brook was a trifle sloshed, which he seems to be every night nowadays, and was a little sour-graped about the film saying, during one of the breaks, that Ron Berkeley clearly didn't do my make-up because my pock-marks were showing. E's loyal little face tightened in defence. Kate said to me guilelessly afterwards ‘you seem so different Dad, I mean you were so handsome then.’ Thank you I said. [...] It seems that I might do Don Quixote next year. I think I can do it by losing a really emaciating 15 pounds or so and getting a really fat Sancho Panza. Perhaps Ustinov or Alec Guinness. Or Zero Mostel.137 If I do it we must get it out fast to beat the musical Man of La Mancha.138 The deal is more or less fixed subject to my approval of the actor to play Sancho and the time slot. An interesting challenge, more so than Harry in Staircase.

  Read Rimbaud yesterday for the first time in the original in one of those dual-language books. The translation is appalling. ‘J'en ai trop pris’ is rendered as ‘I was fed up.’ A lot of the nuance is lost to me, but I shall learn it slowly anyway and corner Enid Starkie or somebody and get myself a free lecture on the subtleties.139

  The British elections are taking place today. We should have fairly positive results about 10 tonight our time here. Unless it's so close that they have to wait right down to the wire.

  The next film is still amazingly vague. No script yet. A group of tailors bootmakers and hatters came down to the Springs the other day to measure me and Brook for the uniforms, but the costume director himself didn't know half the time what was what. It seems that I should be dressed roughly like George Peppard who was in the film Tobruk from which we have stolen the stock footage.140 So, in effect, Peppard is my stunt double. It really is a film by computer and I shall record its idiocies with as faithful an accuracy as I can. The writing is to be ‘dialogue sufficiently credible to get us from one explosion to another’. There is no overt attempt to give it any ‘artistic’ merit whatsoever. Any that comes will come if it comes from the personalities of the actors concerned so they must all be actors of the first rank. What is strangely ironic is that the film is based on a true story and the band of intrepid allies actually included an American, but we cannot use this because it would seem like an obvious gimmick to capture the American market. The fact is more a fantasy than the fiction. The schedule has been reduced again to 3 weeks and two days. If the film does a mediocre gross only, I shall pick up at least a million dollars. I could make as much as a million pounds. For 20 days’ work. Morally indefensible. But at least I don't feel the guilt of taking a million dollars cash down for a film that might be a total failure. Here at least I'm gambling with my money to the same extent as the producers. [...]

  Friday 19th [...] There was a tremendous upset in the British elections yesterday and against all poll analysis the bloody Tories are in with a whacking majority.141 The full extent of it is not known yet but it seems that it will be a very comfy 50 seats majority at least. I am furious. Those smug bastards are in again, and again we'll be run by the old school tie – not that we weren't before when the Labour boys were in power.

  I did nothing, simply nothing all day long apart from a little light reading and a couple of pages of this. Watched a little on TV and chatted around with Kate and E and watched Batman and boxing from the Olympic auditorium.142 [...]

  Saturday 20th Leaving for Malibu today by jet at mid-day. [...]

  Looks like the Tories are in by about 40 seats or so. That means that the Labour party can easily get back at the next election in five years time. So it's not too [sic] bad as it seemed.

  [...] E lolling about on the bed watching TV. Asked me ‘why are you being so bloody Welsh?’ She is watching Cornel Wilde as Marco Polo in Marco Polo.143 Funny we should think of the Italians as physical cowards but there's Marco Polo and Da Gama (or was he Spanish or P'guese) and Columbus.144

  [...] I want to go home to Switzerland.

  Sunday 21st, Malibu Colony Arrived here about 1.30. [...] Terrible silly quarrels for the rest of the day about who fries the chips for dinner. Said I wasn't because I didn't know how. E lost temper and said I'd been boasting for years as to how well I made chips. Told her it was a joke, the boasting. [...] Went to bed early and read a French roman policier by Japrisot.145 Didn't get too far with it and fell asleep. [...] Went to the drug-store for breakfast with Kate. [...] Told her I was sick to death of the States and wanted urgently to get back to Europe though that continent was getting as bad as this. I suppose she'll end up being a Yank. For some reason being an American has always seemed to me to be unglamorous. Now why should that be? Is it natural British xenophobia? After all, they made it to the moon first and never stop propagating the ‘greatness’ of their country. I would still prefer being a Welshman or Irish or Scots. Even English, and even they're a pretty comical lot nowadays.

  Have just had chat with Hugh French and Ronnie Lubin re Don Quixote to co-star Hoffman or Finney or Topol or somebody equally able and to be shot in Colombia as it will be too cold in Spain in the early part of next year but will be perfect in the former.146 And cheaper. They want E to play Dulcinante but I don't think the part good enough for her.147 However they have a lengthier script by the same Waldo Salt which I will read tomorrow or Tuesday. The present one is a little sketc
hy. We'll try and get a man called O'Steen to direct.148 He has never done so before but cut Woolf, Graduate and Catch 22. So should know his stuff. [...]

  Monday 22nd, Malibu This year drags on and on. Yesterday sat in the sun and read a bit. [...] Finished the Japrisot novel. Most improbable even for a detective thriller.

  Am going to LA today, Western Costumes rather in Hollywood, to fit for clothes for this strange film I'm in. [...] An Englishman called Jacklin won the USA Open Golf Championship yesterday and delighted us all.149 The first Englishman for 50 years and the first Britisher. Since he won the British Open last year it automatically puts him among the company of the great. He is only 25 and it's nice that somebody so young and seemingly deserving is successful at something so harmless. [...]

  Dustin Hoffman I understand is either very fearful or very conceited as he says he cannot make up his mind whether to take the Sancho Panza or not as he's afraid that as Quixote I will steal the film from him. What a funny reaction from such a good actor. He obviously wants to play a one-man show where no other actor stands a chance. Reasoning that way, he would turn down Othello and/or Iago. I must be supremely self-confident as no such considerations cross my mind, or ever have.