The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  We both took a nap this morning mine unintended and short E's intended and long. I am reading a book by Le Carré called the Looking-Glass-War which is infinitely sad and depressing.251 Le Carré writes about that clubby class of Englishmen as well as anybody I've ever read and I think him to be as good as Graham Greene without the mystic Roman Catholic stuff but with the dying mystique of Empire and fading old-school-tie virtues as a substitute. He really writes like an angel and understands his victims very well and has a marvellous ear for common speech.

  Wednesday 26th, Portofino Yesterday was a day of frantic evasion tactics. We discovered that the bushes and road above our anchorage were infested with paparazzi – a mass of long-focus lenses everywhere one looked. They in turn must have passed the word around, though we were on the front page of the Genoa newspaper as well, with the result being that we were surrounded by craft of every conceivable description from about 10 in the morning until nightfall. Pedal-boats, smart and powerful Rivas, hard-rubber boats with outboard motors, boats from Santa Marguerita and Genoa and Rapallo, row-boats and even swimmers. If the novelty has not worn off today and we are not left alone, then we shall move tomorrow to Elba which we have never visited and where we should be tranquil enough. We were so ignored in Corsica and Sardinia a couple or three years ago and we may be lucky again.

  [...] Last night we showed on board Elizabeth at 12 years old in a film called National Velvet.252 An utterly improbable story about a horse winning the Grand National – never having run against anybody before – with E riding it. But nevertheless utterly enthralling and timeless. Elizabeth was enchanting with a face of such intensity and such love for the horse that it was almost heart-breaking at times. Though, oddly enough, the face remains the same twenty years later. By some trick of bone-work it still is the same face though the present one is more character-full with its over-lay of experience.

  Interrupted by the necessity to have my hair dyed much darker than it has been, the reason being that everyone seems to think that in the next piece Villain I should be a black rather than a blond villain. [...]

  Thursday 27th, Portofino – Elba 6.45 in the morning and we are about 2 hours out of Portofino en route to Elba. [...] The ship ploughs sturdily and I suppose steadily on to the beginning of Boney's One Hundred Days.253 Have just finished reading White's The Making of the President 1968 which I found very readable.254 He, White, is obviously a good man. I am at the moment re-reading Machiavelli and it is extraordinary how all his dicta apply to the letter to the American Elections. A man must never lie to himself but must, if necessary, lie to the people if he thinks it is good for them. This both Humphrey, Nixon and Wallace did time and time again if only by omission. Lies that are lies repeated endlessly with adulatory listeners who believe the lies even if they were told the same lies in a bar by a friend who know them to be lies. [...] Elizabeth has gone back to bed reading Coward's Hay Fever which they've asked us to play on the stage and then make a film of. I've never read the play or seen it but Coward doesn't sound like our cup of tea. Mugs of beer or should I say ales are more in my line as an actor than pink champagne which is what Noel produces so beautifully. Still, I shall read it after Elizabeth and see if I can compromise and be black velvet.255

  Thursday 27th continued, at Sea [...] Yesterday was as mad as usual in Portofino – scores of small craft and one biggish one – about fifty feet, a largeish cabin-cruiser with a decadent looking white haired Italian owner about 55 years old or perhaps a well preserved 65 with lots of young girls – women – in bikinis, all very brown who had obviously come to look us over. We retreated inside to the salon. They got fed up in about an hour and a half and left. No people look quite as dissipated dissolute and handsomely debased as the rich middle-aged Latin. Vulpine creatures all coldly arrogant and generally with seedy titles and a powerful ambience of orgy. The women too with their lithe hard-eyed gigolos in disdainful condescending tow. They are virtually incapable of being affronted except by a whispered enormity from me in my vilest Italian as I pass within muttering distance. They are great fun to insult, because men of that age (I'm now talking only of the French and Italian Roués) remember only too painfully still the humiliations of the 39–45 war.

  Gianni had a nasty little accident yesterday. He saw what he thought was a new kind of ball-point pen and fiddled with it to see how it worked. It was ‘Mace’ and he gave himself a faceful of it.256 He cried gas tears for about an hour. It was our fault for leaving it lying about without telling everybody what it was. It was the kind that ladies carry in their handbags and had been accidentally unpacked by the stewardess Eugenie. Could have been much nastier. [...]

  Friday 28th, San Ferraio, Elba257 I slept for 10 hours last night. I have rarely felt so tired. We got here about 3 o'clock after a smooth journey. [...] This is the little place from which Napoleon set out for Waterloo. It's a bustling, beautifully sheltered little port with not a throttle of tourists but enough to make the stroll past the yacht and the stare at its occupants worth a walk they think. There are lots of those gaily decorated horse and carriages which trot back and forth which afford the dogs – our dogs – great opportunities for barking. I was so tired last night that I had a vodka martini but it was of no avail and I struggled through a modest dinner almost too tired to eat and went to bed at nine! We are moored right opposite a Bar Roma which is next door to a Hotel Darsena Ristorante announcing itself in large yellow letters. Higher above are the words ‘Grand Hotel Darsena.’ I love the little port already and hopefully we will only have people and no paparazzi which will make it a little heaven, and we must go and see Napoleon's Prison or whatever they call it.258 Almost all the houses are pale yellow and all the shutters are green – without exception.

  John Heyman found us here last night having come by Motoscafola from Piombino.259 His news was that he had commissioned John Osborne to write two plays – a sort of Rashomon 1970 for E and I to do on TV for Harlech, which should get that lot off my back.260 Osborne starts work on Monday. I wrote him a short delighted note. I hope it's some good. We passed a barren little rock half way here yesterday called Gargoni a most inhospitable looking place and a place of terror I've no doubt in earlier days and a haven for pirate vessels.261 [...]

  Saturday 29th, Portoferraio [...] We had lunch yesterday in a charming sea-side trattoria called very originally Ristorante della Mare – unhonoured by the Michelin Guide. The food was magnificent. We all decided to go off our various diets and to hell with it. We had mussels to start, dipping into hearts of artichoke, button-mushrooms, salami and other sausages the while, followed by a sort of thick clam and tomato soup followed by spaghetti with a sauce called something like ‘pesti’ – I mean something that sounded like that. It is a local herb, apparently, this ‘pesti’ slightly bitter but delicious – quite unlike any other taste that I can think of. I had four glasses of the local wine.

  We bought in Portofino an immobile bicycle – one of those contraptions which when assembled presents you with a little bicycle on its own stand. One can adjust the height of handlebars and seat to one's own satisfaction. It has a kilometre attached which records your speed and after you've finished how much you have theoretically travelled.262 Also attached is a clock which you set before you begin at the amount of time you wish to travel. When that time is up a bell rings. I started off four days ago with five minutes and am now doing 15 minutes. It seems a long and boring time and I am trying to find a music stand or something of that sort here in town which I can set up in front of the bike so that I can read. The problem is that as you pedal so the handlebars move forward and back. I might try reading by holding a book with one hand for five minutes and then changing to the other, in order to give each arm its own work-out. Because the arms work too. But more satisfactorily it would be a stand from which to read turning over the occasional page. I will try something this evening. Am now reading in tandem The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson with Machiavelli.263 The parallels are again very amusing. I wil
l try and record some. [...]

  Sunday 30th The sun is temporarily out but generally it looks like a continuation of yesterday, grey and dull. We went dutifully to Napoleon's house which was very pleasant and middle-class, not at all grand. A garden that could be lovely and a magnificent view of the ocean. The only place of real interest to me was the library but naturally, as in all such musées it was roped off. The bike is a marvellous idea. I ‘rode’ for twenty minutes this morning, sweated like a bull, and hot and cold showered for a further twenty. Makes one feel magnificently virtuous and fit. We are going by car, not our own – hired Hertz – to Rio Marina today and stopping somewhere en route for lunch.264 [...] I have read so many books recently about Lyndon Johnson and nowhere does he seem a likeable man, with an ego so vast that it almost approaches mania, genuine madness. We are getting the English papers again and as before, after a long absence, they seem so stiflingly parochial. Huge headlines announce ‘Mutiny in the Navy’ and it turns out to be 1/2 dozen seamen who got stoned drunk and refused to obey orders and re-enacted Bligh and the Bounty taking all the parts between them.265 Mutiny indeed. Picture of Onassis kissing Callas and a snidey-snidey article accompanying it. It is monstrous that such a magnificent pulpit as the press could be has such moronic preachers. Apart from a couple of sportswriters and the occasional political article and the literary critics there is hardly anybody who can write a plain English sentence. Even the Times has become a bit of a rag with gossipy columns yet! One can always rely of course on the crossword puzzles which maintain their standards!

  SEPTEMBER

  Tuesday 1st, Calvi, Corsica Missed yesterday as I was more less stupefied with drink all day long. We left Elba at 1 o'clock in the morning and the sea was as smooth as a dream. We watched the departure and the slowly disappearing lights of Portoferraio and then went to bed. Suddenly we were awoken by heavy pitching and an occasional combinatory roll and pitch. We dozed but were kept more or less awake by the occasional huge dip until suddenly again a particularly heavy wave broke over the bows and we had omitted to shut our forward port-holes as the sea had been so smooth when we set out and our air-conditioning had broken down – it is being repaired today here we hope – and burst into the bed-room so that our highly expensive pure wool carpet was awash. By this time the sea was really throwing us around and it was quite an effort to close the portholes against further inundation. We went out on the poop deck and or sat in the lounge. And that began my day of drinking. I had several straight martinis and goodbye yesterday. However I did my ten kilometres on the bike sweating like the tropics and then drank endless restoratives, alka salzer [sic] and some Italian equivalent that Gianni carries around with him. The day was superb, as indeed it is today, and the carpets are hanging out to dry having been washed again with fresh water, so that the damage might be negligible. One lesson learnt and a lesson that I knew but didn't apply. Never take the sea for granted. She can change from the sweetest smoothest lady into a mad termagant in two minutes. So always keep the port-holes closed while travelling – especially at night. We acquired however a new passenger, with the great wave into our bedroom came a tiny creature, some kind of sea-snail known already as Ari – after Onassis. He lives in a glass of salt water on the living-room table. This morning we found him outside the glass having obviously climbed out through the night. I was afraid I might kill him if I tore him away from the glass's side as he clung on very tenaciously, so Gianni found a jug which we filled with salt water and put the entire glass and snail inside. If this goes on we'll have to build him an entire aquarium all to himself.

  We went to Rio Marina and had lunch in a restaurant 5km outside. It was a splendid lunch of antipasto followed by spaghetti alla marinare followed by delicious chicken flambée with brandy followed by the local cheese and grapes. I drank no wine but the others said it was delicious and they gave us a case for the yacht. Another restaurant not included in the Michelin Guide. Today we are going to lunch in town where we had a very good steak au poivre the last time we were here. I hope it's as good today.

  [...] I discovered a way of passing the time while cycling. You prop a crossword against the shaving mirror in the boys’ room and do it in your head. The time flies by.

  Read nothing yesterday – simply stared about in a generally stunned way. E was sweet and handled me with great affection and wisdom. She really is a superb woman. What I was suffering from was of course a slight case of guilt at not having closed those damned portholes. The drink compounded my irritation so that I was snarling at everybody. [...]

  Wednesday 2nd, Calvi-Ajaccio [...] Went out for lunch yesterday to a hotel that we'd been to before called Les Aloes, I think.266 Had what we hoped would be the same steak au poivre but the chef had obviously moved on to better places because the steak was indifferent. Bought a hammock for Elizabeth to lie on. Odd that we never had one before. Back in our own bedroom but it still ponks a little from the sea-depths. Afraid we'll have to have it all changed. Perhaps we can do it cheaply and temporarily in Ajaccio and do it up properly when we get to London. Little boats, mostly lobster fishers passing us all the time. Thought we might stop at Porto for lunch.267 We have never visited the place, so it will be nice to see it.

  Still hard at Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson. Surprisingly fat book. He does not get any more attractive [...]

  Tuesday 8th, La Verniaz, Evian268 We arrived here on Sunday having felt that we needed to be alone together if the paradox is pardoned – for a couple or three days before the hurly-burly of London and work again. A horrendous night on the yacht much compounded by a mighty sullen drunkenness on my part prompted us after hours of accusation and counter-accusation to a reconciliation and finally to a resolution that we were both happier when we are utterly alone. This done and agreed we ordered the jet and got out of Ajaccio and off the boat and into Geneva and onto a helicopter and are here at our favourite little hotel with our favourite little chef who flatters Elizabeth so. When we arrived and walked through the ‘tea garden’ we were applauded! [...] We have a little house – 3 bedrooms and a sitting room, standing in its own ground – about 200 yards from the main body of the hotel. It is a perfect place, the only nuisance being that we have to leave tomorrow to go and see Ivor and fly to London the following day as I have to be fitted with costumes etc. and begin the film with dread at the pit of my stomach – on Monday.269 Be glad when the first day or so is over. Don't quite know what I'm going to do until I do it. It's about the only time when I miss rehearsals as in the theatre – the slow assimilation of the part, the pub in the breaks, the occasional small explosion of realization of what it's all about in a general mumbling of stage marks and lines imperfectly learned, the discarding of the book after a couple of weeks or three and BANG the whole thing falls into place. That's where it should end of course in a perfect actors’ world, right there at the final dress rehearsal, no performance in front of an audience, no critics, three days’ holiday and begin again on the next play. Or perhaps just one performance for friends. But on Monday, by 9.30am acting a strange part, peculiarly foreign to me, with actors that I think I've never met, there will be 30 seconds of my performance indelibly in the can, as they say. Perhaps I could persuade Elliott to persuade the director to persuade the actors to have a ‘read-through’ before Monday.270 It will make me very unpopular with my fellow ‘professionals’ who want to play golf or screw women or each other but at least I'll know who everybody is. In the last couple of films I knew at least two or three of the company. In this one none.271

  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 gangs
ters. 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.