The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  [...] Later we watched the ‘viewers’ Oscars on TV horribly MC'd by Phyllis Diller – what a horror she is and Vincent Price who sounded terribly queer.32 I wouldn't have thought that a man of such obvious taste in everything else would have allowed himself to get associated with such a farce. Anne won nothing. I hope it won't be the same tomorrow night.

  Tuesday 7th Today is Hollywood's big day – the day of the Oscars. It's curious that the whole world makes fun of it, but that all actors want to win one and in the obituaries of actors it is invariably mentioned as the summit of their achievements. Even in The Times or the Guardian. For instance one of the reasons is that if the Oscar for leading actors is won tonight by John Wayne it will be out of pure sentimentality because, though I haven't seen his performance, I'm told that it is little more than his usual walk through.33 His performance is not comparable with Voight's or Hoffman's.34 I haven't see O'Toole's and I am no judge myself.35 The supporting actress will probably be won by one Goldie Hawn because she is a famous TV personality.36 The leading actress will probably be Liza Minnelli because her mother died last year – Judy Garland a great and sentimental favourite here.37 And so on. That's what makes it absurd and still it's coveted, even by me! My only chance is that I am a Kennedy-Adlai Stevenson associate and a ‘Dove’ while Wayne is a Republican, ‘my country right or wrong’ Birchite Hawk, and the ‘artistic’ Hollywood fraternity is usually very liberal.38 Also, John Springer says that a great many people thought we wuz robbed when I didn't win for Who's Afraid. We shall see. [...] The rest of the day is going to be chaos and I look forward to Vallarta with longing. One more day.

  Wednesday 8th Richard is the BEST

  That was written in his sups and cups last night – I mean this morning at 4.30 by a pixilated Brook. But cups or not I think he means it so shall leave it in. [...]

  John Wayne won the Oscar as predicted. We went to the party afterwards and sat with George Cukor the Pecks and the Chandlers (owners of the LA Times) but were surrounded by scores of photographers, who, to my delight, took very little notice of anybody else including the winners.39 Barbra Streisand who fancies herself a big star was completely eclipsed. And a whole queue of people, literally hundreds, passed the table to stare at E and tell me that I was robbed and after all these protestations we began to wonder who in the world voted for Wayne.

  We got out with a great difficulty because of the hordes of photographers, visiting Gig Young, who won best supporting actor, en route, who was stoned but sweet.40 Hawn won the supporting actress, also as predicted. We couldn't find Duke Wayne so came home, [...] Later still came Wayne himself also very drunk but, in his foul-mouthed way very affable. I survived another night without booze [...]

  Anyway, I lost again, and am now the most nominated leading actor in the history of the Academy Awards who has never won. So I carved my tiny niche in the wall of Oscar's Wisden.41

  Friday 10th, Puerto Vallarta We arrived yesterday [...] and are safe at home again. [...]

  The day before yesterday was a right cock-up. We had arranged, win or lose, to have a ‘Thanksgiving’ dinner at 4.30 in the afternoon. This was to be for E's mother and Brook, Lilla, Norma, John Lee, Dick Hanley, Val Douglas, Jim Benton, George Davies, Aaron and so on. Afterwards, at six o'clock, we were to have a cocktail party for the ‘losers’. The thanksgiving was to be held in a small room at the hotel and the party in our Bungalow. However, this was not to be. Elizabeth didn't turn up for the dinner until six, which meant that the cocktail guests had to be shunted over from the Bungalow to the main hotel and willy-nilly join with us for a combinatory mess-up. [...] Most of the losers turned up. Jon Voight and his girl friend Jennifer Salt (daughter of Waldo Salt who won the best screenplay Oscar) who looks 15 and is actually 25.42 Rupert Crosse, negro supporting actor, Elliott Gould (didn't like him) Susannah York (very nice) Jane Fonda, who talked of nothing but the black panthers and got $3,000 each out of E and me, and Sylvia Miles, who was the only one I felt sorry for, a nice handsome negro called Otis Wilson and other people whose names I never found out.43 It went on until 9.30. By this time we all thankfully returned to the Bungalow with everybody drunk except me of course (still no drink) and E really sloshed. [...] I went to bed and Elizabeth went to the bathroom. Then I heard her calling me and she was bleeding from her rectum, it turned out she'd had a burst ‘pile’. I called Kennamer who told me to wrap some ice in a towel and for her to hold it against the bleeding. But she still wanted to see poor Kennamer, so I rousted the poor sod out of bed [...] and he came over within ten minutes. By this time naturally, it always happens, the bleeding had stopped. However he mucked about and put a bandage around her arse stayed for half an hour and talked about having just before us being sent for to the Hotel where John Lee, also pissed out of his mind, thought he was dying and Dick Hanley (drunk) had called for a priest to give the last rites. According to Kennamer the scene was so ludicrous that even the priest, a new young one, nearly laughed at the whole thing. What a lot.

  We got off to Vallarta and the flight was quick [...]. And home in Vallarta, a game of ping-pong with Brook, fried fish for dinner, a few frames of Pool and off to bed with Wellington: The years of the Sword.44 [...] I didn't do as much Spanish in LA as I hoped. I have 15 lessons to go to finish Madrigal's Magic Key. [...]

  Sunday 26th, Guadalahara We are staying here at General García Barragan's house who, I'm told, in whispers and with much looking over the shoulder by a P.R.O. man called Martin Rodriguez, is the real power in Mexico.45 He will decide, and has already perhaps decided, who will be the next President – it will be Echeverría apparently.46 It is all very Graham Greenish. They, the family, have given E everything she's pointed at and said – ‘It's yours.’ A horse that she saw from their plane (actually an Army plane – a DC3) was given to her on the spot – a Palomino. But on second thoughts Barragan's son Oscar decided it wasn't good enough for her and gave her his own white stallion which we have yet to see.47 I am left with the Palomino [...]. Tonight they gave her a splendid Mexican saddle. What is behind it all? [...]

  Monday 27th This week-end has been intolerably long and none of us can wait to get home. The air of sinister politico-secret-police-Ambler-Greene has disappeared. Despite the fact that the house is continually surrounded by armed guards David Morley, the boys’ tutor, managed to climb over the wall to get back in the house on a Friday night at about 2.00am! Now, instead of feeling stifled by the idea of so much hidden and arcane power, I'm beginning to feel somewhat sorry for them. They are irremediably middle-class in their reaction to our supposed fame and glamour. Though we have both said, almost to the point of vehemence in my case, that we hate, but HATE, meeting strangers and parties, they have had 12 to 14 people for lunch and dinner every day. That includes our lot of course which means that there are generally 1/2 of them and 1/2 of us.

  [...] I read right through the night last night a biography of Ian (James Bond) Fleming. A thick paper-back with snapshots that I picked up in a giant store in town called Fabrica Francia I think.48 [...]

  It's a longish story about El General and our involvement with him. It involves a piece of land on a sweet-water lagoon made by a river called the ‘Agua Caliente’ and which comprises part of a big estate called El Tuacan which is the property of Barragan, the general. They have given us our choice of a piece of land anywhere on the 10,000 acres which contains 5 miles of sea front and goes 12 miles back into the interior. Many forests and another big lagoon (salt water) which they plan to open to the sea so that small ships can haven there. If we are left alone it could be a haven and a heaven. We both chose, separately, a hill of tree-covered rock which plunges straight into the lagoon and which is only about 50 yards – the lagoon – from the sea and at high tide is frequently invaded by the ocean. There is an air-strip 1/2 mile away which is to be extended to take jets. They are to put in a golf course and several condominiums and small sky-scrapers, hotels and a shopping centre which is sufficiently far away from us not to be
a nuisance and at the same time highly convenient for the comforts of bars and food etc. There will also be a group of restaurants. They also plan an 18 hole golf course. I might even take it up again. It's years since I played and it might be amusing again to become an occasional ‘mid-week’ golfer. There is hunting – wild boar and deer – which interests me not at all. But I think I'll get a gun and pot shot at tin cans. It is the age of the private gun and I suppose I should have one. Their largesse is seemingly infinite and we can have all we want. [...] One thing is that it has spurred me to new efforts of learning Spanish. The basic grammar is now under my belt and I shall now extend my vocabulary for the rest of the year. It's sporadic but progressive my self education in this language. My passive knowledge of it is fairly good. Now I must read magazines etc. a lot with a dictionary and start spouting forth. Apart from anything else it will make life much easier talking to the Barragan family who speak nothing but Spanish. [...]

  MAY

  Sunday 3rd, Puerto Vallarta The boys and the tutor left last night for Mexico City [...] The house feels very empty and quiet without them. [...]

  We spent the late morning and all the afternoon at the land in Bucerias – a piece of land on the beach which we have leased for a 100 years or something.49 It comprises many acres though I don't know exactly how many. All of us are overlaid with red again. We have put up a palapa hut and a couple of palapa umbrellas, one for drink and the other (when completed) will be for food. We leave everything there unlocked and so far nothing has been stolen.

  Monday 4th [...] We went again to Bucerias today read, sunbathed, sea bathed I did a double-crostic and read Alan Moorehead's book Eclipse about the fall of Germany from Sicily on.50 [...] The village is a couple of dust streets two miles roughly from our property with 3 fairly raunchy little bars and pretty smelly with it. We had beer and coffee at one.

  Tuesday 5th [...] We (Brook and I) went out shopping today and bought a very elaborate folding table and four unelaborate folding sit-up chairs and a machete each and ‘espatulas’ and barbecue forks and two bottles of olives for the martinis which I make every day for the family's ‘Vallartan’ at 6-ish every day. I regret that drink I must say. After the heat and the broiling sun and the frequent dips in the ocean and the hot-dogs and salad for lunch and a brisk mile sand walk the martini is fantastically tempting. But sternly I've refused. I shall take some coffee tomorrow with me and brew myself a cup during the ‘Vallartans’. We shall all be very sorry to leave for LA. Sheerly for being left alone Bucerias is the best place we've found in 10 years.

  Saturday 9th [...] Bucerias is rapidly becoming our favourite place. We barbecue every day there and read and I do double-crostics and swim and walk.

  [...] We leave for LA tomorrow and Lucy Ball's show, rehearsing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and shooting before a live audience on Thursday. Then E goes into hospital for the (we hope) final operation on her piles. Shall be very glad when that's all over for poor E. They say it is among the most sustainedly painful businesses. Nobody wants to go to LA but I must confess to a little excitement about the show because, I suppose, I haven't worked for so long. I'm told that L. Ball is very wearing to work with. [...]

  Thursday 14th, Beverly Hills Hotel [...] Those who had told us that Lucille Ball was ‘very wearing’ were not exaggerating. She is a monster of staggering charmlessness and monumental lack of humour. She is not ‘wearing’ to us because I suppose we refuse to be worn. I am coldly sarcastic with her to the point of outright contempt but she hears only what she wants to hear. She is a tired old woman and lives entirely on that weekly show which she has been doing and successfully doing for 19 years. Nineteen solid years of double-takes and pratfalls and desperate up-staging and cutting out other people's laughs if she can, nervously watching the ‘ratings’ as she does so. A machine of enormous energy, which driven by a stupid driver who has forgotten that a machine runs on oil as well as gasoline and who has neglected the former, is creaking badly towards a final convulsive seize-up. I loathed her the first day. I loathed her the second day and the third. I loathe her today but now I also pity her. After tonight I shall make a point of never seeing her again. We work, or have worked until today which is the last thank God, from 10am to somewhere around 5pm, and Milady Balls can thank her lucky stars that I am not drinking. There is a chance that I might have killed her. Jack Benny, the most amiable man in the world and one of the truly great comedians of our time, says that in 4 days she reduced his life expectancy by 10 years. The hitherto impeccably professional Joan Crawford was so inhibited by this behemoth of selfishness that she got herself stupendously crocked for the actual show and virtually had to be helped to her feet and managed, not without some satisfaction I dare say, to bugger up the whole show.51 I said very loudly after yawning prodigiously and being asked by the director, a nice but not overly brilliant man called Jerry Paris, whether I was tired or bored or what, that I was not particularly any of those things but was puzzled as to why anybody who didn't have to for financial reasons et al. would submit themselves to this mindless routine week after week for 19 years.52 Miss Ball and her apology of a husband who were sitting beside me said nothing at all. The husband is a man called Gary Morton, who laughs at all her ‘takes’ etc. however often she does them and whether well or not.53 I'm told he used to be a ‘stand-up’ comic in lesser night-clubs, how good or bad I do not know, and protects himself with standard jokes like: ‘I hijacked Lucy from a Cuban’. It is possible to imagine a series for a couple of years perhaps being reasonably tolerable as a way of life and a way of money – enormous money it'd have to be – with a congenial director and a happy few relaxed repertory of actors.

  But for a life-time! Ah no. It is fascinating to watch her reaction to Elizabeth. She calls her for the most part Mrs Burton or Miss Taylor and occasionally Elizabeth but corrects it to the more formal immediately. She calls me in the third person His Highness or Mr Burton and sometimes Mia. This is a joke that E made on the first day when she, E, said that I had become so thin – I am now about 160lbs – that sleeping with me was like sleeping with Mia Farrow who is first cousin to a match-stick. She asked E yesterday how she felt. ‘Fine thank you,’ said E., ‘today my ass is not hanging out.’ Miss Balls then went into an embarrassing convulsion of hysterical laughter which terminated in her throwing herself helplessly over the back of a sofa and drumming her legs against the floor in a false ecstasy of amusement. It was acutely un-watchable and we all avoided each other's eyes. At another point Lucy said to me ‘We had Ruthy Berle over to dinner last night – he wasn't there thank Christ, he's such a goddam bore – and boy do you have a fan in her.54 She went on and on about you. Great actor. Great person and so on. Other people too. Roz Russell and people.55 Why do they do that?’ She ignores Brook and her brilliant straight man who's on, poor soul, week after week with her, a man called Gale Gordon, and Cliff Norton who plays a small part and the director.56 They don't exist off camera. Sometimes on. Between shots yesterday she summoned us Norton, Brook and myself to her dressing-room with a tap on each forehead – we were all sitting down chatting with Hugh French – and proceeded to tell us how to play the scene which we had just walked through. With faces as straight as freeways we then all proceeded to shout every line at each other in ludicrously loud voices. ‘That's better, Richard, now I can hear that word, you're making me laugh.’ And laugh she did, every time we did it and we did it about three times. Brook's face was a study in disbelief. The other actor was obviously used to it and took it all as if this were normal for an actor to tell other actors how to do a scene without the director being there. I warned the director to warn Jingle-Balls that if she tried any of that stuff on Elizabeth she would see, in person, what a thousand megaton hydrogen bomb does when the warhead is attached and exploded. It will all be over tonight and again Lucy will be lucky that I am temporarily such a little saint as normally I would probably let her have what the Yanks call ‘the full shot’ of my contempt. [...]

&nb
sp; Dear Rich

  I hit the sack at 3:30 – so lets sleep late, please!

  You were so right on, so proud-making last nite – everything you did made everyone (like Lucy) look like peasants – Love you

  [Elizabeth Taylor's hand]

  Saturday 16th, Malibu We are staying here – with the inevitable Liz and Brook – for the week-end. It is Hugh French's house in the ‘Colony’ as it is known.57 It is a Norman Rockwell cover of a place with a comfortably middle-class atmosphere.58 [...]

  We did the Lucy show to great acclaim from Lucy and the rest of the people and the audience. We were all apprehensive as to exactly what was going to happen. Ron and indeed all of us were firmly fearful that Lucy, with her superior experience with this kind of medium would swamp us with changes of pace and/or ad libs and other cheap tricks of that kind. Nothing of the sort happened. We swamped her. She was intensely nervous and I found immediately that I was in total control of the audience and her from the moment we appeared together. The same happened when E appeared – Lucy's timing and assurance which we had assumed was a built-in mechanism which was faultless went skew-whiff and E, as ever, took everything in her stride. Everything she did – E that is – worked like a charm, and the audience quite clearly adored her. Her stage presence (this the third time I've felt it happen) is quite electrifying. She held the audience like a vice in Faustus at Oxford, at the Poetry Reading in New York and now in the Lucy Show.59 Now that we can afford it though I will be as tense as a tigress with her young, she should try the living legitimate stage as they call it. Since she has decided to do it anyway there is no point in my getting in the way of a juggernaut. I talked to Ernie Gann yesterday about a stage adaptation of his forthcoming novel The Antagonists which is about the Masada, and it might be a good vehicle for her – and for me.60 [...]