The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  My favourite kind of present, albeit a working present, was brought today by one of Losey's aides – a fat three volume paperback edition of Isaac Deutscher's Trotsky.70 Days of splendid reading. And on a yacht too, at sea, with no telephone calls, no cables and all work set up for the next half year. Bliss.

  [...] My refresher course in Italian has worked wonders and I find myself chatting away like mad. The Serbo-Croat has come to a stop as the discs they sent me have been completely fouled up in Nice by the man who transferred them to cassettes. Half the way through the first cassette the speakers go mad and jump from lesson to lesson like a back-played soundtrack.

  Sunday 15th, Capri [...] E saw Cleopatra last night with all the kids. I popped in at one point for about ten seconds and went away and slept for another couple of hours. No reflection on the film! As a matter of fact E said this morning that the film is not at all bad – marvellous spectacle and all that. My lack of interest in my own career, past present or future is almost total. All my life I think I have been secretly ashamed of being an actor and the older I get the more ashamed I get. And I think it resolves itself into a firm belief that the person who's doing the acting is somebody else. That accounts presumably for my fury if anybody shows me anything about my acting in the magazines and journals. I don't mind the gossip stuff like ‘seen walking on the Via Veneto last night’ or ‘The Burtons on their luxury yacht’ etc. And I am equally angry whether I am praised or damned though mostly I'm praised. The press have been sounding the same note for many years – ever since I went to Hollywood in the early fifties, in fact – that I am or was potentially the greatest actor in the world and the successor to Gielgud Olivier etc. but that I had dissipated my genius etc. and ‘sold out’ to films and booze and women. An interesting reputation to have and by no means dull but by all means untrue. [...]

  Monday 16th, Ischia-Messina Sitting on the poop with a mug of real coffee [...] and the Kalizma steaming flat out with not a quiver on the waves. [...] Italians are shrieking on the radio and E is sitting opposite me having her ‘breakfast’ consisting of vodka and orange juice. A habit she picked up from me in my drinking days. A good start to the day if confined to one. In my case, sadly it had become as much as three and even more if there was anyone game enough to join me. A bottle before lunchtime was by no means unusual and a pleasant but ruined morning behind me.

  We left Capri, the Marina Grande, about 4 o'clock [in the] afternoon and sailed to Ischia where we parked off-shore from the Isabella Regina where we used to live in sin while locating for Cleopatra.71 We went ashore to the pizzeria which we used to do then. Everybody had his or her pizza and then we attempted to do some shopping. I say attempted because the crowds became so great that we had to abandon it and run for the Riva and the Kalizma. [...]

  As usual I am beginning to have butterflies in the belly at the thought of starting work again and don't even have the nerve-deadener of a script to learn as I know it is being entirely re-written. At least, I hope it is. So I continue with Italian and French and Frances Stevenson's [diary] re Lloyd George and Trotsky's life.72 My ignorance of the latter was monumental. I didn't know that he was one of the Mensheviks, for instance, or that he vilified Lenin so harshly.73 As for Frances Stevenson, her diary is sweet but she sometimes makes Lloyd George sound like a boastful little nothing.74 Writing only his version of events and being constantly challenged by history in the shape of dry little footnotes by the editor, A. J. P. Taylor. [...]

  Tuesday 17th, Ionian Sea [...] E read the diary yesterday and said I'd forgotten to mention the cig-holder given to her by Tito. It is the famous one, much cartooned, which he used to flourish a lot at the UN and other convocations holding it as if it were a pencil with hot end up. She passed many many remarks on its unusual beauty assuring him it must be a Fabergé.75 It seems to me that no one there knew what a Fabergé was or is. However after two days of subtle brow-beating he gave it to her. She kissed him on both cheeks which gratified him enormously. He gave me a bunch of flowers. He also gave us a lot of his own home-produced wine made in his own vineyards. [...] There is some trouble brewing up again on his borders with Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Doubtless he'll be able to handle it. Geographically of course, he has that coveted access to the sea which all the land-locked have greedy eyes on. I understand a sight more about Russia's behaviour between the wars since reading Trotsky and for the first time Stalin's pogroms and purges take on a kind of historical inevitability. [...]

  Wednesday 18th, Adriatic [...] Am still deep in Trotsky and so far the man who comes out as the most enigmatically fascinating is Stalin. I must get Deutscher's book about him as soon as I get back to an English library.76 I could order it to be sent to Rome for the start of the Trotsky film.

  [...] We are due in Dubrovnik in about four hours and am beginning to feel nervous again about Tito. Jesus I hope they have a part for me to get hold of. I have all rights outside Jug[oslavia] so I must do my best to get things done so that I can re-cut and if necessary cut out some of the things they might get up to. That is, if the director is as average as he seems to be. We shall soon find out. How splendid it will be if the director is very good.

  I want to persuade them – I have done so partially – to included a great [deal] more stuff about the British Military mission's reaction to Tito and his struggle. A lot more emphasis on his refusal to try and merely talk the British – Deakin principally – into getting Allied support but to show them by the deeds of his partisans that they were really fighting the German and Italian and Bulgarian armies. I also want to show in as low-key a fashion as possible Tito's life-long refusal to shoot captured enemies, even etnik traitors. He told me of one terribly bitter story. He had a few hundred German prisoners and was at a point where he was forced to retreat. To carry the prisoners with him would have been a tremendous strain on his ever-slender resources. So he informed the senior German officer that he was releasing them to find their own way back to their commands. They were astonished but delighted, naturally. The usual treatment in that kind of warfare was to shoot all prisoners. He also hid his own injured men who were not able to move in what he thought was a safe place. He found out later that the released Germans returned as soon as he had disappeared and slaughtered the helpless partisans. Even so, he never wreaked vengeance. The other day, I noticed that Mihaaelovic [sic], the Royalist etnik leader died of old age.77 He had not been shot when he was caught but given a trial, found justly guilty of collaboration with the enemy and sentenced to life imprisonment (I believe) but not shot. When we were with Tito he said how sorrowful he was that one of his favourites in the Sudan coup which was happening then had shot out of hand scores of political and military prisoners.78 This had turned him off completely. I asked him if he had ever lost his temper during those harrowing years of ravenous warfare. He said he had only done so twice. Once when he and some of his men were trapped in a cave and one by one tried to break out against heavy and concealed enemy fire. He said he blazed away at a helplessly trapped company of Germans who were in a captured jeep. Once when Deakin came to him to tell him that, after the capitulation of Italy, all captured Italian arms, ammunition, tanks etc. should be held and handled over to the Allies. Deakin mentions this in his book too saying it was the first time he, Deakin had seen the Marshal go mad with rage.79 Among many little oddities I found from Tito [was] that he shaved everyday of the war except one day, the one day, when he was wounded in the left upper arm by bomb splinters. And that he dressed as impeccably as was possible throughout the whole madness. Another bit: he had sent a message to Stalin telling him of his release of the German prisoners. He received a brutally nasty telegram from Stalin in reply to which he sent a cold reply saying the unless Stalin could send him, Tito, material assistance, or at least the morale-lifting presence of a military mission, he should mind his own business. When later Tito went to Moscow to see Stalin there was a small party at which, among many others, was the dreaded Beria, chief of the Secret Poli
ce.80 Many toasts were drunk and all inevitably to Stalin. Tito had not had a drink of any alcoholic kind during four years and the eternal vodka was hitting him very hard. When his turn to toast came he toasted the inevitable Stalin, whereupon Stalin said with deadliness ‘Why do you toast me now after sending me that insulting telegram?’ Tito mumbled some placatory answer but the atmosphere was charged with menace. Later feeling sick from the vodka Tito went out into the grounds to throw up. A shadow appeared among the trees. It was Beria who said: ‘Don't worry, it is only your friendly policeman!’

  Thursday 19th, Dubrovnik We arrived off Dubrovnik at 5.15 yesterday afternoon and waited for the pilot for whom we continued to wait and wait. [...] When the pilot finally appeared before our puzzled eyes he explained that there was an hour time difference between Italian and Jugoslavian time. Hence the muck-up.

  To our surprise, puzzlement and delight there wasn't a soul to meet us. The wharf was a desert [...] After about half an hour the inevitable little John Howard appeared telling us that everybody was on tenterhooks waiting for us to come.81 The radio and TV had been on about it for days. Were we coming by jet, private, or our yacht. We were due on Wednesday morning, Wednesday evening, we were coming by sea-plane on Thursday! Within half an hour they descended on us like Assyrians. Popovi , Deli , Stepanjek, yet another interpreter a General in full get-up – didn't get his name but sounded like Vuko something – the press representative.82 [...] The Slavs seem unexpectedly to have a manana sense of time except so far Tito.83 He was as fanatically on the dot as I am. [...]

  Friday 20th [...] The house is enormous and totally impersonal and it seems that we are the first people to sleep [there]. Despite its vastness it only contains four bedrooms, two of them gigantic and containing two equally gargantuan study-offices adjoining. The other two are your large but not awe-inspiring bedrooms. The groundfloor ‘lounge’ and dining-room which leads off from it is about the size of a tennis court. There are 17 servants only one of whom speaks English or Italian and badly at that. So I have temporarily married my Serbo-Croat phrase book. Have you ... and nouns nouns nouns. Coffee, tea, onions, tomatoes.

  Everybody means well but we shall quietly move back to live on the yacht. It is cooler and there is no language problem for E when I'm not around and the beloved books are ambient.

  The yacht is parked very precariously near the steps leading up to the house and is potentially dangerous in case of a sudden sirocco so on local advice we are moving today to a little harbour about three miles away. Since leaving the yacht here is inviting everybody, and there are many many people around, to a perpetual ‘open house’, it is a good idea to get away. Yesterday we had Hardy Krüger and wife and children and the nanny and a Jug actress very young and a bit ‘cute’ called Neddy pronounced Naydee and probably written Nedj or something.84 Krüger and wife are very German and very serious and determinedly intellectual. Somebody mentioned Visconti's Death in Venice and I said I hadn't seen it and – politely and totally without interest – asked if Mrs Krüger had seen it.85 She had. What did she think of it? I said like a fool. Foolish, because then she proceeded to tell me and at length with a wealth of perfectly predictable criticisms of it because I too had read a few of the notices by accident, and saw them all coming like a Teutonic juggernaut. Phwew! Krüger himself who is one of those measured mental pipe-smoking meerschaums went on for an equally long time about the vast problem of whether E should or should not play a small part in the film of a partisan lady-doctor who is conventionally brave and loses her legs in a battle and suitably dies heroically and so on. I said that I wouldn't dream of asking a major star like E or Loren or A. Hepburn to play such a minute and conventional role and that it demanded nothing of her while she, being a professional, would demand a great deal of them.86 Well, Mr Krüger went on, now Stanislavski (There are no small parts. Want a bet Stan?) Freud and Stephen Haggard (I would rather play a bad part in a good play than a good part in a bad play) and charity, as ‘twere, her, E's contribution to the heroism of the Slav peoples by playing a small part for nothing.87 My syntax is all to hell as I am sitting on the poop and am continually distracted by Liza, Kate and E and Raymond.

  I awoke this morning [...] and went downstairs to read the ‘new’ script. It is as far as I can remember the same as the previous one with the addition of a few large extracts from Tito's memoirs or speeches which read like memoirs or speeches and which I will change myself into believable jargon. As for the rest of it I have suggested that they employ a standard and inexpensive writer of English to put the translation into speakable terms. Example: young Partisan girl shouting to her companions in the midst of battle ‘Remember the Dalmatians’ which conjures up an image of a frenzied pack of Disney hounds.88 I read out E's part to her as it came up. She is in 14 out of 214 which we have decided is not a dominating role especially as she is never mentioned throughout the other 200 pages. We have just heard from Ron that they are terribly disappointed but will search immediately for somebody else. Who do they have in mind, they were asked? Oh people like Jane Fonda, Simone Signoret, Vanessa Redgrave etc. They are breathtakingly unrealistic. But their innocence is so total that they might surprise us all by actually getting someone like that.

  Anyway, and perfectly selfishly, if the film is a bust they have only one of us to blame because they always blame us for the failures and praise the director for our successes. I have lost count of the number of times I've read that ‘Director X managed to wrest a brilliant performance out of Elizabeth Taylor.’ This is particularly surprising to us because E and I in our combined careers don't recollect more than a dozen lines of direction all told from all directors. And specifically, since I reached my majority, so to speak, as an actor I don't remember any particular direction at all. The only people I remember actually evoking something in me as an actor which I didn't know was there are Phil, Emlyn and John Gielgud. All of which invaluable stuff I learned before I was 23 or so. Since, and sometimes with sad results, I have directed myself. The last man to give me direction which I found interesting and followable and sometimes enthrallingly brilliant was Mike Nichols and that was in the comedy sequences in Woolf. A lot of people have said that my very long speech in that same film under the tree and on the swing outside the house is one of the best pieces of acting etc. I did it, I remember, in one take and without direction from Mike apart from things like ‘maybe you should move from the swing to the tree’. And as for other ‘great directors’ like Marty Ritt, Mankiewicz, Babblin’ Tony Richardson etc. I don't remember anything they said except idiocies which I ignored.

  Saturday 21st Beautiful morning as indeed all the mornings are here so far. Am sitting in a very smelly very noisy helicopter which is our transport to work in the mountains. The journey takes approx 45 minutes and unlike the many copters I have flown in hitherto there are only tiny little windows so there is – without a lot of contortion – no way of watching the lovely land underneath. Looking at it from above I wonder again at the tenacity of the Germans in being able to fight at all in these dreadful places. Crag and crevice, precipice and ravine, choked pass after choked pass, natural ambushes by the thousands and a people of murderous courage, and no victory to show for it as the Slavs would never face them in straightforward battle – hit and run, sabotage and hide, in and out of these endless hills. And what an admirable people the Jugoslavians are. Loveable and naive and quite clearly very different from the Latin and Anglo-Saxon. There is a lot of Asiatic fatalism combined with an almost Italian élan. I would guess.

  [...] When I arrived in the mountains, a place called Zablijia pronounced Jabla (French ‘J'), there were about a hundred press people, perhaps more.89 This seemed odd as the copter landed in a field – actually it was a grass runway for light planes – and a scene one normally associates with big international airports took place on farm land. There were endless questions and only one which I'd never been asked before on this trip. To my carefully hidden astonishment a very sharp lady asked
me how I felt playing Tito and was I also nervous because I was working with a director who'd never directed a film before. Since the Popovi had given me the impression that Deli , the metteur, had done about 50 films and was the number one in Jugoslavia I was a little taken aback. I pointed out quite rightly that I had made three or four films with previously unknown directors and all those films had been successful: Woolf with Nichols, Shrew with Zeffirelli, Anne with Charles Jarrott and now Villain with whassisname.90 Received a cable, incidentally, from Nat Cohen saying the notices for latter superb and great box-office, and another cable said we expect a million pounds from UK alone. That means about $1/2m for me if I remember correctly.

  There is no accounting for the differing tastes of Yanks and English critics. Villain was received badly in the US and with rapture in the UK. I know it is cockney and therefore difficult for Yanks to follow but one would have thought the critics to be of sufficiently wide education to take it in their stride. The English critics, after all, are not embarrassed when they see a film made in Brooklynese. Anyway I am so delighted that it is doing well in UK. Otherwise I would have doubted E's and my judgement in such matters. I thought it was good and she said she knew it was good. The American reaction was therefore a surprise.

  22nd, Zablja Came up last night in a helicopter to stay in a small house in this village. We have worked here for three days though me only for two as I have Sundays off. E [...] asked Gianni and Claudye to say with us though, thankfully they are going to the hotel today. Apart from the house being very small and despite the fact that they are nice people, neither of them are readers and E and I are. Also it means four people, all of whom get up at the same time, sharing one minute bathroom. [...] On Friday, I mean Saturday I spent my time apart from one tiny scene which contained dialogue narrowly escaping being blown up. Don't know what they'll look like on the screen but they – the explosions – looked bloody effective in reality. They had real planes too, trying to look like stukas – about 20 of them. Must have cost a fortune. And will look no better I suspect than an old Anglo-Saxon mock-up. At least to the ordinary public. [...]