The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  Sunday 5th Here we are again ready to set off for the dreaded Tjentiste by helicopter we hope this time. Today has all the hall-marks of being dreadful. Many thousands of people. Speeches. National Anthem. The Internationale.109 And on top of it all they want me to work! Just so that Tito can see a bit of action. After all that they want us to fly to a place called Niš (pron Neesh) to the annual beano of the Yugoslav theatrical profession.110 We are expected to stay the night and come back tomorrow morning for work again. Strange behaviour. The film sometimes seems to be very much in second place to all kinds of social activities. [...]

  Later Today:

  Well, as prognosticated by Dr and Mrs Burton, it was a dreadful day though not as boring as I thought it might be. [...] First of all, we arrived in plenty of time to see Tito at eleven o'clock only to find out that His Excellency didn't expect to see us at all. It was the ineffable Popovi who had insisted that we were there so early because of the danger of being delayed en route. [...] However we hung around the unfinished hotel and I drank coffee while E had a drink or two. Then suddenly there was a flurry of Generals and we were hastily put into cars and driven across fields where we were presented to the Marshal and Wife. Some bloke made a speech introducing the Tito I presume, whereupon the old man tore off up some steps to the podium, batteried with mikes and let us all have it for about 30 minutes. The crowd was huge. I guessed 50,000 trying vaguely to fit them into Cardiff Arms Park in my mind's eye.111 ‘Many more than that,’ said the Generalissimo in English and quite sharply. In fact Tito seemed much less friendly today than he was yesterday. E remarked on it feeling a trifle miffed I suppose. I can only assume that his attitude changes subtly but definitely from public to private. There was none of the hugging and kissing of Brioni. Fact is that I was pretty well pissed off with the man-o-the-people because he didn't make more fuss of Elizabeth. He and Madame Broz did at least ask about her mother and at the end of the day when we had done a very actionful shot for their Majesties, Madame sent E her love and Tito said something which was I suppose ‘hear hear’ or something. And at the final handshake he said in English ‘Hope to see you again.’ You'll be lucky, mate. I swear to God there is more nonsensical protocol than with English royalty. [...]

  After the speech which was apparently full of platitudes [...] about the heroism of the mighty dead and that the world and even their ‘allies’ – meaning Russia apparently – still did not believe the extent of the Jugoslavian sacrifice – we went back to the hotel not knowing whether we were invited to lunch with Tito or not. Not quite sure whether we wanted to be or not we put three tables together and ordered lunch at the hotel-restaurant. Five minutes later there was yet another panic and they came [...] in a sweat to say that we were expected to have lunch with Tito and the surviving partisans of the battle of Sutjeska. Furious [...] we got into the ever-present Mercedes and drove about 10 miles to the place. It was an open restaurant, obviously just shoved up for the day. We stood there, E and I and Maria and Vessna the new interpreter for 45 minutes signing endless autographs waiting for Tito to arrive. After all that we found we were not sitting with him but stuck with the scintillating Popovi and Hardy Krüger. The latter obviously has a very nasty attack of jealousy and resentment of the red carpet treatment I get everywhere. He too is a bore and I hear from the other lads who live around the hotel with him that, typical Teuton, he bullies defenceless people like waiters etc. He works without cease on Wolf to write in flashbacks of Tito and himself enlarging his part and enabling him to get to grips with R. Burton etc. and Wolf refuses and Krüger persists with Wolf saying: I wasn't paid to re-write the plot mate. I was hired to put the translation into palatable English. The insults began according to Ron and Brook. One sample: Krüger: ‘You are a stupid man.’ Wolf: ‘And you're the Nazi Tab Hunter.‘112

  E is in the worst state of lassitude I ever remember of her. She has always been naturally somewhat indolent – not the kind of girl one finds rushing off to play golf and tennis, God Forbid – but now, I mean for the last couple of days, she can barely move one foot in front of the other. It's largely of course the reaction from the tension of the past week but it's bloody worrying. [...]

  Monday 6th [...] The helicopters yesterday were the usual farce. For once we left on time but only seven people allowed again. From the air we could see huge concourses of people milling about before we landed and endless streams of buses. And thousands of cars. We landed on the football field where there was of course no one to meet us. [...] However [...] we were escorted to a car and drove off through dense crowds to the new hotel. [...] To add to the mania, incidentally, when E, bright with fury at the whole mess-up of the lunch came with me to location she sat down in my trailer on one of the banquettes and went right through it, legs kicking in the air. Nobody dared laugh or they would have been brained with a hand-bag but it was unquestionably funny. Ron had to leave the cabin. Once I knew she hadn't hurt her very vulnerable back I became faintly cracked myself. That sort of thing only happens when an entire day turns out to be a bastard.

  Tuesday 7th, Tjentiste Am in Tito's hut and shall tonight sleep in his bed. For the first time it is really cold and fortunately the two little heaters from the other hut are with us and are going full blast. If the electricity fails again it will be mittens and woollen stockings all around. [...] As I say, once this lot get going they are very efficient but getting them going is torture. I doubt whether I've had more than five minutes on film in two weeks, and I have a definite stop-date. I am playing the part of a patient actor and hope to God I don't have to lose my temper. [...]

  And now to await lunch and work and my lovely old E in the evening. It's not a bad life. Not really. Not like the other morning when I was figuring out the repercussions of my suicide on the people who like me.

  Wednesday 8th [...] A miserable night in Tito's bed which for some reason, what I'm beginning to believe is typically Jugoslavian, refuses to have sheets or blankets which adequately cover the bed. This meaning a freezing shoulder or a damp calf. Went in to get Maria's mug this morning – the only adequate drinking vessel we have – and she was completely covered with the clothes. Woke up with an awful feeling of deja vu. I was back in my cold damp childhood without even the prospect of a fire to light and leap and dance of burning anthracite. I shudder to be reminded of anything that happened to me before the age of about thirty and though I had a fantastically happy childhood I don't want to be reminded of Caradoc Street and that awful bathroom window which was broken by Rhys Oates’ daughter when she was taking her monthly bath and which was never mended throughout my children [sic], and what is more ludicrous never allowed to be mended.113 What a monster that Elfed was. Eleven years with the same broken window which would have cost sixpence and fifteen minutes to replace. If anybody had mended it he would have broken it again. What a foony mann. It is hard to remember that that idiot of my childhood is now a benign and elderly man. Had a bitter little contretemps with E this morning. [...] Ended up by her saying she would go on the boat and me saying good idea and her saying that when I was sober I was a pain in the ass and perhaps I should start drinking again. So you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. [...] We had the Bozzacchis all evening. They mean sweetly and Claudye helps to unpack etc. but it means eternal conversations and no long readings of books. I must have dropped hints by the thousand that my favourite occupation is sitting alone in a room with E drinking tea, me, and drinking, her or not drinking and simply and simple-mindedly reading books or occasionally chatting. But one might as well drop a canister of water on a prairie fire. [...]

  Thursday 7th, Tjentiste114 [...] Last night we sat and made our own supper. I looked up the various articles in the dictionary and asked for everything in Serbo-Croat. What's more, almost everything arrived as asked. I was flushed with success. E made some soup with an egg broken into it. Very good. I desserted on chocolate and fancy biscuits. [...]

  Have just written a telegram to Kate who has a birthd
ay on the 10th. She will be 14 years old. How she goes the time. And how she grows the girl. She is a head taller than Liza and as tall if not taller than E which makes her around 5'4". I hope she doesn't grow too tall. 5'6" is enough I think.

  [...] How much happier E and I are when we are left alone. Last night, apart from the waiter, we saw nobody and it was delicious. People get on our collective nerves and as one attacks one of them the other defends. E attacks Brook. I defend. I attack Raymond. E defends etc. Fact is that we're wearing them all out. Raymond's relief when I say or we say that we shan't need him for a few days is palpable. He can't wait to get away. He is rapidly getting old. Any minute or dark day now he is going to look his age. Terrible to be a middle aged pouff. He's actually 50 odd. I hope he's no longer in our employ when he's 60 odd. Still ogling fellow travellers. Creeps-giving. [...]

  Received a cheque yesterday from Ron's Vicky for $3,350 which means $10,000 return on a $40,000 investment in about six years which is not bad. She is certainly the only one of our friends who has ever paid back anything. John Sullivan – over $100,000 and not a cent return. Heyman, ditto. Tim Hardy £12,000 and nil return. etc. etc. Including our various friends we must be owed a million dollars. Alexandre of Paris too yet owes us about $125,000. No sign of repayment – not even the interest. [...]

  Friday 8th, Tjentiste115 [...] Yesterday having sat around in make-up all day long I worked in Foca at 5.30pm. Did a scene with the girl who plays Vera who, of course, doesn't speak a word of English.116 She shall be dubbed. However she was obviously experienced and had a go and was very nice. She had a ‘film face’ – a dark haired girl of about 30 that I'm pretty sure I shan't remember when next I see her where I saw her before. I mean if I saw her in the street. Or at a party or something like that. An oval face, regular features, a good standard voice. about 5'4", standard build. In short, like a thousand other actresses everywhere. [...]

  We had sent Maria back to Kupari with Raymond the day before yesterday as she was quite clearly and understandably bored up here when the rain came down without stop. [...] So with everybody else congregating in the other hut and waiting for the call we sat and read all day. E reading thriller after thriller and me alternating between a ‘Bony’ thriller and a book called Bridge over the Drina described as Yugoslavia's ‘greatest novel by Nobel Prizewinner Ivo Andri ’ and good it is too though it's not a novel at all in the ordinary sense of the word so far anyway.117 More a series of anecdotes loosely woven in and around the history of the bridge over a period of 300 years. I doubt if I would have read it with the same interest were it not that I am close to the actual scene of events. There is a description of an impalement, in detail, which horrified me. I didn't know that impaling was so exact a science. The ‘master’ impaler was able to so do his job that though the pointed stick went right through the body from bottom to shoulder through the anus it must avoid all the essential organs so that the poor bastard would live as long as possible, some for a few hours, some for as long as a day. [...]

  Saturday 9th, Kupari118 [...] Am going into Dubrovnik to buy things. Don't quite know what. Lighters and lighter fluid and a book or two peut etre. [...]

  Walked for an hour in Dubrovnik looking for a bacco shop. Finally found one and bought a gas lighter, cheap, and a pen-and-pencil case for E as an encouragement for her sudden letter-writing. Doubt if it will be used much but you never know.

  Dubrovnik is made ugly by all its tourists. There are always thousands and I had an audience the whole time swelling to a hundred or so when I stopped to buy the lighter. I with Maria got out fast. Went in the mini-moke which is made for these narrow winding roads. I wish it had a little more power however. When I came back I saw John Heyman who stayed for a couple of hours chatting of this business and that business finally ending up chatting of cricket in the old days – i.e. the thirties. I told him of the enormous excitement of the ‘bodyline’ tour of my childhood when cricket made headlines not only on the sports pages but on the front pages and was the subject of editorials in solemn journals.119 We shall never look upon its like again. Bradman and Larwood, Macabe and Voce, Ponsford and Hammond and Gubby Allen and Bowes bowling Bradman middle stump. And the imperturbable Jardine.120

  Everybody, which means E principally, in a foul mood about going to Niš this afternoon for the bloody actors’ do when we are presented with awards etc. and have to meet mayors and presidents of republics and cocktail parties and supposed to see a film in Serbo-Croat yet which we are determinedly holding out against seeing. And another cocktail party tomorrow morning at 10am if you please before flying back here. All the things in fact that we loathe most in this world but which have to be done. Sometimes.

  If it were anything but a communist country, especially a nice one like this, they would be told in no uncertain fashion where to stuff their awards and cocktail parties and mayors and presidents. But we are being fixed-smile-diplomats. Shit.

  Found about three books by unknown authors which will plough through if things get bad.

  Heyman told me that everyone is agreed that The Burtons are as easy as pie to handle but that The Burtons’ Entourage is a pain in the ass and every producer, when they are mentioned, hopes fervently that they will all die in the night of galloping heart attacks. Too bad, I said, though I agree about some. The great exception is of course Ron and though I like the others I don't think that any of them are necessary to me. I like Bob Wilson to be around and be barman and man of distinction and Jim is useful with mail but lacks the charm so essential when handling so many different kinds of people. He's no Dick Hanley. Raymond, Claudye and Gianni actively bore me if they are around for any length of time. Brook is intelligent but is now so circumscribed by something, possibly E's and my hidden but perhaps not hidden enough distaste, that all his wit and humour seem to have fled except sporadically. He used to be very amusing.

  Saturday 11th, Niš Same day and late at night – about 11.30 – and I've changed the date on the heading above as everybody assures me that it's not the 9th but the 11th. That means that all the dates for the last several days must be skew-whiff also. Probably came from making two entries on the same day – as today – and getting distracted or something.

  Any road [...] the dreaded visit here didn't go too badly. At least we're home and safe. [...] there was the time-honoured conglomerate of stick mikes and TV cameras. They pounced and preyed on us of course immediately but we went straight into our car and then watched with astonishment the almost ludicrously old-fashioned posing of the German actor Hardy Krüger who really and truly struck dramatic attitudes – looking up at the sky and showing now this profile now the other. I could hardly credit my eyes while E had some very XYZ remarks to make re that particular kraut. When my baby don’ take no fancy to somepoorbody she sure don’ take no fancy. And the poor-spirited son of envy compounds his lack of charm at every opportunity. He can barely speak to or look at either of us. He reminds me oddly enough of a chap called Raymond St Jacques. A very handsome and some say homosexual American Negro actor who said in Cotonou that the waiters (all coal black) in the Hotel Croix de Sud were discriminating against black clients as for instance ‘whenever the Burtons appear we might as well not exist even though we might have been sitting and waiting for 10 or 15 minutes.’ ‘Ah my friend,’ said the delicious Roscoe Lee Browne, also a blackman, and who speaks as pedantically as a professor, ‘Royalty itself has been known to wait when the Burtons are around. It is a fact of nature this attraction, like the moon's effect on the tide.’

  Sunday 12th [...] After watching Krüger baring his profile, we left the airport, a military one by the look of it with no flare path and a dozen helicopters, we roared through the traffic with a police car leading us with its light flashing and its hooter going (the roof-top light being blue not red) and with a cop leaning out of one door with a round object on a stick waving all traffic to the side we swept into the oddest looking hotel that I'd ever seen. It was peculiar only in that it wasn't the h
otel but a totally unannounced halt where we were made a speech to by a nervous and at the same time pompous manager about ‘workers wanting to see other workers like ourselves even though the two workers her with them were a little better known than Jasha in the canteen’ etc. He gave us some presents and the factory workers presented E with lots of flowers and they pressed in on us from all sides feeling our faces and smoothing our hair, particularly E's. It was all terribly embarrassing as the factory had arranged a table with drinks, including Scotch, on it and there were canapés and cigs in boxes etc. all ready for a little cocktail party. All this time the TV cameras were going and the mikes and before we could attempt to make any sort of thank yous and how delighted we were to be one with the people we were whisked away [...] without giving us a chance to show something other than startled and bewildered shock. [...] From there we went to the hotel which was another mad-house, the police not being able to control the crowds at all. [...] After 45 minutes or so we were summoned down to the cocktail floor where the crowd outside in the square chanted our names. We stood there for some time on the balcony with E bravely and regally waving and me like some dumb Prince Albert giving an occasional half-hearted waggle myself.121 We met the Mayor and I think two governors and other people who were never explained and then totally without warning there was a sort of native nightclub act. A horrible boy said into a mike that he represented the children of the world and proceeded to beat a funny little drum and hop around. There was no applause when he finished. Then a fat girl sang a couple of songs accompanied by a sort of flautist, a concertina, the boy on the small drum and a guitar. [...] After that [...] we went down to dinner. There was a long table seating about forty. We sat next to each other. E had the organizer of the Festival on her right and I had an actress-judge who spoke reasonable French on my left. Next to the actress, who seemed a nice woman there was a critic who spoke English. He was a crasher and talked about British theatre all the time. Since I've only seen two plays in England in 10 years I wasn't able to make much contribution. [...]