The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  My sense of chronology is hopeless and sometimes I put some plays and films in the wrong order but the next step I think was a film called Bitter Victory – a very good script – to be done with Alec Guinness and again Nick Ray directing. This was to be done in Libya, for the most part, with the studio work in Nice. Apart from its being a good script and a good director and the magnificent Guinness as co-star I had never been to the Sahara. So we were on. Alec couldn't do it at the last moment. I must ask him one of these days if he was ever offered it as people are so devious. Curt Jurgens stupendously miscast did it instead. There, at one stroke, went the film and following closely on Anger. I was at my lowest ebb as a film star. I didn't care very much – I won best-actor-of-the-year award somewhere, I think Venice – though I wasn't exactly pleased and was heart-broken by Anger’s failure – and then one day Lerner and Loewe and Moss Hart came en masse to see me. It was in Hollywood. Tower Road. They said they wanted me to play the lead in their new musical. It was based on T. H. White's The Once and Future King one volume of which – The Sword and the Stone – was and is among my favourite books.149 With the condescension that seems axiomatic when writers talk to actors they started to tell me about the story. Quick as a flash I told them also saying that I personally knew Tim White. ‘Tim?’ they said. ‘Why yes,’ I said. ‘His full name is Terence Hanbury White, but to his friends he is known as "Tim".’ Squelch. In fact, I had never met Tim White but I knew a great deal about him from friends who knew him. I knew that he lived on the Channel Isle of Alderney. That he was a melancholic, that he drank himself into a stupor throughout the winters and sobered up in the Spring, started to bath again, and wrote during the summer. And that he was poor. I said that I would do it. They were thrilled. They asked me if I would sing something for them so that Fritz Loewe could note the range of my voice. I said sure thing and sat down very poshily at the piano and played a Welsh song and sang to my own accompaniment. They were pleased and said I was a natural baritone and the potential of my singing voice was immense and indeed I could have, with proper vocal training, made a living as a classical opera singer. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Sure, kiddoes’. Would I go to so-and-so in London, or whassisname in Geneva, or ditto in Paris etc. wherever I might be in the next couple of years? It would be a good idea too, since my voice was so rich so superbly natural Christ what a gift, an actor with such extraordinary vocal gift, such warmth such colour. So would I undergo voice training with any or all of the various names they had suggested? They would pay, of course. Would I do this as Rex Harrison had done.150 ‘NO’ I said.

  Now, two years later, not having heard a note of the music and not having read a word of the script, I was on my way to New York on the Queen Mary to play the piece.151 I arrived in Manhattan to find (five weeks before the opening night in the O'Keefe Centre in Toronto) no script except a sort of treatment with occasional bits of dialogue thrown in. I went raving mad. Moss, sweet man that he was, tried his damnedest to calm me down. I called them every vile name I could think of. And it seems to me, even now, that I had justification. Lerner, Loewe and Hart's last collaboration had been My Fair Lady – the greatest success on any level and by any standards that had ever been. Rex had made the greatest success in his life. My leading lady was Julie who had also made the success of her life in Lady.152 Our poor bloody piece, for God's sake, didn't even have a title!

  Thursday 16th [...] For some reason, even more than usual, I made my entry in the diary yesterday like the beginning of a rather portentous autobiography, an apologia. Must save such fragments, properly written for the real thing which is about the only thing I'm ever likely to write – apart from the usual occasional snippet written for mags.

  I read all day apart from the diary entry. Changing from the biography of Mussolini by somebody called John Collier – very journalisticky – with lots of ludicrous bits read out to E, and the first volume of Toynbee's History to Spengler's Decline of the West to a detective story by Erle S. Gardner.153 [...] Have decided too, though whether I keep it up or not I don't know, that life is infinitely more rewarding without booze. At least my kind of boozing. It's been approx three months now I think though unless I look back in the diary, which I never do and can't anyway in this case as the preceding volume is in Gstaad, my estimation of time like estimating distances over water is absurdly inaccurate.

  [...] the Italians are a race of opera-comics. [...] I pointed out to E that the more the Nazis bombed Britain the tougher morale became, and the more we bombed the Reich the tougher they became, but in the Musso book it says that when the first raid on Rome occurred, and compared with Dresden, Cologne and Berlin it was a nothing, thousands of Italians ran out into the streets waving white flags improvised from pieces of stick and vests, shirts etc. but not, I'm sure, underpants which by this time would have been the wrong colour. I once saw a group of teenage Italians set on a lone colleague and finally get him on the ground. When he was down he put one hand over his face and one over his testicles and submitted. The others then proceeded to kick him but the kicks were unbelievably ineffective as they took turns to do running kicks at him but in their anxiety in case the man who was down happened to grab an ankle and pull one of them down with him they kicked from as far away as possible so that they couldn't possibly get any purchase, any power into the kicks. This was in or rather outside a bar somewhere in Rome many years ago and I was with Johnny Sullivan and a lot of other stuntmen who would have enjoyed joining in but the whole thing was so balletic and coy that all we could do was laugh. Of course the stories of Italian cowardice are legion – they even tell them against themselves – and indicate a highly civilized and very witty and healthy respect for life especially their own lives but, childishly, it's not a reputation I would like the British, and certainly not the Welsh to have. I was informed from birth that the toughest thing on earth was a Welsh miner. I believed it and it got me into more fights than one would have thought possible. I'm still likely to have a go though I know that at my age and condition I stand not a chance. I suppose that's what happens to the Irish too. The Scots are far more sensible, like the English they just know they are the best and don't bother to prove it.

  Friday 17th [...] We sat and read again all day. [...] I finished off Mussolini. What an ignoble end to a fairly ignoble life. And extraordinary how his weaknesses, inferiority complexes, had the effect in other people's eyes, of giving him strength. He had the unthinking cruelty of a child and it seems that any really dirty work was unconsciously delegated and atrocities were committed without his knowledge. Fundamentally he was a weak but decent man. This man, Collier, though he mentions Mussolini's physical ailments, does not give them the importance they should have had in the book. Quite clearly, and I believe it more and more after that slight but important book The Pathology of Leadership, his physical illness had a great impact on his conduct of the war and in fact his going in to it at all.154 I'm sure that Hitler wasn't at all pleased that Mussolini joined him in the war at all. It would have suited him much better to have Italy on the sidelines and supply him with materials, raw and finished. Some German General is asked before the war: ‘Which side is going to win?’ and the answer was ‘The side that doesn't have Italy as an ally.’ This gem is quoted in the book.155 Yet another Italian-cowardice joke? Well let's see. If it were not for Italy's, or rather Mussolini's idiotic adventure into Greece – a blatant piece of idiocy to show Hitler that he too could go to war without informing his partner – there would have been no need for the Germans having to go into Jugoslavia to get at Greece. He could have chosen his own time later. Greece might never have come into the war at all as Turkey never did.156 If the Eyties had not marched on the British and Egypt, Hitler need never have wasted his great troops in the long desert war.157 When they were involved in the Russian War they were also having to defend Italy after her capitulation against the Allies. If Italy had stayed out of the war or come in on our side after she was sure, and everybody was, that the Democracies we
re going to win she would have had herself a seat at the carve-up table as a belligerent member of the winning side. She might even have kept Ethiopia. And Mussolini would have ended up with a state funeral amidst the weeping of a nation instead of being urinated on by Italian women in a square in Milan.158

  Perhaps because it's my own time but this century's politics and wars seem to me to be the most fascinating of all time. Never in history have events followed so fast on each others’ heels, never have politics been so copiously documented and never before has the final move, potential move so far meant the destruction of the entire human race and indeed all living things. Indeed the year of my birth is as good a time as any to begin a modern history. Because although the Great War was terrible and horrendous – more so perhaps than the second – the great disintegration of world values didn't begin until after the dust of the war had settled and the monsters began to appear. The new monsters.

  [...] E still asleep and now must wake her up as she, at least, has to work today. She models for a furrier-artist so called, called Soldano who furs out of Genoa as one might say and who afterwards gives her the furs, and others, that she models.159 Bozzacchi calculates that the furs on the market would bring in $150,000. I wonder what happened to the pledge that E signed in common with other famed ladies that she would never wear the furs of anything in future except pest furs and vermin. Must ask her and will record the answer tomorrow.

  And now back to The Decline of the West.

  Saturday 18th [...] E said that her declaration about furs, done through John Springer, was carefully worded. It said that she would continue to wear furs from vicious creatures like mink who were specially bred to be de-furred but would ban the buying, advertising or wearing of fur that came from genuinely wild creatures since, as a result of the trade in furs, they were in danger of extinction. She pointed out that she would wear Persian lamb since she still eats lamb chops. Personally, I said, I couldn't care less about the fate of wild animals and that I was far more concerned with the fate of wild human beings. And particularly with the fate of my wild human family. [...]

  E did her fur reportage yesterday under great difficulties as they couldn't shoot out of doors as there was a continual downpour. I went over about 1.30 and was fitted for Trotsky and had a bite to eat. Couldn't wait to come back here to the warm intimacy of the yacht and with the two volumes of the Shorter Oxford on the sofa and Decline of the West across my knees I settled down together with endless cups of tea to a long read until E came home, quite late and slightly the worse for wear, about 7.30. She has just given me a graphic description of the delight of over-eating kippers and the particular joy of their repeating. She is the only person, certainly the only woman who will tell you – not anybody I mean, just me – details of the internal workings of her body. She knows it appals me which is why perversely she enjoys telling me. Liz la Perverse.

  I'd forgotten how readable Spengler is even in translation or maybe the translation makes it more readable than the original. He really comes out with all guns firing. The fury in the professional philosopher world must have been joyful to watch. What, I wonder, did people like Bertrand Russell and lesser lights like C. E. M. Joad and economists like Keynes feel like when they read the cold dismissal of them all by our friend Oswald.160 To turn from the vigorous dynamics of Spengler to the distant urbanity of Toynbee is almost comical. And so it was Spengler all afternoon and evening and Toynbee in bed and A. A. Fair for a night-cap.161 [...]

  Monday 20th [...] Did not write in this yesterday but spent a thoroughly lazy day reading Palmerston a biography by Jasper Ridley.162 I didn't know much about Palmerston before and didn't know how loathsome he was. The kind of English that causes me bright fury and arouses all my usually sleeping hatred of the English. And now poor bastards they are worse than ever, their two or three centuries of arrogance as a right having turned into pathos. They flared up for a year or two as a result of Churchill and the war but the post-war debacles killed them stone dead. How I enjoyed Suez and the fools they made of themselves. How I enjoyed De Gaulle and his more English than the English ‘NO’ to the Common Market.163 I watch their every humiliation with great pleasure though I don't much like reading other people writing about them as I am now. [...]

  Have worked and, as usual on this film, rather eccentrically. [...] Took off 9.50. [...] We understood from the pilot that we were flying right to the mountain-top for the location. However, to our surprise, he landed us at the bungalows and immediately took off again leaving us with three locked bungalows. Brook eventually found keys at the hotel. We opened up, put the heaters on, boiled water for coffee and sat in the sun by the window and I continued to read Solzhenitsyn's One day in the life of when the helicopter returned about 11.50 and we set off again.164 It was a short trip as we circled the valley and landed again. Why? They wouldn't need me for another hour. More Solzhenitsyn and off we went again about 1.30 I suppose. Finally to work which consisted of being strafed by planes and explosions going off all over the place and is indeed the scene when I am supposed to be, i.e. Tito is supposed to be injured. Did it umpty-nine times. Became tetchy again when they pegged the poor Alsatian down and chloroformed it so that it would lie dead in the shot.

  Home at last about 5 covered in mud and artificial blood. [...] was told that I too have to fly to Belgrade tomorrow to see Tito. I don't mind really but I feel guilty about the film again, though there is no way, short of insult, of getting Tito to let me off. We are taking him an Alsatian puppy of superior breeding from England.

  Tuesday 21st, Aboard Presidential Plane On our way to see Tito complete with Alsatian dog [...]. The plane is very posh, very presidential – two apartments with beds and sitting accommodation for about 40 people I suppose.

  This all came about when Tito told us in Tjentiste that his old Alsatian ‘Tiger’ had died and E suggested we get him a pup from England. He is very highly bred – the descendant of many champions including a few ‘best dog of any breed at Crufts’ and other 3 stars.165 He is very good looking – a very blacky sort of brown.

  It is also a good coincidence as Tito told us of Tiger II snarling and attacking the Russian Ambassador when he, the latter, brought the ultimatum from Stalin. Brezhnev arrives tomorrow for a state visit which I'm told by CBS and NY Times is a thinly disguised look-around for a possible puppet successor to Tito when the old man dies. So now he'll have another Tiger around. The western correspondents I've talked to – and because of the nature of the film and the part I'm playing all seem to be political rather than film commentators – say they expect a big explosion after Tito dies. All are worried that the various republics will want autonomy in which case they'll be dead ducks for Hungary, Roumania Albania etc. and ultimately, of course, Russia. We shall watch with more than fascination as we love this lot a lot and would hate to see them involved in another ‘Hungary’ or – even worse – another Czechoslovakia.166 [...]

  Wednesday 22nd, Kalizma–Cavtat A horrendous journey back from Belgrade as E was in great pain throughout the journey. Bite-on-bullet, tearful type pain. [...] One of the famed pink pills seemed to help which I've told her to take even if she does get woozy oh willy-nilly-she's-a-ruby. Brilliant morn and God's in his heaven all's right with the world. [...]

  Tito was obviously pleased with the puppy and chuckled richly when he saw it. The poor thing [...] followed him in from the garden once so that pleased him no end. I think he was genuinely moved. And so was the Madame Broz. He talked about Brezhnev coming today and how hard the work was going to be. E insisted that he, Tito, speak English for a while. He protested that he confused it with German but she would have none of it and indeed for about 10 minutes he laboured on in English. A few days and a few books and he'd be speaking it very well. We asked him the form for such visits and he sighed and said it would start with an hour or two tete a tete followed by lunch followed by a mass exchange between delegates from both countries. After this Brezhnev would lay a wreath on their cenot
aph or visit a factory and then there would be a banquet in the evening. Fool! I would go mad. Three whole days of that with neither of them really saying anything and inferring mightily between the lines. He asked about the film and I told him that we'd been held up etc. but that the work we had done seemed to be good and that friends from London who'd seen the rushes dreamt of dollar signs. He said wickedly that dollar-signs weren't what they were. Well then I said ‘Deutschmarks’. Must confess that I didn't think 20 years ago or even 20 weeks that I would choose to be paid in DMs rather than dollars. Oh what a fall was there my countrymen.167 I asked him about the Fitzroy Maclean story that ‘you do this, and you that’ was Ti, To and thereby came his name. I persisted and asked him if he'd told that to Maclean as a joke. No, he said, he'd never said anything of the kind but somebody else may have. He said that Tito was quite a common name in some parts, maybe his part of Jugoslavia. He mentioned some other name which was equally short like Nikki or taka or something which he could easily have become.