The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  And so to bed ere long. I feel very achy and I am expectorating great gobs.

  Thursday 21st, Rome [...] I read a script called The Savage is Loose last night.236 It is a very doable film but would need a very imaginative director with great patience with a boy actor and with many different animals including a panther, a python and a crane. A brilliant cameraman would also be top priority. E would have to lose weight and I would have to put on some muscle. The end is wrong but could be fixed. Will wait for E to read it and decide with her. It would certainly be a pleasant film to make and we could, according to Heyman, shoot it at home in P.V. [Puerta Vallarta] Having read the piece now I don't see why not. All you need is jungle a beach and an ocean all of which we have in abundance in P.V.

  Have just started another piece – the long-promised play for TV of John Osborne's called Separation. Actually it's two pieces, one called ‘His’ and the other ‘Hers’.237 I gather it's about a marriage break-up, one play of an hour from her point of view and the other from his. We must do something for Harlech especially as it's made us some money, though that's incidental, and see if we can help keep the franchise or consortium or whatever they call it. Off to work. In case I hadn't mentioned it before I hate my work. Too strong a word – I dislike it.

  Home from work at 6.00. Got through everything in takes one all day including a new scene with Valentine Cortese. Tomorrow I have yet another new scene to do with Cortese and two actors who play the Rosmers in the film.238 The ‘Rosmer’ couple brought my (Trotsky's) grandson from Europe to see me in Mexico.239

  There's been a man called Jeffrey Archer, MP plaguing the life out of me through Raymond for weeks.240 I've always refused to talk to him and have told Raymond to tell him to tell Raymond what he wants to talk to me about. This he has refused to do as it was very important stuff and had to do with Princess Margaret, HRH. Then would he write it as Mr Burton will not speak on the telephone? So the stuff comes. It is, if you please a Royal Command (according to Mr Archer) to appear in a TV play for Sir Lew Grade – a 90 minutes one – play under separate cover – and at the receipt of our agreement to perform this so far unread play, which incidentally we hear is dreadful, Sir Lew Grade would make over a cheque for £100,000 to the St John's Ambulance lot.241 We would be paid nothing. Grade would have the right to sell it all over the world. I am absolutely staggered by Grade's effrontery. I await the play and John Heyman on Sunday. Her Majesty and His Royal Highness will find that they have commanded the wrong couple. I shall say that I'll do it for a KBE! Mr Archer hinted at it apparently to Raymond over the phone. He sounds a very ambitious little MP. We shall see.

  Friday 22nd, Rome I am a very ignorant man. The front page of the Rome Daily American announces that the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1971 goes to a poet-politician called Pablo Neruda. He is 67 years old and the Chilean ambassador to Paris. A Communist and has the usual revolutionary's awful luck and life until of course the Communists under Allende attained power in Chile.242 Having read a description of his poetry I have an idea that it wouldn't interest me very much – the content I mean. I can never really understand the poetry of another language, Welsh and English only. I suppose few men who are not genuinely bi or multi-lingual from birth can. I generally know the important writers of other cultures even if I've never read them but Signor Neruda is a new one. I was surprised to read that only 6 S. Americans have won Nobel Prizes. That includes that vast half continent from Mexico down and I seem to remember that the Americans and British between them have won over 200. I lump them together because frequently the British and Americans have shared Nobel Prizes like the two British and one Yank who created or discovered the design of a molecule or whatever it was about 10 years ago.243 The Nobel Prize is a very funny one from the start. First of all Alfred Nobel, who started it all, was a Swede, I think, who invented gun-powder!244 It has given some hilarious awards. One of the funniest was to Winston Churchill. He won the ‘Peace Prize’. Never has a politician, despite his outraged protestations, loved war as much as the old man. Peace Prize indeed!245

  Sunday 23rd, Rome246 We worked late last night and I didn't get home til after 7. E very impatient to see me as she'd had news that she valued from Brian Hutton who directed her in XYZ. He is normally a wry pessimist and not given, as most Americans in the film business are, to superlatives but E says that exhibitors are fighting for the privilege to show XYZ and that Harry Saltzman who had the taste to produce Anger and the lucky judgement to produce the James Bond films, has offered $6m for the film.247 All this according to Hutton. I trust they won't accept the offer from Saltzman – I don't think that they can anyway without E's agreement – for if he offers 6 he must think it will gross more. Perhaps much more. At a sale of $6m I think that E could get about $1m guaranteed but at the end, since her percentage is of the gross absolute and for ever, Saltzman would still have to pay E the percentage. I must ask Aaron if E should persuade them to sell, pick up her guaranteed million and then sit back and – hopefully – watch the money roll in. We'll watch the outcome with great interest. There is even talk of Oscars and my lady must – if one can believe this pre-showing enthusiasm – should at least be nominated. That will bring her level with me said he with a sneering and somewhat bitter laugh. It is interesting to think that if one – only one – of the films we have made in the last 12 months or so hits the jackpot, the rewards will be fantastic. If XYZ, Hammersmith, Tito or Trotsky are blockbusters like Cleo, Woolf and Eagles the returns will have to be counted, for us, in many millions. Even if they are merely very big grossers – in the 10 to 20 million bracket – like Becket, Sandpiper, Shrew, VIPs it will still be considerable – far more than the old days of a million in front and 10% against the gross. I've worked out that if we'd no money in front and the same percentage deals as we've been having in the last 12 months, we would have made more money than we did on the old deals even with non-huge-grossing pics like Ceremony, Spy and Iguana all of which did 8–10 mils. It's more exciting this way all around. Against this argument is of course that for Staircase and Only Game we would only have received, as they were both massive flops, our expenses and, with luck a couple of 100 thousand.

  The halcyon days for almost all actors except for the very very big stars or somebody who's had a recent big smash hit are over. I am being paid 5 thousand more in expenses for this film Trotsky than Rex Harrison is being paid in salary with no expenses and no percentage. This latter is an enormous drop from Rex's high time which was as recent as Staircase for which he was paid 3/4 of a million and 10 against the gross. Rex is by no means alone. Anybody who is not in the ‘superstar’ category is getting the same kind of money or even less than the norm in the middle fifties – 150 to 250 thousand and no percentage.

  The most important thing of all from our point of view is of course that we try to do, at least, rewarding films in terms of the films themselves and not their financial returns. We are both rich enough for ever even despite an economic world-catastrophe. I would much prefer, for instance, that E and I won Oscars than that a film should gross like Eagles and have no importance at all. The fact is though that Oscars also, almost inevitably, go hand in hand with good box-office. Of all the films we've done since we were free of contracts, only two can I remember that we knew before starting were not serious. Sandpiper for both of us and Raid on Rommel for me. All the rest have been honest attempts at good movies including the flops au cinema like Boom!, Staircase, Comedians and Only Game. Sandpiper we did because we were afraid that we were going to be out of work and we wanted to work together, while Raid on Rommel was a joke. A joke that paid though. So did the other joke Sandpiper.

  So enough of films. This was prompted by my excitement about XYZ [that it] will be a ‘big one’ for E. By talk of distinction and by talk of Oscars. I know she is brilliant in the film and I know the film is good but I thought almost as highly of Boom! and that went BOOM. [...]

  Reading the Times this morning I came across a, to me, strange us
e of the word utter. In effect ‘to utter’ is to pass counterfeit coins. He uttered a lie now takes on more meaning.

  [...] Yesterday's work was very strange as again – I thought I'd left all that kind of thing in Jugoslavia – for the second time this week I played a scene with two people who couldn't speak a word of English and who were found to be incapable of learning, even like parrots, the few lines they had to say. It was an all day agony of frayed nerves for everybody, including Joe, though we all kept our tempers and were very patient. But why did Joe cast them in the first place. Usually he is so keen on even the extras being accurate. Very odd indeed. I don't know whether Joe is ill or regards this piece as a failure before it starts or has simply run out of gas, but he is passing performances in this film which an amateur director of the annual church pageant would turn down with a shudder. With judicious cutting I don't suppose it will matter but it would be so much more professional not to have to depend on that. It is bad enough with Valentina Cortese who is a good enough actress but acts in clichés and because of her discomfort with the language makes the quoted banalities she is forced to utter even more banal. A line like the following when the Rosmers lament the fall of France becomes yawning chasm of boresville as a result of her infinitely slow and yet uncertain reading. ‘Neither Weep Nor Laugh But Understand.‘248 I am beginning to wonder if the stuff they shot in Mexico with Delon and Schneider is equally bad. And that Joe has sort of given up. Because of its very nature the piece is rife with communist catch-phrases and the actors’ job is to make them sound fresh and desperately intense. You can't do this unless your command of English is complete. I hope to God I'm being unduly pessimistic.

  There was one very funny incident. Joe came in to me while I was being made up and said that the English of the two French actors was so bad that we might have to do it all in French or partly in French. A soon as he'd gone I translated my lines very quickly into French and with Gaston's help got the idioms and grammar right. When, about an hour later, Joe called me to shoot after rehearsing I told him that I knew it in French now. OK. So I started off in that language, going at a mile a minute, which is the way apparently Trotsky talked and was astounded to find that the French people were as bad in French as in English. Finally we stuck to English completely which they failed to get right. It is not even good enough to dub. They will have to [be] off-camera for almost every line they speak and on presumably when I speak. Shit and unnecessary shit and Joe Losey's mother. Anyway, it's a gorgeous day and we are off to lunch on the Via Appia Antica at L'escargot where they have a very good starter dish called Bouchee Caruso which is not too good for diets but undeniably this is a day off and I can watch waists tomorrow. Anyway I am back down to 165 and a bit. I might have a couple of glasses of Mouton or Lafitte or something.

  Monday 25th, Rome I talked to Princess Margaret last night at about 7.25 – she had said 7.15 but not too bad for royalty, and amazingly for the Italian Telephone Service which gave us a very good line. She asked me whether [the]Lew Grade thing was acceptable and I told her that in principle the idea was fine though we thought the plays were not very good and we had two far better ones by John Osborne (I hope we have) and that we would do them in March next year and that the £100,000 would come anyway only simply from a different source. What did I mean? she asked. Well, I said, we had already contracted to do the two Osborne plays for Harlech TV and therefore Harlech had a prior call on our services and the plays were being, had already been financed by USA TV and that the 100,000 would come from us and not Lew Grade. Do you mean from Harlech, she asked? No, I said, from Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Good Heavens, M said, how very generous of you. I am absolutely staggered. Not at all, I said feebly. Pleasure I assure you. Delighted I'm sure and other fatuities. Then we went on to talk banalities about Tito and we must simply spend some time together when we were all back in England swap family albums and stories about Tito and Jugoslavia. She told me she had lost her voice and I thought that it was rather a good idea as she sounded so gentle and long-suffering. That's how I feel, she said. She sent her love to Elizabeth and I sent E's and mine back and to Tony as well I said. I shall give it to him when he comes back from America she said. Well goodbye I still can't get over your extraordinary generosity. Not at all. Goodbye. It was nice talking to you. Nice talking to you too. Goodbye then. Goodbye your Highness.249

  I read a review in the Paris Tribune of a marvellous new-old book. Someone has published the entire Oxford Dictionary – all 17 volumes or whatever it is – in two microscopic volumes with a pull-out magnifier so that one can read the minute print.250 E is buying me three sets for my birthday. One for Mexico, one for the yacht and one for Gstaad. I am genuinely excited. What a superb idea. The review goes on to say that the page titles can be seen with the naked eye and it's only the definitions that need magnification. What an even better idea if someone could do the Britannica as well. One would need nothing else on a desert island. I am waiting to see the OED with all the anticipatory pleasure of a small boy waiting for that engine-and-rails or this pair of ball-bearing roller-skates.

  Suddenly bethought me that a few days ago the papers all carried front-page announcements that the royals were to get increases in salary and that Maggie's was to go up to £100,000. So we nonchalantly give away without so much as a wrinkled brow the equivalent of her annual income. I wonder if that crossed her mind and whether there might be a little pique that two commoners could be that rich.

  Another superb day and Joe (Lucky) Losey should be happy. After my jeremiad the other day I had a letter from him Sat morn in which he said how marvellous it all looked – even the scene he wasn't sure about was splendid and he was herewith enclosing extra speeches about the theory of Art and the State which he had promised to find for me. I haven't looked at them yet but will.

  Tuesday 26th, Rome A good day yesterday in which I did a long long speech while circumnavigating the lawn outside the house. Joe had made a sort of circular railway out of the tracks and the camera did a full 360 degrees. What one might call a typical Losey shot. To my delight Joe said that it was my only shot of the day, and it was. The shot demanded a nice series of movements on my and the camera's part but we got it correctly after a couple of false starts. Choreography in films. This took place in the morning and E was coming to lunch with Heyman and the new prospect as agent – a young man called Michael Linnit – nephew of Linnit (& Dunfee) who is the impresario.251 He seems nice enough and we've decided to try him for 6 months or so. Bob called E for me and told her to wait for me at the Grand as I was finishing and I would take her out to the Flavia or whatever place she fancied. We went to the Rallye restaurant which is inside the hotel and probably has one of the best cuisines in Rome. I'd forgotten how good it was. Again I had two glasses of wine. It was fine but I fear the thin edge of the wedge. No more except for special occasions. Apart from anything else, it seems such a waste of good wine – and I only have the best – to have merely two glasses. The young potential agent pretended to a savoir faire at first which was somewhat and vaguely irritating but after a time the veneer disappeared and he became more himself. This was after E had sat beside him in the restaurant and applied her totally un-self-conscious charm. After that he didn't try to compete with the ambient worldliness but settled for it. I don't think he's very gifted – not in the same league as Heyman for instance – and will doubtless remain an agent all his life, probably not even having his own agency.

  After finishing my film work for yesterday I did 15 minutes for the BBC Tonight programme or maybe it was 24 hours. I talked at a mile a minute the usual guff about Tit and Trot. Then I shouted and bawled into a mike lots of speeches of Trotsky's for the background ‘music’ of some of the scenes. Joe still seems remarkably distrait. [...]

  I started reading Steppenwolf which is very hard going.252 I suppose it is more interesting in the original but in translation it seems so clichéd and juvenile and pseudo. He talks, for instance, of the importance of h
umour and how its possession is a potent weapon in the battle against the bourgeoisie and the smugly satisfied middle-class all the while demonstrating that he has none. Not a glimmer. Not a giggle. [...]

  Wednesday 27th, Rome [...] Message from E came to say that Michael Beth and baby Leyla were coming to Rome [...]. Michael's philosophy is a complete balls-up at the moment. He doesn't want our money he says, but he lives in our house rent free. Again he wants to live the ‘free life’ without our money but with presumably Robin's.253 So he is prepared to use us as suckers – his and his friends’ use of the word – in taking the house. Then finding us not adequate he then uses his friend Robin as a ‘sucker’. He is so exactly like his father that one cannot really blame him. It's bred in the bone. Whose money does he think he is using to fly to Rome? Whose money flew his wife to London? What a funny feller! Let's hope that there is enough of E's pride in him to adopt a more practical approach to life when he is older. Nobody expects him any more to do anything. We don't expect anything of him at all and will keep him in fags and pot forever if necessary as long as he doesn't hurt himself or others, particularly the baby. Now Chris is going to spend a week with him in London. Chris should hold his own I think and hope – a much more intelligent and stronger character altogether, but one can never tell.

  Yesterday, we worked well. [...] I worked with Romy Schneider for the first time. She is very arch. She displayed none of the ‘temperament’ which apparently manifests itself in screaming at the hairdresser, make-up man etc. and was, on the contrary the soul of modesty. [...]

  Wednesday 27th, Rome Michael Beth and baby Leyla duly arrived having had a goodish journey I understand though an hour late. The baby doesn't like planes very much unlike Kate I remember at the same age who adored them – especially a rough ride. Gurgles galore while the adults tightened their sphincters. I did two scenes today one with Schneider and one with Delon. Delon is surprisingly small. From a distance he looks six feet but close to he is only about 5’ 8". I finished with a close-up around 4.30 and was home before M and B and Leyla had arrived from the airport. They both, as usual with modern hippy clothes look unkempt and dirty but that's par for the course. The baby is a beauty and very well behaved and a mess of toothless grins and waving tight fists. She is very brown, and not from the sun. Some dark blood from one side of the family or other. [...]