The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  David Niven and wife Hjordis came up for an after lunch (at the Olden) drink and were in very good form and David, as usual, made us laugh a lot. He is tremendously excited about the success of his autobiography which is lovely to see and enjoy with him.

  I feel so relaxed and almost smug about having got the article in on time and the Mail’s liking it, but above all and especially E.

  Brook and Liza arrived last afternoon and Claudye and Gianni arrived today so the house is now bursting at the seams though the latter couple are not staying with us but at the Olden.

  Liza is a bundle of energy and I spoil her with shamelessness though I have to mentally belt her now and again.

  Brook is irremediably sad and lonely. And he is still a drunk though he claims that at home he only drinks at weekends and then only wine. I feel so sorry for him and wish I could help him more.

  1972

  JANUARY

  Friday 28th, Phoenix1 Yesterday we went to Sara's house for lunch and for the last time, thank God. It was the first time for me to see the place in daylight and it could be a very pleasant little abode were some money and taste expended on it. Sara's brother (80 next September) and his wife were there. He is a thin spare man with marvellous high Indian-looking cheek bones and Howard said of him: If you dip him in a barrel of salt water – clothes and all – then put him out in the sun to dry, he might approximate to looking like Sam. Sam was the pioneering adored grandfather.2 [...]

  Last night I had a unique experience – for me that is. I went to have dinner with the Voldengs in the swankest country club in Phoenix, or the richest, or both. However, the uniqueness was that I discovered towards the end of the dinner that the Club was restricted to gentiles only. NO JEWS ALLOWED. Mary Frances told me so.3 She said that they, the Club, had told them, the Jews that there are just too many of you and before long you'll be running the place so why don't you form a club of your own. I was flabbergasted. I should have immediately announced this to the rest of the family and we would have undoubtedly swept out en masse. However I thought of Sara and that the only reason why we were dining with the Voldengs was to get her out as easily and unrancorously as possible, but I simply couldn't sit there and say nothing. She promptly gave me an opportunity to salvage my conscience as she said with twinkling glee ‘And do you know Richard they ran into financial difficulties and had to appeal to us gentiles for help. What about that!’ I swooped. ‘How strange to hear that,’ I said, ‘our lot doesn't usually get into that kind of difficulty.’ She took the blow with an air of not knowing quite whether I was making a little British joke or not. I now laid it on. ‘Elizabeth, as you obviously don't know is a convert to Judaism and our daughter is of course a Jewess and my grandfather was a Jew’. She was helpless. She said ‘Yes’ but it had several additional vowels in it, impossible to write down but it was something like ‘Yeaaeahowes.’

  To reiterate here the platitudinous idiocies of their conversation would be tedious. E and I and Howard and Mara had gone there knowing what to expect but so exactly did they react to any given suggestion that they were little different from Pavlovian dogs. One rang the bell of this idea and they tolled the precisely expected answer. To the very anticipated word. We all agreed afterwards that they were so brain-washed that nothing, no argument, no appeal to intelligence, could possibly change them. For instance, and only one example will I give, Dr Voldeng said that the thing that had made this country great was that it was a melting pot for all the peoples of the world. Yawn. Yawn. But they had just said that Jews were not allowed in their club! There was therefore absolutely no point in asking about the blacks.

  We reduced ourselves to hysteria in the course of the post mortem in our suite but under it all we were sick at heart. [...]

  Saturday 29th, Beverly Hills Hotel An eventful day. One of those that despite much incident manage to be tedious. We left Phoenix at 2.14 in the GS2 [...] and we took 45 minutes to get to Air Research airport.4 There, there was a hell of a problem with Sara who refused to lie down in the ambulance. I said I would ride with her if she would lie down but she wouldn't so I snapped off smartly into the Cadillac. She tried to get Howard and E to ride with her [...] but H nipped off as smartly as I and joined me in the car – then tore back to the ambulance which still refused to leave, grabbed E and brought her back and finally [...] we were under way. We arrived in the underground garage and I fled fast to the safety of Bungalow 5. The others came swiftly afterwards. Howard and E were already somewhat sloshed by this time but only my experienced eye could tell while Mara was trying to catch up. Howard and Mara told me that they never have a drink until the evening when they're at home and I know E barely has a drink before 6pm normally but seeing and being around Sara, said Howard, drink was the only defence. Yes sir. My way out was to eat ten lbs of chocolates and liquorice etc. washed down with many cups of tea. By about 8 o’ clock at night all three were pixilated [...].

  At one time Paul Newman came in and Howard and Mara carried on talking as if he was not there. I asked him what he was doing in town and he said he was there to see John Huston. ‘Oh, I know him,’ said Mara, ‘he came to Kuwaii once. He's got a patch over his eye and he's a film producer or something.’ ‘No,’ says I, ‘you're thinking of John Ford.‘5 That's right, she said. Sometimes I wonder whether Mara's defence mechanism against being impressed when she meets a famous and very distinguished man like Newman is a pretence of ignorance about all things filmic. She sees more films in three months than I see in ten years so it can't be ignorance. Paul is what I call a real actor. A nice man, extraordinarily youthful looking with a complexion so peaches and cream that at first I thought he had make-up on. Every move he makes is like one practising –with no need to look any more – in front of a mirror. I don't mean that unkindly. He doesn't even know he's doing it. He is a keep fit fanatic and my God the results are remarkable. He must be at least my age and yet with a little care around the eyes and a dye-job on the hair he could still pass for 24 or so.6 I would hate to look like him. I did once before acne re-mapped my face and I hated it. I abhor mere prettiness.

  Voldeng, while we were on the plane, quite blatantly asked E if she would contribute $5000 to the Orchestral Fund of Phoenix. E, caught in a corner said OK. In a minute he was sitting next to me in the rear compartment where he asked me the same. I said that we gave a considerable amount to charities but only with great suspicion and only to the lame and [...] the blind and the retarded etc. but that I would ask Aaron if it were possible to make an exception. I have no intention of giving $5000 to a group of anti-semitic idiots. What appalling effrontery.

  I did something this morning which gave me immense satisfaction. I took the two dogs for a run on the lawns in front of the bungalows. [...] Suddenly I was aware that I was being shadowed from tree to bush to tree by some idiot photographer who fondly believed that I couldn't see him. I started to throw the ball harder and harder, followed by new friend. Suddenly I whirled and with all my strength threw the rubber ball with a baseball pitcher's action straight at the snapper hoping to hit the camera, instead of which I hit him square in the middle of his forehead. It's quite a heavy hard rubber ball with a bell inside it. It was only later that I realized that I could have taken his eye out if I'd hit him there and that if I'd missed I would have had to suffer the ignominy of having to cross the road to retrieve the ball. He said nothing but stared at me with under-privileged hatred. I stared back and said ‘you're on private property, get off it.’ He left.

  Sunday 30th We ran XYZ yesterday afternoon and though I'd seen the film twice before (once a rough cut) and had seen sections of it 1/2 a dozen times I was still fascinated, though not so much when E was off-screen. There are always little subtleties in E's performance to be discovered anew whereas Caine and the girl are always carefully studied but obvious. What is that girl's name?7 [...] I went to bed at 10.30 or thereabouts simply not being able to keep awake. [...] I awoke slightly in the middle of the night to find E snoring gently
[...] and tipped her chin to stop her. She stopped.

  Kurt Frings and his vapid little girlfriend came to the film and Alex Lucas and his wife (?) very very nervous girl Rex Kennamer (who again got pissed) and of course Sara and the two nurses and Jim and George. Half – more than half – the audience were seeing it for the first time and we at last got some idea of where the laughs come. I'm afraid that we have made a mistake with Frings. I cannot bring myself to like that man. He is monumentally ill-mannered and thick as a trunk. All he had to say about the film was that he wished that Maggie Leighton had a bigger part. Rex was staggering about with either drink or pot and endlessly cornered me (and before me Elizabeth) saying equally endlessly ‘I know John Q Public better than you or Frings or anybody in the business. I listen to those old ladies talking and they say, "Is Liz Taylor really really beautiful?" and I think your John Springer should run a campaign saying, "Go and see the most beautiful woman in the world at her most beautiful," because these old ladies say, "you know, is she really beautiful or has she got old and fat," and I'm telling you Richard this is the most ravishing I've ever seen Elizabeth and I've seen everything she's ever done. You've gotta get Springer to do this because I know my John Q Public and I know them better than ...’ He doesn't know his John Q Public. Nobody does. If the film is a hit it's a hit and if it's a flop it's a flop and nobody can persuade John Q to go or not go by a piece of advertising. The most important advertisement in the business is unbuyable and it's called Word of Mouth. We shall not know for about three weeks whether – in the USA – we have a hit or a miss. I have an idea that the film will be immensely successful with sophisticated audiences but the hick may still be puzzled by the ending. Say and write what you will the small towner, the uneducated sticks, still don't know about lesbians. Howard and Mara Jim and George Alex Lucas know all about it and appreciated the ultimate horrendous trick that Zee plays but I can't see my brothers and sisters getting it. They'll just think that Zee has said something awful to Stella and be frustrated at not knowing what.8 I may have underestimated the spread of sexual knowledge – God knows the papers never stop writing about sex and its aberrations – but I don't think so.

  Mara and E came into the bedroom last night when they all got back from Sara's bungalow with some tale about the condescending rudeness of the room service manager as they had waited for over an hour for the food to come [...] I wasn't sure of what exactly went on. I'll get it straightened out this morning. [...] Once the waiters get their knives into you you might as well pack up and move to another hotel because they can make your life very uncomfortable. They can forget the sauce for the steak and the dressing for the salad and a million little inconveniences and since Sara relies on the room service to an unprecedented degree the waiters must be kept sweet. [...] I remember Ivor and I once in the Negresco being so fed up with the lousy waiter's lousy service combined with a ‘fuck you’ attitude that Ivor poured a bowl of chips over his head and while he was shouting and bawling I sketted him with a carafe of water.9 We had the police an’ all. Syb was pregnant with Kate at the time and while I had been at work apparently this waiter had been giving Gwen and Syb a rough time because they spoke no French and he didn't know who they were. Just two plain ladies from Wales I suppose he thought they were. We sorted him out alright. He was fired by the management for calling the police but, having withdrawn his charges I – against everybody's will – insisted that he was reinstated and that he continued to serve our suite. He became devoted to everybody and indeed used to send us postcards for a time until, not getting any back, he fell away.

  Edie Goetz came with Mr and Mrs Arthur Hornblow to visit us last night at about 7.15.10 The Hornblows left after half an hour [...] Edie stayed on. She looked alive and very well kept though she had on a pair of frightful eyelashes. [...] She, surprisingly to E and I both, boasted about the cost of her sable coat. It's Crown Sable she said and added $10,000 to the bill. After she left we both said how much we liked her whereupon Rex Kennamer, soberer now than he had been, began to attack her. It was all-embracing in its viciousness. He wouldn't allow her a single virtue. He said she thought of nothing but money and herself. That neither she nor Bill had ever given a penny to charity and that he had seen them stand up at fund-raising dinners and pledge money and then dishonour the pledge. That she has a daughter who has been desperately ill for two years and to whom she has given nothing except porcelain vases with potted plants inside, and that the girl is married to a not very successful agent and she needs money for hospital bills here are astronomical and don't we know that, and that she has fought for years to be LA's top hostess but has been out-ranked, flanked and buggered-up by a Mrs May (of May Company) who gives copiously to hospitals and was the force behind the building of the huge new cultural centre, and that she is obsessed by Frank Sinatra who, said Rex, pointing to his temples, is a sick man and if Frank ever drops her she will kill herself and that her obsession with Sinatra had made the last few years of her husband's life a torment as Frank had done a film for Goetz called Capture of Queen or something and that Frank had behaved so atrociously that he quadrupled the cost of the picture which was a majestic flop and he would normally never have had anything to do with Sinatra ever again but Edie ignored him and became Frank's slave despite Bill's protestations and so on and on and on.11 [...] I said rather feebly [...] that she had always seemed very nice to me. If I'd had a few argumentative drinks I would have challenged Rex all along the line but I decided he was drunk and therefore not a compos opponent. I shall ask him again when he is more measured in judgement. It was all fascinating – particularly the social aspect and it all seems so second class compared with Parisian society. Christ I'm a snob! How about, as they say, that?

  Monday 31st 8am and we've all been up since 7 to see off Howard and Mara who have a pleasant 5 hour journey to Hawaii while we have an unpleasant 5 hours to NY on Wednesday and an equally unpleasant 7–8–9 hours to Rome the following day. [...] We went to see a James Bond film yesterday afternoon [...] called Diamonds are Forever which was good fun but surprisingly ill-acted and amateurish.12 There are some good sequences – notably a car chase – but the plot, which as far as I can remember has nothing to do with the original, is very silly indeed.13 It makes Eagles [...] look realistic by comparison. Sean has got potty and now really looks like a miner going to seed.14 Which he is. [...] His Scots accent was more pronounced than ever – perhaps deliberately – perhaps indicating Home Rule for Scotland. He has become a devout nationalist. Anyway it was all good clean fun.

  [...] I cannot make up my mind about Mara. One thing I'm certain of and that is that I couldn't live with her for more than two days. If one could only gag her it would be alright. E tells me how her father told her that he had long ago tuned off whenever her mother talked. Howard goes at it the other way. When Mara talks he talks, but louder, and the shriller she gets the more thunderous he becomes. I'm beginning to doubt whether they've had a proper conversation together for twenty years. In fact I can't imagine them having an ordinary chat as we have. The point about Mara is: is she stupid or not? Don't know. Is she silly or nasty or not? Don't know. If it were not for Howard I am pretty certain that E and I would make bloody certain that we were never in the same place as that most uncomfortable woman ever again. And it is not that I dislike her, it is simply that her manner and the content of her observations on life are so tremendously BORING. To the point of screaming. If only she could acquire the virtue of silence or force herself to listen when somebody anybody else is talking, she might be tolerable. There have been times when I longed to say ‘shut your bloody trap for just 15 minutes, only 15 little minutes, while Howard talks or Elizabeth finishes that story’. She also has the most unfortunate accent and intonation. Sometimes I have – in the past week – asked her a direct question and listened to the answer and have realized after 10 minutes that I haven't known what she's been saying for the past five. My mind has wandered off. Some teachers and lecturers and most pulpi
t preachers were like that. That's the criminal thing about having children – they keep incompatible people together. I believe that I heard vaguely that Howard took off once with another woman maybe, or just took off. I bet that he would never have gone back were it not for the children. The same with Francis too, I guess. There must have been a time, before he got too old, when he wanted out. It's funny that both father and son married two non-stop talkers. You'd think that Howard would have chosen a quiet woman for a partner after a lifetime of Sara's endless gabble but he chose a lady who could if anything out-talk Sara. [...]