The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  This was an astonishing step forward. Many young actors, some of them good like Dirk Bogarde, Donald Houston, Andrew Crawford, Jimmy Granger – I think – and Jean Simmons were under horrible contracts to the Rank Organization but I was under contract to Sir Alexander Korda and his other contract actors were Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson and a host of other giant names. A very much posher and distinguished lot than the Rank ‘stable’. In the end I never did do a film for Alex. He loaned me out to Emlyn Williams and Tolly de Grunwald and then to Fox for a film called My Cousin Rachel with Olivia de Havilland as my leading lady.41 I was still agent-less (unless one considers Korda as my agent) and Fox offered me $50,000. I had told Syb and the family that I was going to stick out for £7000. When the Fox representative, whose name oddly enough was Freddie Fox, offered me roughly twice what I was so ruthlessly determined to hold out for I agreed at once. I must confess to lying about it all to my friends and saying that I had fought them every inch of the way to get that enormous sum. To ice the cake Korda said he was not going to take his cut but that I should go out and buy a Rolls-Bentley immediately. I bought a Mark 8 Jaguar instead.

  But there was more to come. The man who insisted I played in the film was George Cukor, an infinitely wicked and loveable man as well as being, at his best, one of the very fine directors. He has seen me and was seeing me in a play of Lillian Hellman's yclept Montserrat.42 I didn't think much of the book or the script but I thought a lot of Cukor and my leading lady was, he assured me, to be either Garbo (who told me mendaciously but charmingly some months later, having seen the film, that she would have done it had she known I was so good) or Vivien.43 So I left with Syb and her brother Dai Mogs – just down from Cambridge with a deliberately indifferent degree – who was supposed to be my secretary though I ended up answering not only my own post but his too – on the Queen Mary first call and all found.44

  By the time we got to NY 51/2 days later Cukor had been either fired or had withdrawn (I never did find out which) and my leading lady was Olivia de Havilland who had just won two Oscars in three years and was in the language of Hollywood ‘hot, hot, hot.‘45 She was married to a very eccentric man, very forgettable, who thought that his wife was the mid-century Duse and had a notice put on the board that all members of the crew and cast were no longer to call Olivia ‘Livvy’ which was her long-established diminutive in the industry, but as Miss De Havilland at all times.46 I was also told by Zanuck's hatchet man [...] Lew Schreiber that Miss De Havilland would not permit me to have co-starring billing with her. I didn't mind about the billing a bit and to this day I have never cared about it but I did get the impression, later confirmed, that they were hoping I would do a Rex Harrison and arrogantly walk out as they wanted somebody else, or Miss De Havilland wanted somebody else – I seem to remember it was Greg Peck – to play my part.47 I said somewhat testily to Schreiber that I had worked with the greatest living actors and actresses and they hadn't fussed about billing. So I stayed but with a little murder in my heart for Miss De H. The film, for some forgotten reason was delayed for 7 weeks and we lived in a small – large to us – duplex apartment on Charleville Boulevard. It was during those seven weeks that I started the hunt for Jean.48 It didn't take long. What has this to do with Hungary? Well, eventually it will lead back to the loveable larcenous Sir Alex Korda. [...]

  Tuesday 8th, Budapest We arrived yesterday at exactly 5pm [...] when I arrived a pimply bloke with a mike asked me why I had come to Budapest. I said ‘You mean you don't know. I have come to do a film.’ Yes please, he said, and what is the name of the film? ‘Don't you read the papers?’ I queried, and then, at a nudge and a look from E, added ‘I have to do a film called Bluebeard.’ ‘What are you doing here Mrs Burton?’ ‘I am being Richard's wife’ said E. End of interview. Budapest was shrouded in Danube damp, ghostlike like London sometimes and is still the same this morning. Pretty cold too, but the suite – The Presidential Suite of course – is about the best appointed of its kind I've ever seen anywhere.49 It is enormous with an indoor garden and a massive balcony on which one could play tennis practically, certainly two games of table tennis. Additionally there is a heated indoor, glassed-in terrace. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dining room, a largeish kitchen and enough space for all of E's clothes. Sensational. Its only drawback, which I shall try to rectify today is that at night the lights are so low powered that it is difficult to read. One has to sit directly under the lamps to read.

  [...] There was much talk last night from Gianni, who is Jonah's half brother I swear, and Claudye about the recalcitrant intransigence of one of my ladies in the film. A lady I'd never heard of before this film called Joey Heatherton.50 She has refused to work until her clothes which she wore in Paris and approved have all been re-done by someone other than Vicky who designed the first lot.51 She sounds a frump but I shall be interested to find out if she carries on when I'm around. The probability is that she's talentless and knows it and is therefore frightened and hides behind a defensive cloak of ‘temperament’. Why couldn't they get a good actress? There are a lot about.

  The Danube – certainly not blue in this London weather – lies beneath us. It is as wide as the Thames at Westminster at this point I would guess. Perhaps a little less though I am a hopeless judge of water distances. The far ‘Buda’ side is thick with ice floes which are moving almost imperceptibly down river. It must be cold up in them thar hills.

  So far all the Hungarians I've met are very solemn though I did get our evening waiter to crack a somewhat pained smile. The tragedy of ‘56 must still be a giant sorrow. I shall get to know them better once I start work. Gaston says they are much nicer than the Jugs. That must be very nice indeed.

  But back to Korda. As a result of the enormous success of the Rachel film and the one following it – a terrible thing called The Robe – Fox offered me a million dollars for 7 years for 7 films. It was only later that I found out that in addition to paying me a million they had – forced to because I was still under contract to Korda – paid him a 1/2 million on the side. A few years later, after I'd found this out, I went to have dinner with Alex in Millionaires’ Row to which he had moved after living for years at Claridges taking his new wife with him. His brother had found a Canaletto and when I admired it Alex said, ‘Enjoy it my boy, you paid for it.‘52 The new wife incidentally after Alex died married a tall thin chap with an enormous nose, very lah-di-dah and possibly titled, and, poor thing, committed suicide a few years ago. She was very rich apparently, very beautiful certainly while Lah-di-dah married a quite dishy French Countess later.53 I always think of him with great suspicion as a sort of murderer once removed. Quite unjustified I suppose.

  [...] I am cunningly, stealthily, thief-in-the-nightly trying to make the ultimate personal sacrifice. Today I am smoking only with a filtered cigarette holder – I have forgotten twice out of ten cigs so far this morning – and after some days I shall try and cut down to after breakfast, then after 10, then 11, then 12 and so on. If my desire to do it is great enough I should succeed unless some catastrophe intervenes. But can I do it while working? [...] Yes, of course Richard, you can do anything if you try hard enough except certain things like running 100 yards in even time. [...]

  Wednesday 9th, Duna, Budapest [...] I am as happy as a scientist until Tommy Thompson of Life magazine and Eddie Dmytryk came to chat. It was alright for a bit but they – particularly Tommy sated us by staying on and on and we finally didn't have our pörkölt until nearly 10 o'clock.54

  Both E and I did our going to bed exercises last night together. It is difficult to keep a straight face when she is doing her numbers as she goes at it with a solemn ferocity which is hilarious. It is especially droll when we do running on the spot as she has to hold her breasts – one hand on each – for firm as they are, really like a thirty-year-old's more than a nearly forty-year-old's, they are pretty big and the resultant wiggle-waggle would be pretty odd as well as bad for her. It's a very fetching sight and w
ere it open to the public would fetch a lot of people. Like 10 million.

  [...] yesterday I started out on the Hungarian language. It is the kind of potted grammar which I adore, somewhat like ‘Hugo's’ grammars, which have little vocabs and exercises at the end of each lesson with the answers in the back half, third, of the volume. And all my answers were alright. Since it is neither a slav or romance language the acquisition of the vocab alone is a formidable task. It has, the vocab, no association with anything I know.

  I was up at 5.30 [...]. The bridges and the morning mist looked for all the world like a Whistler Nocturne except it was the Danube and not the Thames.55

  Apparently, according to Dmytryk, the girl Heatherton is as good as gold and the reason for her tantrums is simply nerves. To my surprise, on the other hand, they said that Raquel Welch is a monster of egoism and difficulty.56 For some reason, not ever except by accident reading the show pages of the various newspapers and mags I had the impression she was a nice and very pretty somewhat bewildered Marilyn.57 According to Tommy Thompson and Dmytryk she is an arch fiend. Everybody expects me to control her. How? My only defence against ‘temperament’ – though oddly enough I have ever hardly come across it – is to laugh and leave the set until everybody has cooled off. They expect me to awe her and frighten her into good behaviour. I have no intention of doing anything of the kind unless she really does behave boringly in which case I will turn all my ice-cold intellectual guns on her. [...]

  To my delight I got very good reception from the BBC on my little Philips Radio [...] I've looked again and it's not a Philips it's something called a Grundig. Inevitably German of course. When I turned it on at 6 there was a discussion going on about pornography. It was curious that the attackers were all lah-di-dah and cut-glass and chiffon and very pukka while the defenders – those who sold and published porno and made and showed the films were all provincially, mostly educated cockney accented. The pro-pornos in fact sounded dirty and salacious while the others with their Oxford and ‘County’ accents sounded faintly disgusted that they had to talk about such things at all may deah. It sounded in fact so funny that it might quite easily have been the Goon Show boys of delicious memory doing a send-up.58

  E has been up, had a glass of grapefruit juice, read my last two entries, walked on the terrace and gone back to bed. [...]

  Thursday 10th, Budapest I did not go to the studio at all yesterday. Elizabeth had to have a chat with Tommy Thompson of Life mag before her being snapped today by a very tall elegant – over elegant Englishman called Norman Parkinson (call me ‘Parks’ my dear) of whom neither of us had ever heard but who is apparently well known as a society photographer or something.59 At least I presume so as he snapped Princess Anne for the same distinguished mag a month ago.60 He reminded us separately and together that we had all met some years ago. [...] Thompson is a nice enough man but a bad interviewer so just as he was due I sloped off into the smaller of the two bedrooms to read while he interviewed.

  [...] Today I have to work. There is but no question that I am the laziest actor in the world with the possible exception of Marlon. My first scene today is merely to sit in front of the stage at the ‘Moulin Rouge’ and show myself attracted by the – as yet – unknown Miss Heatherton. I go to work at 11.30 to be ready at 1pm. I am so much more interested in Volcano that when I do think about my work at all it is always for the time being at least something that's in the future and not what I am presently doing. It has always been the case in my case. At Oxford if Chaucer was our task for that term I read Shakespeare, if Shakespeare I read the Metaphysicals, if the Romantics I read Eliot and Pound.61 Yesterday I read – switching from one to t'other Smokin’ Joe a book, very bad, about Frazier the current world heavyweight champ, a bit of Volcano and, in bed, Hag's Nook by Dr Fell, a John Dickson Carr whodunit.62 The script stared at me from the coffee table all day long. It is still staring at me so will stop staring back and attack it at last. [...]

  Saturday 11th63 [...] I read in the local German–English paper that Sarah Jane Todd, wife of Mike Junior, had died suddenly of a heart attack. Totally unfair as unfairness goes in this world. Never drank, never smoked, adored and lived for by her husband, 6 children the oldest of whom must be about 16–17. She died on Monday but we got the news today only. Also we have to wait until tonight or late this afternoon to attempt at least to call him. Helpless feeling all round. I hope, no cynicism intended that he gets married in a couple of years.64 He's a very married type and since he chose well the first time he probably will the second. [...]

  I worked yesterday. It involved me sitting in a box and looking at a girl dancer on the stage played by the hitherto anonymous Heatherton and with her looking uncertainly back up at maniac with the blue beard.

  Heatherton seems unbelievably ordinary which might be good for the part. She has one of those one-on-every-street-corner blonde rather common and at the drop of an insult I'm sure vicious bitchy faces. However the film comes first and I will do what I can to help her be good, because if she ain't good we only have half a picture. Dmytryk is very little and very brisk and light-voiced and intelligent and pretends to knowledge that he doesn't really have or has forgotten. The girl said that she had never been so nervous in her life at meeting anyone and that she had worshipped me ever since, as a schoolgirl (she was careful to point out) she had seen me in Anger and – wait for it – Bramble Bush. The first put her up in my estimation, the second sank her without trace. [...] Talk is that she is having a ding-dong, as the vernacular goes, with Dmytryk. I wouldn't be at all surprised as however else did she get the part? I mean, who had heard of her? And Ann-Margret who is currently fashionable, having made a success in Mike Nichols’ film Carnal Knowledge, had offered to play in Bluebeard.65 [...]

  I dwell on ‘Joey’ as she is yclept, as until I read the script again yesterday I had forgotten what an enormous part and opportunity it is and gives. Also I've got to learn to act this kind of Maria in the Red Barn melodrama.66 It has to be done with immense tongue in cheek. I try to remember how the master – whassisname – Vincent Price plays it. [...] Even voiced, measured in speech, purposeful in movement with the occasional violence in voice and movement. Must be funny serious. Shall know the minute I begin how to do it I hope. [...]

  Keep on thinking about poor Mike Junior. His mother died when young as E pointed out.67 His father died shockingly in an air-crash and they were very great friends. His wife dies after a skiing holiday at 41 years old. Rough on the poor little sod. Must try and talk to him tonight. And he's such a nice man. [...]

  Sunday 13th [...] Had a telegram yesterday saying that Jim Benton was in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital having a bad case of infectious hepatitis and since we had [been] in contact with him 10 days ago it was necessary for us to have a shot of Gamma Globulin – if that's the word I'm searching for as Bertie Wooster might say – an operation that I always dread ever since I had a mass of typhoid, tetanus, yellow fever, Gdang fever and other assorted shots to go to work in Morocco in 1964 and lo and behold – after being as sick as a dog for a week with each inoculatory disease as they took turns, and having to work at the same time at the Vic I suppose – we shot the film (Alex the Great) in Madrid – in and around Madrid – instead.68 [...]

  I worked, as ‘twere, for the first time yesterday. That is to say I did a full scene with the girl and her partner though he had nary a word to say and it seems to be alright. She has a natural hardness that might become effective as she is the only lady of the 8 who manages to turn the tables on me and escape. I might enjoy this film and one of the ways is to work hard at it and not ‘eef’ it or ‘wing’ it as I had thought to do. First of all I can, I think, improve my dialogue by paraphrasing what they already have – I don't mean on the spot, waiting for the inspiration paraphrasing but pre-planned re-writing. Keeping it to myself and simply doing it when the time comes for I know that directors dearly love to ‘kick it around a bit’ when you suggest a change of dialogue. That can –
and I'm pretty sure it applies to this man – mean a couple of wasted hours mucking about [...].

  The minute people go away and leave E alone she is a different woman. She came to the studio yesterday afternoon and waited until the end and we went home together, and for the first time spent an evening together without interruption from anybody except the waiter who unfortunately will hang around while we eat and though I'm sure he is not trying to listen to our conversation or any of that kind of spies everywhere rubbish it is still uncomfortable. We smile and nod and say that will be fine thank you, we'll help ourselves from now on and though he understands English perfectly, nevertheless it is cribbing cabining and confining.69 [...]

  We had our shots and E's left a lump like a goose egg whereas mine left nothing at all except a lot of blood on my underpants and pyjamas. I forgot to tell the Doctor that I am a bleeder. Whatever will the laundry think. [...]

  Monday 14th [...] I am still slowly persisting with the Lingua Magyar but it is not so sweet now as twas before and I had asked the young doctor who comes in now regularly – whether asked or not it seems – if he could spare five minutes, to record some ordinary phrases into my tape-recorder which he did and I thanked him but on playing it back I must have buggered up the device as he sounds as if he's speaking Turkish on a bad line from Istanbul via Vladivostok.70 I shall try again. [...] I don't ask much. I want to be able to ask for food and drink in the native tongue, acquire the numbers and the monetary system, and learn like a parrot about a page about any given current topic and show off. If anybody replies, I shall revert to English or if there's nobody around to understand it, Welsh.