The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  Susan has just come in to the room to talk to la concierge who is actually a Frenchwoman. The woman had asked me in rapid French if she could talk to Madame Burton. Obviously being tested I replied in equally rapid French that I would go and find her. Susan has just said that the concierge had asked if Susan would like her dead or dropping dying death's worst winding sheets tombs and worms and tumbling into decay flowers to be removed from the suite rooms, but her actual reason was to hear me talk.54 ‘Quelle voix extraordinaire! Ah!’ ‘Le Roi de Voix’. Now, peculiarly enough Susan who couldn't have a more different background from Bob Wilson has almost as quick and true an instinctive reaction to people as he does. At a party they will silently, across a crowded room, especially a crowded dressing room after a performance, agree or concur with minute eye-contacts and head-shakes of exquisitely imperceptible signals who's ‘class’ and genuine or ‘no class’ and meretricious. Later they will give me the benefit of their combined instincts. Bob Wilson is 74 and Susan is 31. Bob is tall (6’ 3") and Susan is tall (5’ 10"), he is handsome, she is beautiful, they both speak differing forms of English but there the similarity ends. Bob is black. Susan is very white and blonde streaked. Bob worked on the railroads in Pittsburgh etc and his grandparents were slaves. Susan's father is Brigadier Frederick Miller and her mother Dierdre Wallis with some connections with the Duchess of Devonshire.55 Bob learned the three ‘R's. Susan grew up in Kenya, convent taught where her officially retired father was a lawyer and a judge. Bob's father is never mentioned and is still a mystery to me, his mother is still alive, immensely old and in a home. An absolutely impossibility for two such people to bridge that mighty chasm and understand each other even vaguely [...]. But on the contrary they understand each other perfectly and did from the first meeting 41/2 years ago. I continue to be continually surprised by life. He Bob Wilson said to me one day quite recently that I had great taste in women. ‘All your wives, Sybil, Elizabeth and Susan don't have an atom of prejudice in them. Neither does Valerie (Douglas) (my sister, my mother my baby and my Manager). Val may not like me but she hasn't got a prejudiced bone in her body.’

  [...] Susan came into the room 15 minutes ago dressed for the party tonight. She is one of the few women in the world – certainly in my world – who could carry off such a fantasy of dress. Though ‘dress’ is the wrong word. It's actually black trousers, a kind of black ‘merry widowish’ top with a diaphanous black jacket that comes down to mid thigh. I should ravish her on the spot. I'll ask her if I may. On second thoughts I'll do it after the performance. Tiredly and gently.

  Friday 29th, Chicago We opened last night and it went well. Christine, and Richard Muenz [...] were ‘up’ and so was I, though my shoulder gave me hell all night but surprisingly eased at the party afterwards. We arrived home at 2am and made cups of tea and grapple-snapped (Howard Taylor's, now the family's word, for raiding the refrigerator at sporadic intervals) [...]until long after dawn. And we talked and talked and talked – about Franz Allers and his delightful self adoration, about how old he was (74) and agreed that we loved him and his funny ways – about Eres McClure (John McClure's wife) and how earnest and subdued and intelligent she was last night.56 She is a lovely woman, dark and high cheek-boned easily mistaken for an American Indian though she is in fact Israeli born and bred. [...] I took in the newspapers a couple of hours ago and saw a boxed announcement on the front page of one of them ‘Burton regal in Camelot. See Page 22’ or something like that. [...] I haven't read my notices for years but of course everybody else does. M. Merrick is amusingly predictable about them – he calls really vicious ones ‘personal vendettas’, bad ones ‘constructive’ and very good ones ‘love letters.’ I wonder why he is so worried about the critics. I'm not and he, I think, is uncertain as to whether I'm pulling his leg or not when I say simply and honestly ‘How's the box-office?’ or ‘Are we sold out.’ I mean it's no use having good notices and empty houses – much better to have stinkers and full houses. There is nothing, simply nothing that dispirits me more than to see great black blocked gaps in the audience like missing teeth. It's only happened to me once since I became a leading actor and it's an experience I didn't at all relish. (Legend of Lovers. Anouilh NY mid-fifties sometime.57) I've been very lucky in that way. A very different matter in films over which I have little or no control. We talked a lot too, in the small hours, of Elizabeth. We both are very fond of her and for some reason worry about her. I can't think why. She seems to be all right. It's the first time we've talked at length about her for a long time. Hope she's happy, as we are. Sounds fearfully smug which I suppose it is but it's true.

  Susan awake (3pm) and has read the notices. I could feel her fury or disappointment. She said ‘what did you say about the critics before we opened in Chicago.’ I replied ‘if they're good in New York they'll almost certainly be bad here.’ Well, she said, I was right though they're actually a bit bland rather than bad, she said. ‘Are they good for the kids?’ I said meaning Christine, Richard Muenz in particular, but also Fox, Valentine and of course Paxton.58 ‘Yes,’ she said. [...] She then said (God how I love this child) ‘I am now going to have a bath and get myself CLEAN.’ The ‘clean’ was said in majestically capital letters and victoriously underlined. So yet another first night is over and it seems that the houses – gigantic as they are – will be full ones. [...]

  SEPTEMBER

  Friday 5th, Chicago This city is very pleasing and unless I'm careful it will erode my affection for London and New York as being my first and second favourite cities. (Rome, LA, and Paris are villages avec beaucoup des banlieus.59 Our day off (last Monday) co-incided with Columbus or Labor Day – which meant that the city was like London or New York on a Sunday – streets virtually deserted and very little traffic. [...] A lot of the restaurants were closed for the day but a few were not, including an Indian place called The Khyber. It was cool and pleasant and the food was good though no Indian restaurant have I found yet, anywhere, makes the spices hot enough. [...] I was surprised when I went to the lavatory that it [...] was filthy. [...] I am reminded of a story that D. M. Thomas told us about Caradoc Evans.60 Now Caradoc Evans was a very Welsh Welshman who hated his own country and countrymen, hatred that was closely akin to love in its hostile virulence. He had written a famous diatribe against the Welsh in a book or a play called Taffy a pile of which books had been, so I'm told publicly burned in the towns of Aberystwyth Bangor Swansea and Cardiff by students.61 Once below a time, as D. M. Thomas wrote, they, together with Augustus John and Louis MacNeice and others were drinking in a pub in Ceinewydd (New Quay) in Wales (a bewitching sailor's town) when Caradoc when offered a drink said darkly ‘Where are your lavatories. I wish to inspect them.‘62 The barman an authentic cor blimey cockney said, ‘they are outside turn left, left again and Bob's your uncle.’ Caradoc left. Caradoc returned. He said ‘I will have a drink now.’ ‘You must be a foreigner and not Welsh.’ ‘Well now,’ said the sound of bow-bells, ‘how did you guess that?’ ‘Because,’ said Caradoc in a mighty voice, ‘your urinals are clean!‘63

  It's 12.45 and Susan is still asleep. I have been awake and up and about and reading and writing this since about 10.30. We went to bed very late and I would guess that Susan didn't get to sleep until 7 or 8 or 9 o'clock this morning. She is dreadfully worried about her twin sister in South Africa.64 We are trying to get her out of South Africa and to us here in Chicago without her husband's knowledge [...]. She has a 7 month old baby and the husband is found to be, I put it mildly, incompatible. [...] We are very anxious to get Vivvy and the child away before he does irretrievable damage to either or both. [...] We hope to fly her to Frankfurt where she will get a visitor's visa to these United States and fly on from there to us here in Chicago. We are continually on edge and will remain so until she and baby Vanessa arrives. Also excited at the prospect of having a small baby around. 1pm and time to awaken Susan who is going to see The Empire Strikes Back a sequel to Star Wars.65 She goes with Bill Parry (Sir Din
idan in Camelot and my understudy) and two girls from the chorus Melanie and Laura.66 I may go with them. They guarantee me bad acting which I enjoy.

  [...] Yesterday, with Christine (Guenevere) Ebersole, I went on the Donahue talk show which is apparently unique among its kind in that it invites the audience to ask the interviewees questions.67 It went along predictably enough. Same old questions. Same old answers. Booze, Elizabeth Taylor, which kind I prefer – stage or films etc? I felt sorry for Mr Donahue. He tried so hard to be provocative and had, fatal for an interviewer, got a couple of stock phrases locked into his brain in his exchanges with me which became almost uncomfortably ineffective as the hour wore on. [...] Susan listened and watched in the sound booth hoping that Mr Donahue would not ask about the booze and especially the one-night crack-up on Broadway. When, inevitably, he did, she said quietly ‘Vulgarian.‘68 The technicians who had been talking like mad went absolutely silent. She also said that when I mentioned Dick Cavett and Irv Kupcinet (two other talk-show hosts) they, the technicians, said respectively ‘shit’ and ‘son-of-a-bitch’.69 I think of Donahue's job and shudder. Every day, day after day, he has this shabby shop-soiled little show to do. The strain must be enormous. Cavett really seems to enjoy his work but, on yesterday's evidence Mr Donahue does not. Later Christine said at the side of the stage as we were due to go on in Camelot. ‘You're such a gentle man (not gentleman) that you made him look crass.’ [...] Ah well. Kupcinet next. I wonder if he'll be the same. In person he's a treasure – and his wife too. [...]

  Thursday 18th 13 days since writing – at least in this apology for a journal. Most importantly Vivvy and Vanessa [...] have arrived from J'burg. [...] Both Susan and I and grandparents and Valerie and Bob immensely relieved. [...] Now for the dreariness of divorce and who gets custody of the baby etc. That could go on and on. But [...] – I am delighted with the child. I have played with her for hours. And I'm trying to remember what my other babies were like at that age – Kate, Jessica and Maria. I cannot remember of course.

  [...] Susan and Vivienne and Baby and I and a brilliant sunny autumnal day and full houses. What more could one euphorically want? And so to walk.

  [...] As I entered the hotel I was greeted by a thunderous Welsh accent saying ‘Well look who's here by God Almighty. I heard you were about but didn't think I'd see you.’ I replied ‘Sen he has all my brether ta'en He will nocht let me live alane. Of force I man his nex’ prey be Timor mortis conturbat me.‘70 It was Ian Bannen, the very fine, highly eccentric Scots actor.71 With him was his wife. So he has married at last after years of living with this one and that one. He must be 50 years old or so. I remember him first at Stratford-upon-Avon at the Memorial Theatre (now called ‘The Royal Shakespeare') and was intrigued by the fact that he had a very (to me then) expensive two-seater sports car despite the fact that he was a mere walk-on and understudy. Among other roles, he understudied that of the Scot in Henry V in which I played the King. One night the actor playing the Scot was off and this boy went on. To me it was sensational – Bannen showed immediate, perhaps instinctive, dynamic quality. Nobody else seemed to notice. It was therefore no surprise to me that later he became one of the world's finest actors. He is, at the moment, doing a personal appearance tour for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.72 [...] I'm very fond of him. His wife is attractive and seemingly good and kind. He needs that – I would guess. The last time I worked with him I played Winston Churchill and he played Hitler. I thought he was splendid but the American producers thought he'd gone too far. I didn't think so and said that it was almost impossible to go too far with A. Hitler. They made him tone it down which I still think a shame. The show was for the Hallmark Hall of Fame yet! As they say. Very frightened people the latter lot. The NY Times had asked me to write about playing WSC and had published the article which wasn't entirely complimentary about ‘the great man’ on the Sunday of the TV premiere of the film in the USA.73 I'm told that the Hallmark Hall of Fame people nearly had several heart attacks and seriously thought of cancelling the show.74 So frightened indeed, is everybody in American TV [...] that one derogatory article in the August NY Times sends them immediately into conniptions. When one realizes that though the NY Times is read by a couple of million people and the viewing figures for a show of that magnitude are 60 or 70 or 80 millions who could not possibly be affected by what I wrote in the NY Times on the very day of issue and show one begins to wonder afresh at the sickness of our Western Society. Further, though I was very good in the part and would have been a certainty for the abominable Emmy (for make-up) if nothing else, my article struck at their fearless hearts and I wasn't even nominated. What should such creatures as they do, crawling between heaven and earth.75 [...] Almost time to go to work. [...]

  It's 11.55 and midnight is upon us again. In the car on the way home I saw what I thought with my bad eyesight, was the moon and muttered almost to myself: ‘Regard the moon. La Lune ne garde aucune rancune, She winks a feeble eye, she smiles into corners, she smoothes the hair of the grass. A washed out small pox cracks her face.’ Susan asked ‘What's that you're saying?’ I said that it was T. S. Eliot – a bit from ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’.76 When we were home, I said, I would try and remember the whole thing. I've tried (Susan is cooking supper) and can't get it all. Large lumps of it but not the whole thing. That means a walk to a book shop tomorrow. Unless midnight, ‘this midnight, tonight,’ shakes the memory as a madman shakes a dead geranium.‘77 I must confess that some of Eliot's metaphors are hard wrought and sometimes unlikely and not at all evocative. ‘Prufrock’ for instance with ‘when the evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherised upon the table.‘78 Shocking then I suppose but a dead and very forced image now. [...]

  Tuesday 23rd We are playing 13 days consecutively. Last night after a sleepless (who knows why?) night I laboured mightily through the piece with sudden turns of my head making me dizzy, both shoulders taut with pain, and legs of lead. [...] Came home immediately, dined while watching with dulled eyes Roger Moore in a Saint episode.79 To bed and read and slept for ten solid hours. Consequent feeling of relief today almost amounting to joie de vivre.