The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  The Kissinger tea, cocktails and dinner was v. interesting though somewhat nerve-wracking especially for Susan who didn't know who everybody was not having caught their names. I filled her in as quickly and as often as they were out of earshot. ‘Joe Alcott famous, sometimes brilliant and always instinct with probity, political writer.’ ‘William F. Buckley (Bill), T.V. talk show star political writer too, brilliant too, not too sure of his probity.’ Harry Evans we had to be told about as he was new to both of us.44 Editor of London Sunday Times with a provincial accent. 42 years old or 44 I'm not sure. Irish-Welsh he said of himself. Did a very good Welsh accent. Mrs Buckley – sloshed.45 ‘Happy’ Rockefeller – sloshed too but sweet and very un’ happy.’ Not surprising after the death of Nelson Rockefeller.46 And the manner of his death. I spent a long time comforting her. Susan too. The Kissingers and Susan and thy humble servant all sober. Ed of the Times – careful. Joe Alcott a bit tight but impeccably spoken at all times. He spoke with a veddy veddy English upper class accent. ‘Where on earth did you, a Yankee, get such an English accent?’ I asked. ‘I was very badly educated,’ he replied. Buckley [...] very red in the face and tried desperately to make it a brilliant evening. Much talk of the Middle East. Only Jordan (the kingdom, not the politics) could solve the situation with the PLO etc.47 ‘Happy’ Rockefeller said Buckley had no common-sense. She may have been right that night. We like the Kissingers more and more and Susan now feels at home with them. I always have done. I reasoned that after our first meeting in Jerusalem they wouldn't ask me back unless they liked me for my little timid self alone. Acting and actors were rarely if ever mentioned which is an enormous relief. I liked everyone there and, our hosts apart, ‘Happy’ and Joe Alcott the best. He has a wicked leprechaunish air about him and is deliciously acerbic – barbed at all points. ‘Hiss was guilty as hell,’ he said.48 [...] ‘I'm confused,’ I said. I've over-read on that case. ‘How can you be so sure?’ ‘Dean Acheson told me and my brother Stew,’ he said.49 ‘In private, of course, in public he said that he would never turn his back on a friend.’ He also said that Dean Acheson felt very uncomfortable with journalists – ‘he accepted Stew and he accepted me with albeit some reluctance because we had aristocratic connections but he equated being a journalist as someone who was “in trade”’.

  It never ceases to surprise me despite my wide reading of history and the inevitability of the class system in any form of government or society and their rigid adherence to their own shibboleths when the Americans show it at all levels. ‘In trade’ indeed? In the USA indeed? Yes indeed! Buckley is very American but European mostly in his way of thinking I believe – like his arch-enemy Gore Vidal.50 [...]

  All of them seemed to have read one or other of my occasional published writings and seemed to my relief far more interested in that part of me than the acting part. I couldn't have been better pleased. The Editor of the London Sunday Times suggested that I write about the American hinterland. I was going there for the first time – why didn't I make it a book? Any good and he would publish extracts in the Sunday Times. He'd paid £32,000 or was it £38,000? to William Manchester for six or eight extracts from his latest.51 Why not me? Why not indeed, I thought? I said I would ponder over it and perhaps send him a few thousand words to see if or how he liked it. I still don't know if I will but it's an intriguing temptation. But what can I do about getting out and around. I cannot sit in a public park or any public place, restaurant or bar or church without being recognized within minutes. Like Hamlet but not for the same splendid reasons I am the observed of all the observers52 Being famous or infamous depending on whether you're Dean Acheson or Harry Goldberg the cab-driver has that disadvantage, and there are others but, I quickly must add, the advantages greatly out number the disadvantages. One curiosity about being as peculiarly well known as I am is that almost everywhere I go, it's the other people who change – not me. In the restaurant for instance, once it is known that I'm there and, gradually, Susan too, it's the other diners who begin to be self conscious and start unconsciously to act. Women especially become arch or arrogant, simpering or ultra-sophisticated [...] and everybody covertly, they think, stare at Susan – searching her hair, her jewelry, her clothes, her fingernails, face, figure legs and feet. A great many restaurants in these limited states have mirrors and it is sometimes amusing to sit at a mirrored bar with Susan beside me, while waiting for a table, [...] and watch the subtle changes of attitude and posture and pose and poise of the others. I taught Susan, who, unlike me, is shy almost to the point of being in pain, to watch them and I think it has greatly eased her shyness but she is still indignant that whenever she goes to the loo she is always followed by a gaggle of women who are hoping to see her at close quarters and her underclothes Bill Buckley would zengmatically say.53 I got the impression from Buckley, oddly, that in his conversation and questions to Henry K he was anti-semitic. He used the word ‘Israelis’ for instance with greater assurance than the word ‘Jewish’ or ‘Jews’ and yet he said both with a kind of furtive defiance. I may have mistaken what was a slight awe of Kissinger, his fame and achievements with anti-semitism but I honestly don't think so. Coming from a minority myself and having been taught by Bob Wilson how to look out for the signs of prejudice I am pretty sure I was not mistaken. Wilson and I have been together for some 25 years. He is a negro or a black, take your choice, and his antennae are always miles out waiting for the signals. ‘You see that guy,’ he said of a white man at a party years ago, ‘he hates my people's guts.’ ‘How do you know?’ I asked. The fellow had been sitting beside us and seemed weak but pleasant enough. ‘He's just asked me if I would let him freshen my drink. And I've let him.’ ‘So?’ I said. ‘He didn't ask if he could freshen yours.’ It was true, for I looked at my drink and saw the glass empty. Later on I came to know the man better – a theatre-buff in NY – and gradually I got him by very oblique statements, questions and answers to prove Bob right. He couldn't stand he told me finally ‘uppity niggers.’ It was a massive vindication of Bob's life-long experience. From then on, for some time I relied on Bob's judgements of people. He is always uncannily right. And though I think I'm pretty good myself now I always double check with Bob as I am still a little too naively trusting. I tell people, tongue slightly in cheek, that it's part of my charm but it is true. I am still appalled (at the age of 54) when I find out – and the evidence has to be overwhelming – that someone I like and trusted has lied to me, or stolen from me or cheated me. I lie quite freely myself but my lies are usually to make somebody else feel better and are rarely, if ever, egoistically prompted though some times egotistically so. Sometimes there is, to my sorrow, a touch of self aggrandizement in my talk. In vino which I never am nowadays I lose all control and will lie in my teeth about anybody or anything and viciously too. I am not a nice man at those times. I hope they never recur.

  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 e
nds. 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 Dinidan 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, h
e 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. [...]