The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  66 Auberge du Pere Bise, Talloires.

  67 Bulle, just west of the southern end of Lac de la Gruyère.

  68 Sandie Shaw (1947—) had won the Eurovision Song Contest with ‘Puppet on a String’ in 1967.

  69 Mara Taylor, Howard's wife.

  70 Colonel Louis Johannot (1919–2009).

  71 Ava Gardner (1922–80), actor, who had played alongside Burton in The Night of the Iguana. Ricardo Sicre, a friend of Gardner, whose son, also Ricardo, went on to study at Yale University.

  72 This may be a jokey reference to Norma Heyman (1940—), John Heyman's wife.

  73 Yul Brynner (1915–85), actor, by this time married to his second wife, Doris Kleiner (the marriage ended in 1967). Morges is 11 km west of Lausanne on the northern shore of Lake Geneva.

  74 Grande Hotel Bellevue, Gstaad.

  75 Hôtel Beau Rivage, Quai du Mont Blanc, Geneva.

  76 Nella was Elizabeth Taylor's maid.

  77 Ernst Andrea Scherz, owner and manager of the Gstaad Palace, with his wife Shiwa. The Scherz family had been running the Gstaad Palace Hotel since 1938.

  78 Victoria Brynner was born in November 1962.

  79 Stephen Marlowe (1928–2008), writer. The Shining appeared in 1961. Marlowe wrote many thrillers.

  80 Vivien Leigh (1913–67), actor, former wife of Laurence Olivier.

  81 Jayne Mansfield (1933–67), actor. Although she suffered severe head injuries, the rumour that she was decapitated is untrue.

  82 Gianni Bozzacchi, photographer. He and Claudye would marry in June 1968.

  83 Roy Emerson (1936—), Manuel Santana (1938—), and Rafael Osuna (1938–69) were all international tennis stars. Emerson would beat Santana in the final in 1967 for the second year running.

  84 Paula Strasberg (1909–66), actor. Lee Strasberg (1899–1982), drama teacher, founder of the Actors’ Studio and guru of ‘method’ acting. Susan Strasberg (1938–99), actor, was their daughter, and had been Richard's lover in the late 1950s.

  85 'Anche io’ is Italian for ‘me too’.

  86 Jim McManus (1940—) and Jim Osborne (1940—), international tennis players, beaten in the men's doubles.

  87 Gavin Maxwell, Ring of Bright Water (1960).

  88 Neuchâtel, a city on the northern shore of Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

  89 Posthotel Rössli, Promenade, Gstaad.

  90 Salisbury, Wiltshire, slightly more than halfway between London and Street, Somerset.

  91 R. J. O. Meyer (1905–91), headmaster of Millfield, former captain of Somerset (cricket).

  92 The Bobo. Peter Sellers was at this point married to Britt Ekland (1942—).

  93 Sammy Davis Jr (1925–90), entertainer.

  94 Taormina, a small town on the east coast of Sicily.

  95 Peter O'Toole, actor, who had played alongside Burton in Becket and would play alongside both Burton and Taylor in Under Milk Wood. Between 1959 and 1979 he was married to the Welsh actor Siân Phillips (1934—), who had also acted in Becket and would act in Under Milk Wood.

  96 At this point O'Toole had been twice nominated for Oscars (for Lawrence of Arabia and Becket). His current (2012) tally stands at eight nominations, one higher than Burton.

  97 Catania, city on the east coast of Sicily, and location of the Fontanarossa airport.

  98 Michael Wilding Sr. ‘Maggie’ refers to Wilding's fourth wife, the actor Margaret Leighton.

  99 Burton and Taylor (and O'Toole) were attending the Taormina Film Festival.

  100 Noël Coward (1899–1973), actor, director and playwright.

  101 Burton had played the Marquis of Sheere in Coward's Conversation Piece.

  102 Ehud Avriel (1917–80), Israel's ambassador to Italy, 1965–8.

  103 Grand Hotel de la Minerve, Plaza della Minerva, Rome.

  104 Jane Swanson, secretary to Burton and Taylor.

  105 Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), wrote La Traviata (first performance 1853); Robert Merrill (1917–2004), operatic baritone. His second wife was Marion Machno (d. 2010).

  106 Taverna Flavia, Via Flavia 91, Rome.

  107 Hôtel Président Wilson, Quai Wilson, Geneva.

  108 Chambésy, a village on the northern outskirts of Geneva.

  109 Leighton: really Layton. Son of Howard and Mara.

  110 William David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech (1918–85), at this point leading the Harlech Television consortium which would win the franchise from Television Wales and the West.

  111 Francis (1954—), the current Baron Harlech, Alice (1952–95) and Victoria (1945—).

  112 Sylvia Thomas (1940–67).

  113 Lord Derby, chairman of Television Wales and the West.

  114 A reference to T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land (1922), which opens with the line ‘April is the cruellest month’. ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’, a reference to Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act V, scence v.

  115 Hotel Capo Caccia is on the Capo Caccia peninsula, near Alghero, a port on the north-west coast of Sardinia.

  116 'Evan Roberts Tiziani’ is a slip – it was Evan Richards. Evan Roberts (1878–1951) was a Welsh evangelist who had led the 1904–05 religious revival in Wales. A Kabuki headdress is an elaborate Japanese wig.

  117 A steward on the Kalizma.

  118 W. John Morgan (1929–88), Welsh journalist and television producer, also involved with the establishment of HTV. The New Statesman is a British socialist weekly magazine.

  119 Michael Dunn (1935–73) played Rudi in Boom!

  120 Graham Payn (1918–2005), actor and companion of Coward. ‘Coley’ was his secretary Cole Lesley (d. 1980).

  121 David Niven (1909–83), actor.

  122 Joanna Shimkus (1943—) played the role of Blackie, the secretary to Flora Goforth (played by Taylor).

  123 Valerio DePaolis (1942—), who was to perform again as Unit Manager in Divorce His, Divorce Hers.

  124 Peter Thorneycroft (1909–94), previously Conservative MP for Stafford (1938–45) and Monmouth (1945–66), formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer, had lost his seat at the 1966 general election and become Baron Thorneycroft. His second wife was Carla, Contessa Roberti (1914–2007), by whom he had had a son (Piero) and a daughter (Francesca).

  125 Bonifacio, port on the southern tip of Corsica.

  126 David Heyman (1961—), more famous today for being the producer of the Harry Potter films.

  127 Paris was to be the venue for the European premiere of Taming of the Shrew.

  128 Cavalcade (1931).

  129 The play Blithe Spirit (1941). Portmeirion, an Italianate holiday village and architectural flight of fancy in Merionethshire, North Wales.

  130 Joyce Carey (1898–1993), who appeared in the film Blithe Spirit (1945).

  131 Burton and Taylor would appear on stage together in 1983 in a production of Private Lives (1933).

  132 Hay Fever (1925).

  133 Jacqueline de Ribes (1929—), designer, couturière and socialite. Her husband was Edouard, comte de Ribes.

  134 It could have been either Elie (1917–2007) or his cousin Guy (1909–2007).

  135 'La Scandale’: the affair between Burton and Taylor. It should be ‘Le Scandale’.

  136 Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970), President of France.

  137 Curd (often Curt) Jurgens (1915–82), actor, who had played alongside Burton in Bitter Victory. His wife at this time was Simone Bicheron.

  138 The Bear Hotel, Sunninghill, Woodstock, Oxfordshire.

  139 David Lewin and James Mossman interviewed Burton and Taylor. Alexander Walker (1920–2003), film critic and writer who would publish a biography of Elizabeth Taylor. Lord David Cecil (1902–86), Professor of English Literature at Oxford, 1948–70. Professor Marvin Rosenberg of the University of California, Berkeley, Shakespearean expert (1912–2003).

  140 Dylan being Dylan Thomas. David Jones (1895–1974), author of In Parenthesis (1937).

  141 Louis MacNeice was a friend of Burton.

  142 Archibald MacLeish (1892–
1982), poet.

  143 Mildred Eldridge (1909–91), artist and wife of R. S. Thomas.

  144 Nuffield Hospital, Woodstock Road, Oxford.

  145 Quintin Hogg (1907–2001), Conservative MP for St Marylebone, formerly (and again after 1970), Lord Hailsham, who had been a contender for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 1963 but had lost out to Edward Heath (1916–2005). Robert Boothby (1900–86), Baron Boothby from 1958, another Conservative politician, who had married earlier that year Wanda Sanna, a Sardinian woman 33 years his junior.

  146 Prince Edward, Duke of Kent (1935—) and Katharine, Duchess of Kent (1933—).

  147 Rolf Hochhuth's play Soldiers, Necrology on Geneva (1967). Burton was considering playing the role of Churchill.

  148 Bettina Krahmer, Guy Rothschild's stepdaughter by his first marriage.

  149 Costa Smeralda, on the north-eastern coast of Sardinia.

  150 Alberto and Raphael were crew members on the Kalizma.

  151 Liscia di Vacca, a bay between Porto Cervo and Pevero, on the Costa Smeralda. It means ‘beach of the cows’.

  152 Curtis Bill Pepper (1917—), war correspondent and head of the Rome bureau for Newsweek magazine.

  153 Port city some 60 km south of Rome.

  1968

  1 Fitzroy Nuffield Hospital, Bryanston Square, London.

  2 Michael Holroyd (1935—), Lytton Strachey: The New Biography (1968).

  3 Muriel Spark, (1918–2006) The Public Image (1968). Raymond Vignale, also secretary to Taylor.

  4 ‘God save the mark!’ is a line spoken by Hotspur in Henry IV (Part 1), Act III, scene ii.

  5 Johann Sebastian Bach was Burton and Taylor's housekeeper at Chalet Ariel, Gstaad.

  6 The Wells, Well Walk, Hampstead.

  7 At this point Taylor was planning to make The Only Game in Town with Frank Sinatra, singer, actor. The subsequent delay led Sinatra to withdraw from the project, and he was replaced by Warren Beatty (1937—).

  8 Burton means autobiography. A. L. Rowse, A Cornishman in Oxford (1965), p. 145: ‘He [Cecil] asked me along to lunch: it would have been kinder to ask me to tea, for I foresaw that some fearful social obstacle would rear its ugly head. It did – in the form of asparagus – and I was inwardly vexed. How did one eat it? It was the same conundrum that was raised in an aristocratic Officers’ Club under the Nazis: how did the Führer eat his asparagus? I could not bring myself to plunge my fingers into the mess, as my host did without ado; so I proudly left it on the side of my plate.’ Burton and Rowse (1903–97) would become friends in the last months of Burton's life, after appearing on American television together.

  9 Terence Young (1915–94) was to direct Burton in The Klansman and was also director for the ill-fated film Jackpot.

  10 Brook Williams (1938–2005), actor, son of Emlyn and Molly Williams, was a great friend of Burton's and acted alongside him in more than a dozen films starting with Cleopatra and ending with Wagner.

  11 Sally, daughter of Stanley and Ellen Baker.

  12 Ethel Kennedy (1928—), widow of Robert F. Kennedy (1925–68), US Senator, candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for President, who had been assassinated in June 1968.

  13 Aristotle Onassis (1904–75), shipping magnate, who was to marry Jackie Kennedy (1929–94), widow of President John F. Kennedy, in October 1968.

  14 The documentary film (which won an Oscar for Best Short Subject Documentary) was directed by Charles Guggenheim (1924–2002) and entitled Robert Kennedy Remembered.

  15 Hôtellerie du Bas Breau, Grande Rue, Barbizon, Fontainebleau.

  16 Dr Barrington Cooper (1923–2007), who had been introduced to Burton and Taylor by Joseph Losey.

  17 Hyral was Tom's second wife.

  18 This story is not true: the name comes from the German words pumpern (to break wind) and Nickel (goblin).

  19 Mary (1542–87), Queen of Scots (1542–67).

  20 Nicholas Ray (1911–79), the director.

  21 Cambridge University has no record of Barry Cooper winning a Blue for rowing.

  22 This refers to the Crichton-Stuarts, Marquesses of Bute, whose family seat is Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute.

  23 The term ‘non-U’ means not upper class. The distinction between ‘U’ and ‘non-U’ terminology and linguistic usage was popularised in the 1950s by the author Nancy Mitford (1904–73).

  24 Roscoe Lee Browne (1925–2007) had appeared alongside Burton and Taylor in The Comedians.

  25 P. G. Wodehouse, Do Butlers Burgle Banks? (1968).

  26 Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, 1911–1918 (1923).

  27 Burton was to co-star with Rex Harrison in Staircase.

  28 Richard Zanuck (1934–2012), son of Darryl F. Zanuck and President of Twentieth Century-Fox.

  29 John C. Shepridge had been executive producer of What's New Pussycat?

  30 Rue du Vertbois.

  31 Mia Fonssagrives (1942—), clothes designer on What's New Pussycat? and The Only Game in Town, partner of Vicky Tiel in the Paris boutique Mia and Vicky. George Davis: one of Taylor's secretaries.

  32 Rocky Brynner (1946—), son of Yul Brynner.

  33 George Stevens (1904–75), director of The Only Game in Town, who had also directed Taylor in A Place in the Sun and Giant.

  34 European Cup Holders Celtic beat St Etienne 4–0 at Celtic Park, Glasgow, in the second leg of their first round tie, winning 4–2 on aggregate.

  35 ‘W.B.’ is Warren Beatty. Elizabeth is teasing her sometimes jealous husband.

  36 Elliott Kastner (1930—) had produced Where Eagles Dare and would also produce Villain, Absolution, and the Taylor film X, Y and Zee.

  37 Jim Benton, Burton's secretary, and partner of George Davis.

  38 Pat Newcomb (1930—), press agent.

  39 Justine (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1969), directed by George Cukor (1899–1983).

  40 The Man From Nowhere was a screenplay that Joseph Losey was discussing with Burton at this time, but which fell through when Burton decided to act in Where Eagles Dare instead.

  41 Jay Kanter, agent of Marlon Brando, who would produce the Burton film Villain and the Taylor film X, Y and Zee (1971).

  42 Lew Wasserman (1913–2002), head of Universal Pictures. Ed Henry, senior executive at Universal Pictures.

  43 Liz Smith (1923—).

  44 Alexis Rosenberg, 2nd Baron de Redé (1922–2004), collector, socialite.

  45 Marie-Hélène de Rothschild (1927–96), socialite and wife of Guy de Rothschild.

  46 Maria Callas (1923–77), opera singer.

  47 Paul-Emile Victor (1907–95), explorer, ethnologist.

  48 Burton means Bora-Bora, in the Leeward Islands.

  49 Florinda Bolkan (1937—), actor, had played alongside Burton in Candy. Oggi (Today) is an Italian magazine.

  50 Burton is here referring to his published volumes A Christmas Story (1965) and Meeting Mrs Jenkins (1966).

  51 Terry O'Neill (1938—), famed photographer of the 1960s.

  52 Lester Piggott (1935—).

  53 Bobby Charlton (1937—), of Manchester United and England. Billy Bremner (1942–97), of Leeds United and Scotland.

  54 A reference to paintings owned by Burton and Taylor by Vincent Van Gogh (1853–90), Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Claude Monet (1840–1926), Maurice Utrillo (1883–1955), and Augustus John (1878–1961). The Monet was Le Val de Falaise. The Picasso was La Famille de saltimbanques.

  55 A reference to the Wall Street stock market ‘crash’ of 1929.

  56 Sheran Cazalet had married Simon Hornby on 15 June 1968.

  57 Sir Jacob Epstein (1880–1959) had cast a bust of Churchill in 1946. Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958), painter.

  58 Kevin McCarthy (1914–2010), actor. Hôtel La Voile d'Or, Avenue Jean Mermoz, Saint Jean Cap Ferrat.

  59 Roderick Cameron, owner of Villa Fiorentina.

  60 Lana Turner (1921–95), actor, at this time married to Robert P. Eaton. She had played alongside Burton in The Rains of Ranch
ipur.

  61 George Hamilton (1939—), actor. Hamilton and Taylor would become companions in the 1980s.

  62 Hal W. Polaire (1918–99), who had been assistant to the producer on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Grant Tinker (1925—), producer and television executive, then married to Mary Tyler Moore (1936—).

  63 Moore had played the part of Laura Petrie, wife of Rob Petrie, played by Dick Van Dyke (1925—) in The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–6) and the part of Miss Dorothy Brown in Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967).

  64 Cameron sold the villa in 1969 to Mr and Mrs Harding Lawrence. ‘Metteur-en-scene’ – scene setter.Stanley Donen (1924—), was producer-director of Staircase. He and Taylor had been romantically involved in 1951, from the time that he had directed her in Love is Better Than Ever.

  65 Cathleen Nesbitt (1888–1982) played the part of Harry's mother (Burton being Harry) in Staircase. She would also act in Villain.

  66 The Great White Hope began a run of 546 performances on Broadway on 3 October 1968.

  67 Howard Sackler (1929–82), screenwriter and playwright.

  68 Jones (born 1931) was in fact in his late thirties.

  69 Smith drew on this for a column that appeared in the New York Times on 26 January 1969.

  70 Joan Crosby (1934—), journalist and actor.

  71 A Flea in Her Ear (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1968), directed by Jacques Charon (1920–75), starring Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts.

  72 Geneviève Bujold (1942—), was to play the part of Anne Boleyn in Anne of the Thousand Days.

  73 Arne Lindroth (1910–85), a marine expert, was advising Burton on the seaworthiness of the Kalizma.

  74 The film was Krasnaya Palatka (1969: US title The Red Tent), which starred Sean Connery (1930—) as Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) the Norwegian explorer, and first man to reach the South Pole.

  75 Elizabeth Harris (1936—), daughter of David Rees-Williams, Baron Ogmore, and at this time married to the actor Richard Harris. She and Rex Harrison would marry in 1971 and divorce in 1976.

  76 Burton means the Vatican newspaper the Osservatore della Domenica, which in 1962 had condemned Taylor for ‘erotic vagrancy’.

  77 George Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (4 vols, 1968).