The Richard Burton Diaries
Page 185
53 James A. Michener (1907–97), The Drifters (1971).
54 Probably William S. Burroughs (1914–97), Exterminator! (1974).
55 James George Frazer (1854–1941), The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1890; abridged edn 1922).
56 The film project was Abakarov, to be filmed in Israel, but it was never made.
57 Have inserted ‘Christ’ here – there is a mark which might be a cross.
58 Carwyn James (1929–83), Welsh rugby international, coach of Llanelli Rugby Football Club and of the British Lions tour to New Zealand in 1971.
59 Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957), crime writer, translator, playwright, essayist. The biography is by Janet Hitchman, ‘Such a Strange Lady’: An Introduction to Dorothy L. Sayers (1975).
60 Lindsay Anderson (1923–94), director.
61 Scorpio (1973), directed by Michael Winner (1935—), starring Paul Scofield and Burt Lancaster.
62 HW is Henry Wynberg (1935—) – Elizabeth Taylor's former consort.
63 Burton was to publish ‘My Life at 50’ in McCall's (December 1975).
64 Peter Lawford (1923–84), actor.
65 The President of South Africa at that time was Nicolaas Diederichs (1903–78), his wife Margaretha Potgieter.
66 Ringo Starr's marriage to Maureen ended in divorce in July 1975.
67 Chobe National Park, Botswana.
68 Fritz or Fred Knoessen, manager of the Chobe Game Lodge.
69 Richard Barrett (1933–2006), music producer, singer and songwriter, manager of The Three Degrees girl group.
70 The Kruger National Park, north-east South Africa.
71 A reference to the children's book The Story of Ferdinand (1936) by Munro Leaf (1905–76), where the bull prefers flowers to fighting.
72 Taylor suffered a temporary scare over her health when a chest X-ray was believed to reveal the possibility of lung cancer, only for this to be discounted within hours.
73 From Richard II, Act III, scene ii: ‘And that small model of the barren earth / which serves as paste and cover to our bones.’
74 Public Relations Officer.
75 Elizabeth and Richard remarried on this day.
76 Antabus or antabuse is the proprietary name for the drug disulfiram, used to combat alcoholism.
77 Brian Graham organized wildlife tours from the lodge.
78 Douglas Reed (1895–1976), The Siege of Southern Africa (1974).
79 Gavin de Becker, Elizabeth's secretary.
80 Ambrose Masalila, district commissioner.
81 Serondela, in northern Chobe.
82 HW: Henry Wynberg.
83 Sausages, bread and butter.
84 He may mean vervet monkeys.
85 Hugo van Lawick (1937–2002), Solo: The Story of an African Wild Dog (1974).
86 Eugène N. Marais (1871–1936), My Friends the Baboons (1939).
87 Donald R. Morris (1924–2002), The Washing of the Spears: The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation (1965).
88 Burton means Chen Sam (d. 1996), who became Burton and Taylor's business manager and press spokesperson.
89 This is probably a reference to the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 and the battles of Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift.
90 Basil Davidson, Africa in History (1968).
91 Victoria Falls, waterfall on the Zambezi river between Zimbabwe and Zambia.
92 Elephant Hills Hotel, Victoria Falls.
93 Robbie Lantz (1914–2007), agent to both Burton and Taylor. Elizabeth Taylor, ‘Richard Again’, Ladies’ Home Journal, February 1976.
94 Die Landdrost Hotel, Johannesburg.
95 Richard had bought Elizabeth a pink diamond to mark their marriage. But she wished it to be returned and for the money to be used instead to finance a hospital-clinic in Botswana. Although the diamond was returned the clinic was never built.
96 John O'Hara (1905–70), novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter. Author of Butterfield 8 (1935), later a film starring Elizabeth Taylor.
97 Appointment in Samarra (1934).
98 Burton means the Evening Standard British Film Awards.
99 Albert Finney won the award for Best Actor for his performance in Murder on the Orient Express (1974), directed by Sidney Lumet (1924–2011), who would direct Burton in the film Equus. Burton presumably meant to write ‘never seen’.
100 Cancer.
101 Harvey Orkin died on 3 November 1975.
102 Frank Hauser (1922–2007), theatre director, based at the Oxford Playhouse from 1956 to 1973.
103 Jean-Paul Sartre, Kean (1953).
104 Naomi, daughter of Michael Wilding and his girlfriend Johanna, had been born earlier in 1975.
105 Scott's Restaurant, Mount Street, Mayfair, London.
106 The Pedro Club, Rushmore Road, Hackney, established in 1929, and relaunched in the 1960s.
107 Match of the Day, the BBC football highlights programme shown on Saturday evenings.
108 Pusey, the home of Simon and Sheran Hornby.
109 The Old Manor House, Bampton, Oxfordshire, to the north of Pusey. Lord Blandford (James) may be a reference to Jamie Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford (1955—).
110 Bear Hotel, Park Street, Sunninghill, Woodstock, north-west of Oxford.
111 Elizabeth Sweeting (1914–95), general manager of the Oxford Playhouse. Helen Gardner (1908–86), Merton Professor of English Literature (1966–75), was a Fellow of St Hilda's College, and held her chair in association with Lady Margaret Hall, both all-female colleges at this time.
112 The Taylor-Burton building opened during 1976, an annexe to the Oxford Playhouse.
113 This refers to unrealized plans (based on the concept of the geodesic dome, associated with the American scientist and designer Richard Buckminster Fuller, 1895–1983) for the building of the Samuel Beckett Theatre beneath a quadrangle in St Peter's College.
114 The Castle Hotel, The Parade, Neath.
115 Today the Aberavon Beach Hotel.
116 This presumably refers to Burton's previous engagement to Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia.
117 Charlie Hockin.
118 The First Clown's line from Hamlet, Act V, scene i: ‘But age with his stealing steps / Hath clawed me in his clutch’.
119 Burton means the Black Mountain, the westernmost range of the Brecon Beacons.
120 The Red Lion, Llangadog.
121 Michael was living at Ffynnon-Wen, Goginan, Ponterwyd.
122 Michael's girlfriend, Johanna.
123 Michael.
124 Bara Lawr: a laver bread recipe.
125 'Gareth the villain’: probably reference to Gareth Owen, Richard's nephew. Bratu: Welsh for ‘brat’.
126 T. H. J.: Thomas Henry Jenkins, Richard's brother.
127 Burton actually writes ‘1975’ as the year, but the content of the entry indicates (along with a preceding marker in the original folder) that it was 1977.
128 Tom Pryce (1949–77) was a Welsh racing driver killed on 5 March during the Formula 1 South African Grand Prix at Kyalami. Susan Burton (1948—), Richard's third wife.
129 A reference to John Donne's poem, ‘No man is an Island’. ‘For whom the bell tolls’ is the penultimate line.
130 Cecil Day Lewis (1904–72), who had been Poet Laureate (1968–72), published 20 detective novels under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake.
131 Looping being the process whereby film dialogue is re-recorded after the original shoot.
132 The Via Appia Antica and Via Appia Pignatelli, roads leading south-east from the city centre of Rome.
1980
1 Richard Attenborough (1923—). Graham Greene's 1938 novel Brighton Rock was made into a film in 1947, directed by John Boulting (1913–85), and released in North America with the title Little Scarface.
2 Frank Dunlop (1927—) was director of Camelot. Madison Square Garden: an events arena on Eighth Avenue, New York.
3 John Barber (1912–2005), chief dramatic critic of the Daily Telegraph (1968–86)
. David Rowe-Beddoe (1937—), President of the cosmetics company Revlon at this time.
4 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), part 5, includes the lines ‘Oh Sleep! it is a gentle thing, / Beloved from pole to pole! / To Mary Queen the praise be given! / She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, / That slid into my soul.’ Burton had produced a long-playing record including this work in 1960.
5 'Come seeling night’ are words spoken by Macbeth in Act III, scene ii.
6 Cauchemar: nightmare. Burton does not return to this, which is a reference to his having to leave the stage after five minutes in New York in July on one occasion, an episode which prompted much speculation about his alcoholism.
7 Edward Kennedy's bid for the Democratic nomination for the 1980 US presidential election ended with his withdrawal on 11 August.
8 Franz Kafka (1883–1924), novelist.
9 David Kissinger, later a television producer, son of Henry Kissinger (1923—) (US Secretary of State, 1973–7) and his first wife Ann. Arnold Weissburger (1907–81), theatrical lawyer. Milton Goldman (1914–89), theatrical agent. Lucy Kroll (1910–97), talent agent.
10 Kennedy's speech of 12 August at the Democratic Convention was hailed as one of his greatest.
11 US President James Earl ‘Jimmy’ Carter (1924—), elected 1976, was defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980.
12 Second wife Nancy Kissinger (1934—).
13 John B. Anderson (1922—), Illinois Congressman and Independent candidate at the 1980 US presidential election.
14 Burton had met Kissinger while in Israel scouting locations for the film project Abakarov, which never materialized.
15 The 21 Club, West 52nd Street, New York.
16 The Riverhouse building, Battery Park City, New York.
17 The Dam Busters (1955), directed by Michael Anderson. Mogadon is a sedative.
18 Richard Muenz (1948—) played Lancelot du Lac.
19 Robert Fox played Mordred.
20 Thor Fields (1968—) played the part of Tom of Warwick.
21 Tom Wicker (1926–2011), political journalist. This refers to his On Press (1979), which opens with an account of the Convention.
22 Henry IV (Part 1), Act I, scene iii: a line spoken by Hotspur.
23 The Avengers was a British television series of the 1960s. It is likely that Burton was watching the 1970s series The New Avengers which was screening in the US from 1978. Cannon was an American television series of the 1970s.
24 Linda Ronstadt (1946—) actor. Kevin Kline (1947—), actor. Ronstadt and Kline were appearing together in the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance in Central Park, which later transferred to Broadway.
25 Christine Ebersole (1953—) played Guenevere.
26 Jerry Adler (1929—) was production supervisor.
27 Paxton Whitehead (1937—) played King Pellinore.
28 Hiraeth is a Welsh word which means a blend of nostalgia and longing.
29 This aphorism is to be found in ‘Reflections on Sin, Pain, Hope and the True Way, 1917–20’, on p. 147 of Kafka's The Great Wall of China, and Other Pieces (1933; London, 1946 edn).
30 John McClure was sound designer on Camelot.
31 Leonard Bernstein (1918–90), composer, conductor.
32 Cheryl Kennedy (1947—).
33 Luke 15: 29 includes the line ‘Lo, these many years do I serve thee’, as part of the parable of the Prodigal Son.
34 Burton refers to Francis Bacon, but he may be thinking of Lady Holland's comment in Sydney Smith's Memoir (1855) ‘No furniture so charming as books’ or indeed the novel Books Do Furnish A Room (1971) by Anthony Powell. Producer and screenwriter Ernest Lehman (1915–2005) had given Burton an original edition of Bacon's essays at the end of the filming of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1965.
35 Burton may mean ‘Hao yun’.
36 A reference to the line ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’, Hamlet, Act 1, scence iv.
37 Variety magazine, published weekly in New York. Camelot ran at the New York State Theatre from 8 July to 23 August.
38 Nancy Seltzer, publicist.
39 Internal Revenue Service.
40 Onllwyn Brace (1932—), capped nine times for Wales, twice as captain, who succeeded Cliff Morgan as Head of Sport at BBC Wales.
41 Touch of Glory screened on the BBC on 31 October 1980.
42 Arie Crown Theater, Chicago.
43 Jean Cocteau (1889–1963), poet, playwright, novelist and filmmaker.
44 Harold Evans (1928—), editor of The Sunday Times (1967–81).
45 Patricia Buckley (1926–2007).
46 Nelson Rockefeller (1908–79), US Vice-President (1974–77), whose death in January 1979 from a heart attack was surrounded in controversy, there being a strong suspicion that he had died in intimate circumstances with a young female aide. Margaretta ‘Happy’ Rockefeller (1926—) was his second wife.
47 Palestine Liberation Organization.
48 Alger Hiss (1904–96), US government servant convicted in 1950 of perjury.
49 Dean Acheson (1893–1971) US Secretary of State (1949–53).
50 Buckley and Vidal had a long-running feud dating from televised debates in 1968.
51 William Manchester's American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880–1964 had been serialized in the Sunday Times in 1979.
52 A reference to Hamlet, Act III, scene i, where Ophelia speaks the line ‘The observed of all observers’.
53 Burton means zeugmatically.
54 A reference to Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem ‘The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo’ (1882), which includes the lines ‘drooping, dying, death's worst, winding sheets / Tombs and worms, and tumbling to decay’.
55 Burton presumably means Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1757–1806).
56 Franz Allers (1906–95), Musical Director of Camelot in both 1960 and 1980.
57 Burton appeared in an adaptation of Jean Anouilh's (1910–87) 1941 play Eurydice, retitled Legend of Lovers in New York in 1951–52.
58 James Valentine played the Friar.
59 Villages with lots of suburbs.
60 Dylan Marlais Thomas. Caradoc Evans (1878–1945), short story writer, novelist, playwright, journalist.
61 Taffy (1923), a play, certainly received a hostile reception from the London Welsh community (including Welsh students) when it premiered in London in 1923, and again when it was revived in 1925, although there is no record of Evans's works having been burned in public.
62 A reference perhaps to the poem ‘Once Below a Time’ by Dylan Thomas, or to the same phrase used in Thomas's ‘Fern Hill’. New Quay/Ceinewydd, on the Cardiganshire coast.
63 Augustus John painted a portrait of Dylan Thomas, who married John's lover Caitlin Macnamara (1913–94).
64 Vivienne Van Dyk.
65 The Empire Strikes Back (1980), directed by Irvin Kershner (1923—), indeed a sequel to Star Wars (1977), directed by George Lucas (1944—).
66 William Parry (1947—) played Sir Dinidan.
67 The Phil Donahue Show, 1970–96, hosted by Phil Donahue (1935—).
68 'Vulgarian’ superscript over ‘you bum’.
69 Dick Cavett (1936—), talk show host.
70 The penultimate verse of Dunbar's ‘Lament for the Makaris’, which reads ‘Sen he has all my brether tane, / He will naught let me live alane; / Of force I man his next prey be: – / Timor Mortis conturbat me.’
71 Ian Bannen (1928–99), had starred alongside Burton in The Voyage and Walk With Destiny, also known as The Gathering Storm. He had married Marilyn Salisbury in 1976.
72 Bannen took the part of Jim Prideaux in the BBC television adaptation of Le Carré's 1974 novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which was subsequently broadcast in the US.
73 Burton's article, ‘To Play Churchill Is to Hate Him’, appeared in the New York Times on 24 November 1974. It was extremely unflattering of Churchill and provoked
a furious reaction in both the US and Britain.
74 Hallmark Cards co-produced the play with the BBC. In the USA it appeared as part of the series ‘Hallmark Hall of Fame’.
75 A reference to Hamlet, speaking in Hamlet, Act III, scene i, ‘What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth?’
76 T. S. Eliot, ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’, first published in 1917, includes the lines ‘Regard the moon, / La lune ne garde aucune rancune, / She winks a feeble eye, / She smiles into corners, / She smooths the hair of the grass. / The moon has lost her memory. / A washed-out smallpox cracks her face’.
77 The line is ‘Midnight shakes the memory / As a madman shakes a dead geranium.’
78 The line from ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ is ‘When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table;’.
79 Roger Moore (1927—), who had played alongside Burton in The Wild Geese, had previously played the character of Simon Templar in the television series The Saint (1960–69).
80 The ‘Kup show’ was Irv ‘Kup’ Kupcinet's television talk show, which ran from 1959 to 1986. Richard appeared on 12th September 1980.
81 Jack Brickhouse (1916–98), broadcaster, and his wife Pat. Forrest Tucker (1919—86), his daughter Brooke. Others present included Tony DeSantis (1914–2007), theatre owner, and his wife Lucille, and Mr and Mrs Bruce Goodman. The party was held at Café Angelo.
82 F Troop ran for 65 episodes from 1965 to 1967 but was much shown thereafter.
83 George C. Scott (1927–99), actor.
84 Robert Atkins (1886–1972), actor.
85 Robert De Niro (1943—). Al Pacino (1940—) played Richard III on Broadway.
86 A reference to Sardi's restaurant, New York, frequented by movers and shakers in the theatre world.
87 Paul Ferris (1929—), Dylan Thomas (1977). Burton had reviewed Constantine Fitzgibbon, (1919–83) The Life of Dylan Thomas (1965) on publication. According to Ferris's biography of Burton (p. 181), Burton scorned the suggestion in Ferris's biography that Thomas had had homosexual experiences as a young man.
88 Iraq invaded Iran on 22 September 1980. The war lasted until August 1988.
89 The theme song for the film Alfie (1966), written by Burt Bacharach (1928—) and performed by Cilla Black (1943—), also covered by Dionne Warwick (1940—).