The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  45 The city of Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, today the capital of Bosnia-Hercegovina. By Brioni Burton means the Brijuni islands in the northern Adriatic, location of Tito's summer residences. Brioni is the Italian spelling.

  46 Burton probably means Pula, now in Croatia, a port on the mainland (with airport), close to the Brijuni islands.

  47 Tito's (third) wife, Jovanka Broz (1924—).

  48 Van Cleef & Arpels: French jewellery and watchmaking company.

  49 Stipe Deli (1925—).

  50 At the Tehran conference of November 1943, Churchill had suggested further Anglo-American operations in the eastern Mediterranean. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) had raised the possibility of landing in Yugoslavia in order to lend support to Tito's partisans. Stalin resisted such proposals, which came to nothing.

  51 ‘Perfidious Albion’: a pejorative term for England (originally rendered in French – la perfide Albion), implying a lack of trustworthiness.

  52 Spencer Tracy starred in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), directed by John Sturges.

  53 A reference to the speech of 9 February 1941 by Winston Churchill, which ended ‘Give us the tools, and we will finish the job’.

  54 Sukarno (1901–70), President of Indonesia (1945–67).

  55 Draza Mihailovi (1893–1946), leader of the Serbian hetnik movement, which opposed Tito's Partisans during the Second World War.

  56 Michael Caine (1933—), who had starred in Zulu, and who was playing opposite Elizabeth Taylor in X, Y and Zee.

  57 Suzy Kendall (1944—), actor. Her marriage to the comedian Dudley Moore (1935–2002) ended in divorce in 1972.

  58 Paul Gallico (1897–1976), novelist and sports writer.

  59 Possibly Ludmilla Nova (1949—), actor.

  60 Prince of Players was released in 1955.

  61 Moss Hart (1904–61), playwright, screenwriter and theatre director.

  62 Richard and Elizabeth had apparently enjoyed a central role in a knife-throwing act at a Mexican circus, Richard having written about this in his article, ‘My Day’, for Vogue, 1 September 1971.

  63 Porto Santo Stefano, on the western coast of Italy, due east of Corsica, some 100km from Rome.

  64 Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–93), director of Cleopatra.

  65 Anzio, Italian port city, 56 km south of Rome.

  66 The island of Ischia, near Naples.

  67 Belgrade, then capital of Yugoslavia, now capital of Serbia.

  68 Messina, Sicily.

  69 Heyman was 38.

  70 Isaac Deutscher's (1907–67) trilogy on Trotsky was first published in separate volumes in 1954, 1959 and 1963.

  71 L'Albergo della Regina Isabella, Piazza Santa Restituta, Ischia.

  72 A. J. P. Taylor (1906–90) (ed.), Lloyd George: A Diary by Frances Stevenson (1971).

  73 Mensheviks: the moderate wing of the Russian Social Democrat Party, opposed to the Bolsheviks.

  74 Frances Stevenson (1858–1972), secretary to and second wife of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George (1863–1945).

  75 House of Fabergé, the Russian jewellery designers.

  76 Isaac Deutscher, Stalin (1949).

  77 It is not clear here what Burton is referring to. Mihailovi had been shot in 1946.

  78 An unsuccessful Communist-backed coup, led by Hashem al-Atta, had been staged in the Sudan from 19 to 22 July 1971. Hashem al-Atta was executed following the coup's failure.

  79 F. W. Deakin, The Embattled Mountain (1971), p. 115: ‘This meeting was the only occasion since our arrival when Tito displayed, in my presence, an explosion of temper.’

  80 Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (1899–1953), head of the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) in the USSR.

  81 John Howard: Australian photographer based in Rome.

  82 Stepanjek may be Branimir Š epanovi , the screenwriter. ‘Vuko’ is later adjusted by Burton to ‘Vulkov’.

  83 Mañana: a tomorrow which may never arrive.

  84 Hardy Krüger (1928—). Krüger's wife at this time was the Italian painter Francesca Marazzi. Krüger and Burton would co-star in The Wild Geese, but Krüger did not appear in the final cut of The Battle of Sutjeska. Neda Arneric (1953—).

  85 Death in Venice (1971), directed by Luchino Visconti (1906–76).

  86 Audrey Hepburn (1929–93).

  87 Constantin Stanislavski (1863–1938), actor and director, usually credited with inspiring the ‘method’ approach to acting. Stephen Haggard (1911–43), actor, poet and writer.

  88 A reference to the Walt Disney film, One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).

  89 Burton means Zabljak, now in Montenegro, which is at an altitude of 1,456 metres.

  90 The director of Villain was Michael Tuchner (1934—).

  91 Cavtat, port south of Dubrovnik. Carlo Ponti (1912–2007), producer, and his wife Sophia Loren. Ponti was to produce The Voyage, co-starring Burton and Loren.

  92 Kupari, between Dubrovnik and Cavtat.

  93 The dog was playing the part of Tito's dog ‘Lux’.

  94 The Bay of Kotor, often referred to as the Fjord of Kotor, 40 km south along the coast from Dubrovnik.

  95 The Verige strait is the narrowest section of the bay, separating the inner bay from the outer bay. A standard translation is ‘trammel’.

  96 Shaw is usually credited with labelling Dubrovnik ‘paradise on earth’.

  97 Mary Stewart (1916—), The Gabriel Hounds (1967). Ira Levin (1929–2007), Rosemary's Baby (1967).

  98 Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), playwright and short-story writer.

  99 The memorial is at Tjentiste, now in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

  100 Johnny Green (1908–89), songwriter, composer, conductor, who was Music Director at MGM from 1949 to 1959.

  101 Probably Karl E. Voldeng (1905–89) and his wife Mary Frances Voldeng.

  102 Jack L. Warner (1892–1978), executive producer at Warner Bros.

  103 Alun Lewis (1915–44), poet.

  104 Everyone says that the President sometimes stays here. Jamais: never.

  105 Royal Air Force.

  106 Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), diarist, politician and public servant.

  107 £1.

  108 This may refer to some problems that Baker's company Oakhurst was encountering.

  109 The Internationale: the socialist anthem.

  110 The city of Niš, now in Serbia, the location of the Yugoslav National Theatre.

  111 Cardiff Arms Park: the home of the Welsh rugby team.

  112 Tab Hunter (1931—), actor, perhaps renowned more for his looks than his talent.

  113 Burton is referring here to one of his childhood homes in Caradoc Street, Taibach.

  114 Thursday was 9 September.

  115 Friday was 10 September.

  116 Milena Dravi (1940—).

  117 Arthur Upfield (1890–1964) wrote 29 novels featuring Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, set mostly in the Australian outback. Ivo Andri , Bridge over the Drina (1961). Andri had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961.

  118 Saturday was 11 September.

  119 The ‘bodyline’ controversy (over what some felt was unnecessarily aggressive and intimidatory bowling) erupted during England's tour of Australia in 1932–3.

  120 International cricketers. Donald Bradman (1908–2001); Harold Larwood (1904–95); Stan McCabe (1910–68); Bill Voce (1909–84); Bill Ponsford (1900–91); Wally Hammond (1903–65); Gubby Allen (1902–89); Bill Bowes (1908–87); Douglas Jardine (1900–58).

  121 A reference to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1819–61), husband of Queen Victoria and Prince consort.

  122 Heavy Luger, meaning Hardy Krüger.

  123 A reference to Radie Harris (1904–2001), Louella Parsons (1881–1972) and Hedda Hopper, gossip columnists.

  124 Ambassador Hotel, Trg Kralja Milana Bb, Niš.

  125 The Gettysburg Address was delivered by President Abraham Lincoln on 19 November 1863 when dedicating the Soldiers’ National Cemetery a
t Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

  126 Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928), suffragette. Culver City is in Los Angeles county and was home to the MGM studios.

  127 Laurence Olivier was a founder and the first Artistic Director of the National Theatre. In October 1970 he had impetuously suggested that Burton might take over from him, and Burton had been interested in doing so, only to discover that the appointment was not in Olivier's gift. Olivier's letter, dated 16 July 1971, relayed the view of the Chairman of the National Theatre, Sir Max Rayne (1918–2003), that Burton did not have the appropriate experience to be seriously considered for the post. Rayne had in fact already identified Peter Hall (1930—) as his chosen successor to Olivier, this taking place in 1973.

  128 Rolf Hochhuth's play Soldiers, Necrology on Geneva (1967), was a controversial treatment of the Allied bombing of Hamburg in the Second World War and also of the alleged involvement of Winston Churchill in the death of the Polish leader General Sikorski (1881–1943). The National Theatre production of Soldiers in 1967 had been cancelled by the board of the National Theatre, against Olivier's wishes.

  129 Guys and Dolls, a musical by Frank Loesser (1910–69) which had premiered in 1950.

  130 A reference to former pupils of the English public school, Eton College.

  131 Robert Stephens (1931–95) and his then wife Maggie Smith (1934—).

  132 Edith Evans.

  133 A reference to the film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) which starred Robert Stephens and Maggie Smith. Smith had appeared with Burton and Taylor in The V.I.P.s.

  134 Paul Rogers (1917—); William Squire (1916–89).

  135 Johnson is credited with saying ‘when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully’.

  136 This is the first half of Lewis's ‘Postscript: for Gweno’, which appeared in Raiders’ Dawn (1942).

  137 James Joyce, (1882–1941), Ulysses (1922), the central character of which is Leopold Bloom.

  138 Neil Simon, (1927—), playwright and screenwriter. The Gingerbread Lady (1970).

  139 Terence Rattigan (1911–77), playwright.

  140 The Sunset Tower Hotel, 8358 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood.

  141 George Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man (1894); Anton Chekhov, The Seagull (1896).

  142 Rock Hudson (1925–85); James Dean (1931–55); both of whom co-starred with Taylor in Giant.

  143 King of Kings (1961).

  144 Rebel Without a Cause (1955).

  145 The subject of the play was the socialist, secularist, Owenite and co-operator George Jacob Holyoake (1817–1906).

  146 ‘The Magic of Meredith Jones’, Sunday Times, 17 June 1956.

  147 Burton played Prince Albert in Time Remembered. Paul Scofield had played the same part at the Lyric Theatre and New Theatre in London in 1954 and 1955.

  148 Eleonora Duse (1858–1924), actor.

  149 T. H. White, The Once and Future King (1958). The Sword and the Stone (1938).

  150 For his part as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady (1964).

  151 RMS Queen Mary, which operated between Southampton and New York from 1936 to 1967.

  152 Julie Andrews.

  153 Burton means Richard Collier, Duce! A Biography of Benito Mussolini (1971). Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975), A Study of History (1960 abridged edn). Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), The Decline of the West (first published in English in the 1920s, with further editions in the 1960s). Erle S. Gardner (1889–1970).

  154 Hugh L'Etang (1917–96), The Pathology of Leadership (1970).

  155 Collier, Duce!, p. 135, citing Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg.

  156 The Italian invasion of Greece in October 1940 had not gone to plan for Mussolini, and had necessitated, in April 1941, German intervention. This is widely believed to have delayed the onset of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and thus to have played a critical role in determining that the Germans would not win the campaign on the Eastern Front.

  157 Eyties, (often ‘Eyeties’) is a derogatory term for the Italians.

  158 Mussolini was executed on 28 April 1945 and his body placed on public show in Milan, where it was subjected to public abuse.

  159 Sergio Soldano, furrier, clothes-designer, parfumier.

  160 Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), philosopher. C. E. M. Joad (1891–1953), philosopher. John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), economist.

  161 A. A. Fair, one of the pseudonyms of the thriller writer, E. S. Gardner (1889–1970).

  162 Jasper Ridley (1920–2004), Lord Palmerston (1970).

  163 President De Gaulle twice vetoed Britain's application to join the European Economic Community, in 1963 and 1967.

  164 Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (published in English, 1963).

  165 Crufts is an annual international dog show which has been held in England since 1886.

  166 Burton is referring to Soviet interventions in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).

  167 A reference to Julius Caesar, Act III, scene ii.

  168 The death of little Paul Dombey is a famous episode in Dickens's novel Dombey and Son (1847–8).

  169 Mljet, to the west of Dubrovnik.

  170 Coleen Gray (1922—), actor.

  171 Young Bess (1953), directed by George Sidney (1916–2002).

  172 George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays (1907), vol. 2, p. 52: ‘With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his.’

  173 Lew Schreiber, the casting director of Twentieth Century-Fox. Louis Burt Meyer (1884–1957), film producer with MGM. Jack L. Warner (1892–1978), executive producer, Warner Bros.

  174 It is generally believed that no fewer than 50,000 people were killed during the 1948 ‘purge’ of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

  175 Branko Spoljar (1914–85).

  176 A reference to Saint Sava (c.1175–1235).

  177 Milovan Djilas (1911–95), Yugoslavian partisan and communist, who had fallen out of favour in the 1950s and served a number of prison sentences. He was by 1971 living in Belgrade, a renowned dissident.

  178 Burton is referring to E. M. Forster (1879–1970), novelist, biographer, essayist. However the Forster quoted (actually as saying that Dickens was ‘the most popular novelist of the century, and one of the greatest humorists that England has produced’), was John Forster (1812–76), biographer. Alan Pryce- Jones (1908–2000), literary editor, critic and journalist. This is the 1964 edition of Dombey and Son, published by Signet.

  179 Presumably the International Herald Tribune.

  180 A reference to George Orwell's dystopian vision in 1984.

  181 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue, New York.

  182 Robin Moore (1925–2008), The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics and International Conspiracy (1969).

  183 George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824); Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822).

  184 Roget's Thesaurus. Rex Stout (1886–1975), crime writer, whose novels often featured detective Nero Wolfe. Anthony Powell (1905–2000), novelist.

  185 Ngaio Marsh (1899–1982), novelist. Herman Melville (1819–91) The Confidence Man: His Masquerade (1857).

  186 Anthony Powell, A Question of Upbringing (1951).

  187 The character's name is Kenneth Widmerpool. There are 12 volumes in the A Dance to the Music of Time cycle.

  188 John Braine (1922–86), Life at the Top (1957).

  189 Wilfred Owen (1893–1918), poet.

  190 A reference to Lewis Carroll's ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ (1872) which includes the lines ‘Of shoes—and ships—and sealing–wax — / Of cabbages—and kings’.

  191 George Baker (1931–2011), whose greatest success was on British television portraying Inspector Reginald Wexford (1987–2000), created by Ruth Rendell (1930—).

  192 Anthony Pow
ell, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (1960).

  193 Burton refers here to Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning (1964), p. 201, where Waugh writes of Powell: ‘In reading his brilliant series of novels I have sometimes thought – and indeed, have been so foolish as to state as much in a review – that the recurring seemingly haphazard conjunctions of human life, which comprise his theme, pass beyond plausibility. His hero's passage through youth and early manhood is continually recrossed in improbable circumstances by the same characters. After I had written the review expressing doubts of the authenticity of so many coincidences, I began to reflect on my own acquaintance with him and understood that his was genuine social realism.’

  194 Burton is using poetic licence here. The relevant passage which inspires his invented quotation comes in the first chapter of Powell's fourth novel, At Lady Molly's (1957), in which Mildred Haycock, once Mildred Blaides, arrives at a party with her fiancé, who happens to be Kenneth Widmerpool, younger than Mildred by about ten years, and known to the narrator, Nicholas Jenkins.

  195 Nicholas Monsarrat, Smith and Jones (1963).

  196 Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926).

  197 Oleg Lyalin (1937–95) of the KGB (the Soviet intelligence service) had been revealed as a defector on 30 September.

  198 Mostar: north-west of Dubrovnik and inland, today in Bosnia Herzegovina.

  199 Pop music associated with Liverpool in the 1960s.

  200 Wednesday was 6 October.

  201 Robert Newton (1905–56), who had acted with Burton in The Desert Rats. Bernard Lee (1908–81), who had acted with Burton in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Trevor Howard (1913–88). Errol Flynn (1909–59).

  202 Walter Mitty is the daydreaming character in James Thurber's American short story, ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ (1939). It is possible that Burton means something else entirely.

  203 This is a rather oblique reference to the central character in the Indian Sanskrit epic The Mahabharata.

  204 Juan Fangio (1911–95); Stirling Moss (1929—), racing drivers.

  205 Trotsky lived at Viena 45, Mexico City.

  206 Burton had played the part of Sir Toby Belch in the Old Vic production of Twelfth Night, and Caliban in the Old Vic production of The Tempest.

  207 Alain Delon (1935—), who would play Frank Jackson in The Assassination of Trotsky.