Furious Love

by Sam Kashner

  In one of the few favorable reviews, the Los Angeles Times commends Burton’s voice as “absolutely the right organ on which to play Marlowe’s mighty lines, and Burton runs through all the changes from quavery whisper to stentorian roar.” But he describes “Mrs. Burton” as the film’s principal weakness, not for her performance but because by now, her presence overwhelms the part. “Her vivid personal imagery—solo and in tandem with Richard” distorts the mood of the film. The Burtons, not the roles they were playing, were now the main characters under review. It was so bad that Elizabeth’s private secretary, Raymond Vignale, would rise early, collect all the newspapers, and weed out the worst of the reviews.

  The glamour of the Burtons, and Richard’s genius for speaking Elizabethan verse, could not lift up the low-budget, amateur nature of the movie—the minimal sets, the psychedelic effects (the purple haze of smoke, the fiery lights of hell), and the fact that most of the actors were students who had never before set foot on a soundstage (some of them quaking in their boots when the cameras rolled). Like most actors, Burton flourished under good directors; unfortunately, his and Coghill’s direction tended toward the literal (as Kael complained, “if Faustus says ‘gold’ or ‘pearls,’ the screen shows gold or pearls”). Coghill just wasn’t a filmmaker—he was a theater director and a teacher, and it showed. And just as no defendant should hire himself as a lawyer, there are few actors who can credibly direct themselves. Imagine the material, and Burton in it, if Zeffirelli—or John Huston, or Mike Nichols—had gotten their hands on it. “No one sets out to make a bad movie,” Graham Jenkins later said about his brother’s first directorial effort; “those reviews had to have set him back.”

  Unfortunately, the withering reviews scuttled Burton’s hope to direct himself and Elizabeth in a film version of Macbeth. He’d felt that Elizabeth, at thirty-six, was the perfect age to play Lady Macbeth. But the goodwill generated by the box office success of The Taming of the Shrew was negated by the lukewarm reviews for The Comedians and the howls of protest over Doctor Faustus, so there would be no more Shakespeare for Richard or Elizabeth.

  Nonetheless, the public still could not get enough of the Burtons. At the movie’s New York premiere in February 1968, it was like Hamlet all over again. Crowds overwhelmed the couple, crashing through police barriers at the Rendezvous Theatre, nearly starting a riot. After the premiere, the Burtons hosted a gala to raise money for Philip Burton’s American Musical and Dramatic Academy (perennially in need of a boost, it seems), with guests such as Robert and Ethel Kennedy, Peter Lawford and Patricia Kennedy Lawford, Spyros Skouras, and even one of Lyndon Johnson’s two daughters.

  The film, actually, does bear a number of treasures—Burton’s performance evokes terror, and Marlowe’s rich verse rolls beautifully off his tongue. And there is one moment that sends shivers down the spine of those who know, in retrospect, what fate awaited Burton: when Faustus tries to lift up his arms to pray to Christ to save his immortal soul at the end of the film, he finds he cannot. “I would lift up my arms, but, see, they hold them—Mephistopheles and Lucifer!” he wails. Burton’s neck and shoulder troubles would lead to a botched surgery, making him, in the last year of his life, unable to lift up his arms.

  But the Burtons had more immediate problems. As far as the critics were concerned, just nine months after the predominantly warm reception of The Taming of the Shrew, for which Burton won the British Film Institute’s Best Actor award, there were whiffs of blood in the water. What the press giveth, the press taketh away.

  After two box office disappointments, Reflections in a Golden Eye was released in November 1967. It, too, was coolly received. Once again, the critics were not kind to “the greatest film actress in the world.” Bosley Crowther, who had so adored Elizabeth in Cleopatra, described the film in the New York Times as “anticlimactic and banal.” Both Brando and Taylor would be given poor marks for what would later be seen as powerful work. Burton thought that both Marlon’s and Elizabeth’s sheer physical beauty were so great that they could have “got[ten] away with murder” onscreen, but he disliked what he called Brando’s “under-articulation.” He blamed Elia Kazan and the Actors Studio for that, and he longed to “take him in my teeth and shake enthusiasm into him.” However, Burton confided portentously in his diaries, “deep down in his desperate bowels he knows that like Elizabeth and myself, it is all a farce. All three of us, in our disparate ways, know that we are cosmic jokes.”

  Not surprisingly, given the poor reviews, Reflections was a serious failure at the box office, with producer Ray Stark eventually blaming the subject matter of homosexuality for the movie’s rejection by the public. (Curiously, the public had not rejected Tennessee Williams’s florid Suddenly, Last Summer, which had homosexuality and cannibalism at its center, but Gore Vidal, who adapted the one-act play for the screen, thought it was because its 1959 audiences didn’t really understand what the movie was all about.)

  Despite the churlish reviews, Huston went to his grave proud of Reflections, which he considered one of his best pictures. “Scene by scene,” he would write fourteen years later, “in my humble estimation—it is hard to fault.” If Elizabeth was disappointed with the poor reviews, she didn’t show it. She had gotten used to the barbs of the press and had developed a much tougher skin than Richard, who still seemed to need the esteem of the world.

  The year 1967 had begun with filming The Comedians and, for Burton, ended with Candy, the Terry Southern parody in which Richard had a small role, along with Marlon Brando and Ringo Starr. The year 1968, however, would see a palpable shift in the twin careers of Elizabeth and Richard. Roles continued to come Richard’s way, but to appear singly, without his famous partner. What ushered in this sea change for Elizabeth was a long time coming: competition from younger and more nubile actresses as Elizabeth approached forty, and the financial disappointments of The Comedians, Doctor Faustus, and Reflections in a Golden Eye. Also, between the flattery and the overprotection of their entourage, they were losing touch with reality and would make poor choices in their next three films together.

  10

  THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN

  “I introduced Elizabeth to beer; she introduced me to Bulgari.”

  —RICHARD BURTON

  “With Richard Burton, I was living my own fabulous, passionate fantasy.”

  —ELIZABETH TAYLOR

  Elizabeth called it “money for old rope.” That was her expression for the kind of heroic movie Burton was shivering atop a five-thousand-foot mountain in Austria to finish. He’d decided to make Where Eagles Dare, an adventure story for MGM his children could enjoy seeing him in. The World War II espionage thriller with Clint Eastwood was based on an Alistair MacLean story about a group of commandos making a high-risk raid on the mountaintop fortress of the German Secret Service. There was so much derring-do performed by stunt doubles in the film that Eastwood took to calling it Where Doubles Dare. Thankfully, filming would be completed on a soundstage in London.

  They had other reasons to return to England in 1968. Elizabeth would be working with Joseph Losey again, after Richard finished shooting Where Eagles Dare from the safety of a London set. Richard was also offered the lead role in Laughter in the Dark, to be directed by Tony Richardson (who was nearing the end of his marriage to Vanessa Redgrave). Richardson had earlier directed Burton as Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, one of Burton’s greatest roles, and after the fair-to-horrible reviews of their last three films, Burton was pleased to have the work. He was amazed when Where Eagles Dare turned out to be MGM’s biggest money-maker after its release the following year, and the most financially successful movie of his career. As it was fairly scoffed at by the London press during an early screening, and Time magazine complained, “It is a little melancholy to see Richard Burton reduced to playing cardboard parts like this one, but he at least manages to look as if he’s having a good time,” the movie’s financial success surprised Richard and Elizabeth. More importantly, it help
ed to restore Burton’s sagging box office appeal.

  The writing was on the wall—their movies were now more successful when they appeared separately.

  Now Elizabeth would have to play catch-up after the bad reviews of Reflections in a Golden Eye, and she had hopes that the new Losey film might boost her own ratings. But in the meantime, she was having too grand a time with Richard to be overly concerned with her career. “With Richard Burton, I was living my own fabulous, passionate fantasy,” she later wrote about this time in their lives together.

  When they arrived in London in January, the Kalizma was being refitted, so the Burtons leased another yacht, the Beatrice and Bolivia, moored at Tower Pier on the Thames, at a cost of $21,600 a month. As the British press was quick to point out, the yacht was primarily leased for the Burtons’ five dogs, including their two Pekingese, O’fie and E’en So. British law required a six-month quarantine for all dogs brought into the country. By keeping their beloved pets on a boat, they could avoid quarantine. It was a gift to the British tabloids, who called it “the most expensive dog kennel in the world,” and it brought the Burtons unasked-for publicity as the most decadent dog-owners since the French Revolution. The story became simply that the Burtons had rented a yacht solely for their dogs because Elizabeth couldn’t bear the idea of her beloved pets being “locked up” for such an unconscionably long time. It seemed inhumane to her. The fuss would follow the Burtons into biography, where it still sits as an example of their extravagance. But it was of a piece with how money was there to be used, and if it could save the pets from their imprisonment, she was going to do it. Money simply didn’t mean that much to them; it was a means to an end; they spent it on themselves—and their dogs—as freely as they spent it on both their families, and on their ever-expanding circle of helpers and business associates. They did it because they could.

  By the late 1960s, reporters and magazine editors competed like pearl divers for stories about the Burtons’ “extravagant lifestyle.” The Burtons played a coy game with the press, particularly Richard, who, if he wasn’t talking to someone he truly respected, like Kenneth Tynan, was just as happy to make remarks like “Yes, luv, we did spend $21,600 a month to keep the dogs on board, but what could we do? Elizabeth wouldn’t be separated from her pets!”

  To the delight of the international press, Burton topped even himself on May 17, 1968, when he flew to New York and bought at auction the Krupp diamond for Elizabeth, for $307,000 (nearly $2 million today). He had already gifted her with several stunning pieces—the beautiful emerald-and-diamond brooch from Bulgari that she had worn at their wedding in Montreal. It had matched the emerald-and-diamond ring he had given her the year before, in Puerto Vallarta, when he was filming The Night of the Iguana. He would later add two emerald-and-diamond bracelets to the set (sometimes called “The Grand Duchess Vladimir Suite”), also from Bulgari, whose shop they had discovered in Rome at the beginning of their great affair.

  The 33.19-carat, oblong Krupp diamond took Elizabeth’s breath away. It had been owned by Vera Krupp, wife of the German arms manufacturer. Elizabeth took special delight in that, saying, “I thought how perfect it would be if a nice Jewish girl like me were to own it.” Richard presented it to her on the Kalizma, now refitted and moored in the Thames, where they had a small plaque installed to commemorate the occasion. Elizabeth was overjoyed—she later described the stone’s “deep Asscher cuts—which are so complete and so ravishing”—as steps leading “into eternity and beyond…it sort of hums with its own beatific life.” It brought Richard an equal amount of pleasure. As a miner’s son, he knew the value of coal and he knew the value of diamonds. He took great pleasure in adorning Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth took Richard’s extravagant tokens as her due, but she also had an enlightened view of her ownership of some of the world’s most expensive and fabled jewels. “I adore wearing gems, but not because they are mine. You can’t possess radiance, you can only admire it,” she later wrote. Which is why she was often pleased to slip off the magnificent ring and offer it to admirers to try on, as when she famously showed it off to Princess Margaret while attending a wedding in London.

  “Is that the famous diamond?” Princess Margaret had asked her.

  “Yes,” she said, lifting up her hand so that it would catch the light.

  “It’s so large! How very vulgar!” the princess remarked.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth answered. “Ain’t it great!”

  “Would you mind if I tried it on?”

  “Not at all!” Elizabeth slipped the ring onto Princess Margaret’s finger, and noted that the princess didn’t think the jewel so vulgar when she was wearing it. Elizabeth loved telling that story, imitating Margaret’s plummy tones. She and Richard were not enthralled by royalty and knew that that story pointed up the hypocrisy and envy of the titled class.

  Elizabeth and Richard’s delight was short-lived, however, when Boom! was released on May 26, 1968, to devastating reviews. Again, the critics couldn’t help commenting on the Burtons’ off-camera lives, adding a dash of schadenfreude when they seemed to stumble. The Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton remain the nearest thing we have in the movies to a reigning royal family…we know so much about them—or think we do—that there is a gruesome satisfaction at the sight of them bogged down in Tennessee Williams’s belabored script, especially since its broad lines seem to resemble the Burton and Taylor private lives.” Life magazine accused the Burtons of “a kind of arrogance…they don’t so much act as deign to appear before us, and there is neither discipline nor dignity in what they do…Perhaps the Burtons are doing the very best that they can, laden as they are by their celebrity.” Tennessee Williams couldn’t help but feel that his movie had been derailed by what was essentially miscasting: “Dick [Burton] was too old for Chris and Liz was too young for Goforth,” he wrote in his memoirs. “Despite its miscasting, I feel that Boom! was an artistic success and that eventually it will be received with acclaim,” he added, ever hopeful. A number of reviewers attacked Elizabeth as looking fat in those billowing caftans, but in retrospect, she looks voluptuous but fit. Burton was right in one sense—Elizabeth blooms in hot climates—and in Sardinia she has that preternatural glow. Unfortunately, however, former model Joanna Shimkus’s tall, willowy figure makes Elizabeth look short and plump in comparison, and Shimkus represented the new ideal in women’s bodies. After the bad reviews came out, Burton wrote to Losey that he didn’t care about the critics, “we’ll all be proud of [Boom!] one day. It contains what I consider to be—though I may be alone—a magical combination of words and vision.” It’s worth noting that over forty years later, Boom! has become a somewhat guilty pleasure, enjoyed for its gorgeous setting and style, its archly poetic language, its sometimes unintentional humor. A favorite moment oft cited among the movie’s fans is when, after Elizabeth paces up and down, delivering a long, highly poetic aria about the nature of time, Noël Coward remarks cattily, “You’re just wrought up, dear.” Boom!, for example, is a favorite movie of director John Waters, who describes Cissy Goforth in her fabulous outfits as “the ultimate drag queen role.” He described it as “beyond bad, the other side of camp—a film so genuinely beautiful and awful that there is only one word to describe it: perfect.” And it remained Tennessee Williams’s favorite adaptation among all his works. With Boom!, the Burtons—and especially Elizabeth—entered the realm of camp.

  Burton was never really happy in London—the press had been so relentlessly prying, and he preferred seeing his wife in lush, warm climates like Sardinia and Dahomey and Puerto Vallarta, where they could make love without having to keep their socks on. London taxed not only his income but his patience. And London reminded him of Hampstead and Sybil and Jessica and Kate, and what he had left behind to be with Elizabeth. (In his diary, Burton had described his dilemma as a choice between Kate—not Sybil—and Elizabeth, a choice he did not regret but that had never stopped haunting him.) If Rome ha
d brought him Elizabeth, and the storm that followed, London punished him for it, or so he felt. It was London where a new round of troubles lay in wait.

  Licking their wounds from the bad reviews for Boom!, in July the Burtons dragged themselves through their separate films—Secret Ceremony for Elizabeth and Laughter in the Dark, based on Vladimir Nabokov’s 1932 novel, for Richard. In his film, Burton played an art dealer. While on location at Sotheby’s, he used the occasion to buy a Degas drawing for £58,000 ($140,000), and Elizabeth, attending an auction at Sotheby’s with a new friend, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, won her bid of £50,000 ($120,000) for Monet’s “Le Val de la Falaise.” There were rumors that the purchase of the two paintings had annoyed Tony Richardson, who considered it showboating—“The Dick and Liz Show” on flagrant display. Richardson seemed to be annoyed with Burton even before filming began.

  Burton’s respect for Nabokov had attracted him to the project, but it would turn out to be another humiliation. About two weeks into the filming of Laughter, Richard showed up thirty minutes late on the set. It was a Sunday, and he had brought Liza with him, thinking she would enjoy the outing with the man who had very much become her father. Richardson was furious at Burton’s late arrival, and he dressed him down in front of Liza and the crew. Richard answered back and was fired on the spot.

  Woodfall Film Productions announced, “Richard Burton would be leaving the set of Laughter in the Dark, to be replaced by Nicol Williamson,” fired for being “unpunctual and unprofessional.” Richard had never been fired from a film before. The actor Robert Beatty, who had been on that Austrian mountain with Burton filming Where Eagles Dare, came to his defense, telling the British press that the movie’s producers were behaving “like an immature bride with a brilliant husband who divorces him because he arrived a bit late for dinner.”