Shunt

by Tom Rubython

  The marriage may as well have ended there and then, but it dragged on for another eight months as Suzy looked for a new partner. Finally, despairing of the likelihood of a miracle, Hunt offered to buy Suzy a smart apartment in London and to give her an allowance, with a divorce to follow when it suited them. He was prepared to pay heavily to get out of the marriage, but she didn’t need the money and was reluctant to make it official. Suzy was certainly not going to get divorced and be single again – that was not on the menu at all. So they continued to live together in Marbella although, by July 1975, they had for all intents and purposes gone their separate ways. However, publicly, outside of the Formula One paddock, no one knew or suspected anything was amiss.

  Only one journalist, David Benson of the Daily Express, guessed anything was wrong. He had heard stories of rows between the Hunts in the Marbella Club. It prompted him to send his photographer, Douglas Morrison, to Marbella for a photo shoot in the first week of November for a later article. When Morrison got there, he thought it very odd that Suzy had just flown back from the United States, where she had been for the past four weeks after the US Grand Prix, while Hunt had gone straight home. Morrison went with Hunt on the 35-minute journey to Malaga airport to pick her up. The couple were friendly but it was not the homecoming of a husband and wife who had not seen each other for three weeks. Later that evening, Morrison overheard a heated argument between them about the cost of transatlantic telephone calls on her hotel bill. The hotel bills added up to nearly US$8,000, with two thirds from telephone costs. Morrison thought it very strange that, after such a lengthy period apart, the first thing they did was argue about the telephone bill. When Morrison reported all this back to Benson, Benson sensed a story might be in the air, although he couldn’t quite believe that Hunt would want to let a woman like Suzy go so easily.

  In reality, they had put on a togetherness act in front of Morrison. The truth was that they were barely speaking, although there was no animosity. It was as if they had agreed to an amicable parting.

  Hunt took up with Jane Birbeck while he was in London and met with a succession of other girls when he was elsewhere. But he was careful to be discreet, as he didn’t want anything in the newspapers that might upset Suzy or the Miller family – or his own family for that matter.

  In the end, it was Suzy who made the move, over Christmas of 1975. Hunt had secured his future with a new drive at McLaren, and Suzy had seen him through the crisis when the Hesketh team folded. Fatefully, they both went to Gstaad for Christmas with friends. Gstaad was the place to be at yuletide. At that time of year, it was an absolutely magical place. Gay and festive, it was a veritable playground for the rich and famous. Coincidentally, Richard Burton and his wife, the actress Elizabeth Taylor, were also spending the winter holiday season in Gstaad, at a villa called Chalet Arial.

  Burton and Taylor were the most famous married couple in the world. They had met in 1963 while both were on set filming Cleopatra, the biggest movie of the day. Taylor was playing the title role and Burton one of her suitors, the Roman general Marc Anthony. They went to bed together on their first evening on set, and the rest was show business history. They were married in 1964; she was 32 and he was 39.

  Taylor was a major Hollywood actress – by far the bigger star of the two – and Burton was the quintessential British actor. The marriage helped his career enormously and he soon overtook his wife in stature as her career began to fade as she neared 40.

  The marriage was a huge success for ten years and was characterised by Burton presenting Taylor with bigger and more expensive diamonds as the years went on. In those ten years, Burton spent almost US$15 million on jewellery for his wife. But Burton’s large capacity for alcohol and Taylor’s eccentric prima donna behavior doomed the marriage. She was a sophisticated American and he was, essentially, a simple Welsh boy.

  They divorced ten years later, in 1974, but almost immediately got back together. A year after the separation, on 10th October 1975, they bizarrely remarried during a safari holiday in Botswana. She was 43 and he exactly 50 – they were married on his birthday.

  When they got back to London from Botswana, Taylor threw Burton a 50th birthday party in the famous Orchid Room at the Dorchester Hotel on London’s Park Lane. 250 guests attended and drank as many bottles of champagne. Burton was on the wagon and sipped mineral water all night, looking miserable at his own party. As he was prone to unpredictable personality changes when he drank, Burton daren’t drink in public. All his drinking tended to be done in private.

  In the winter of 1975, Burton and Taylor had resolved not to work and had planned to spend quality time together to attend to their new marriage. They cleared off nearly four months from their respective schedules but soon realised that more time together actually had the reverse of the intended effect. Although it was clear they were still in love, the remarriage had been a disastrous mistake.

  In December, Burton checked into the Wellington Clinic near the famous Lord’s Cricket Ground, in North London, for treatment for malaria and alcohol addiction. Afterwards, he and Taylor flew to Gstaad for Christmas. The marriage was already a disaster, and they spent less and less time together as Taylor flitted in and out of Gstaad that winter. Even when they were both together at Chalet Arial, they slept in separate bedrooms in separate wings of the house.

  In Gstaad, Miller and Hunt also went their separate ways. Hunt was in serious training for the 1976 Formula One season and spent all day at the gym or running. At night, he didn’t drink and, consequently, didn’t socialise. Without alcohol, Hunt was a different man. But Suzy knew he was surreptitiously seeing local girls during the day. Miller ended up very depressed for the first time in her life, and spent most of the days on her own.

  She first set eyes on Richard Burton as they were going opposite ways on a ski cable lift. Burton turned to his assistant, Brook Williams, and asked him who the “vision was that had just passed by.” Of all the magnificent women in Gstaad that Christmas, and there were many, Burton was struck down by the sheer presence of Suzy Miller. ‘Transfixed’ would be a better description, as he would say later: “I turned around and there was this gorgeous creature, about nine feet tall. She could stop a stampede.”

  Luckily for Burton, Williams knew exactly who she was and was acquainted with her socially. Williams was the son of the playwright Emlyn Williams, and he acted unofficially as Burton’s aide-de-camp. He knew everybody. As Burton recalled: “I was wondering when she would turn up again, but Brook knew her a little and my luck was in.”

  His luck had him running into her again a few days later on a snowy street in Gstaad. By then, Hunt was out of the way completely. He had flown to São Paulo to compete in the Brazilian Grand Prix in the opening race of the 1976 season. It was his first race for the McLaren team. Williams took the opportunity to invite Suzy to a party they were attending that night.

  Williams couldn’t help but notice the way Suzy lit up when she received the invitation. Burton had never heard of Hunt, but Suzy was well aware that Burton formed one half of the most famous married couple in the world. His marriage to Taylor, however, who was also at the party, was no obstacle for Burton.

  At the party, Burton sat at one end of an overcrowded table and Suzy was at the other end of another table. As the party became more crowded and more people squeezed on the benches, Burton and Suzy found themselves next to each other and were introduced.

  Burton was captivated by her that night, particularly as she, having lost a contact lens, ended up crawling around on the floor to look for it amongst the guests’ feet. Burton thought this hilarious.

  Williams invited her to come to the house the following day and, after that, Suzy started visiting Chalet Arial regularly to meet Burton. The affair between Burton and Suzy began almost immediately. He was 50 and she was 26. It was Suzy’s first dalliance since her marriage to Hunt. The age gap appeared large but, as Burton said: “She was mature far beyond her years.”

  Al
though both their brief marriages were effectively over, the union was immediately problematic. As far as the outside world was concerned, both the Hunts’ and Burtons’ marriages were happy. But Burton needed Suzy Miller desperately – his life was a mess, he was drinking heavily again, and he needed to be taken care of.

  From the day they were introduced, Burton and Suzy became virtually inseparable. Burton remembered: “She started coming to the house two, three and then four times a week.”

  Taylor noticed the fresh-faced and uncomplicated Englishwoman coming to the house and quickly guessed what was going on. Miller and Taylor were two very different women with very different talents and interests, but, despite the predictable rivalry, Taylor instinctively recognised that Suzy was something special and witnessed the way she fussed over her husband. One evening at the château, in a particularly memorable exchange, Taylor said to Suzy: “You’ll only last six months with Richard.” To which Suzy replied: “Perhaps, but those six months will be very worthwhile.”

  Taylor, to her surprise, found that she was rather relieved at Burton’s seriousness about Suzy and at the acknowledgement that her marriage to him was finally over. She went straight out to a local discotheque and hit on a 37-year-old flaxen-haired Maltese advertising executive called Peter Darmanin, whom she brought back to the house to stay with her.

  In the third week of January, Burton had to leave for New York to start rehearsals for a new play. He was due to replace Anthony Perkins for a three-month stint as the lead in Peter Shaffer’s Equus at the Plymouth Theatre, on Broadway.

  When Burton went to New York, Suzy went with Brook Williams to Lausanne; to the home of playboy Gunter Sachs, one of the richest men in Europe. Burton had arranged with Sachs for Suzy to stay with him to give him time to tell Elizabeth that their marriage was over. He didn’t want his relationship with Suzy turning into a media feeding frenzy, which he knew was easily possible. Burton knew she would be safe and have a good time at Sachs’ extraordinarily lavish home by the lake in Lausanne. When Burton left for New York, Taylor stayed in Gstaad in residence Chalet Arial, continuing her affair with Darmanin.

  Throughout it all, Suzy had been keeping Hunt fully informed over the telephone of her developing affair, and to say that he was delighted would have been an understatement. In fact, when she had first told him that Burton had invited her to go to New York, he had simply replied: “Fine, off you go.” In any case, he had been spending any free time he had in London with Jane Birbeck.

  A week later, Burton, now settled into a suite at the Lombardy Hotel near the Plymouth Theatre, called Suzy and told her he believed it was safe for her to come to New York, even though he had still not told Taylor of the situation. The truth was that Burton missed her desperately. The two spent two weeks together discreetly in New York. When people asked her what she was doing as part of Burton’s retinue, she told them she was a friend of Brook Williams’. If Hunt was asked why his wife was in New York hanging around Richard Burton, he admitted there were strains in the marriage, but no more than that. No one guessed that Suzy was Burton’s new girlfriend.

  It was a heady time. Burton excited the city with his pre-opening performances as psychiatrist Martin Dysart. Equus was a gruelling drama about a boy who blinds six horses because they witness his love-making and the wretched provincial psychiatrist whose patient he becomes as a result. The role of the psychiatrist had previously been played by Anthony Hopkins as well as by Anthony Perkins. But Burton eclipsed them both, and was immediately signed up for a Hollywood film version for a payday of a million dollars. His pay for three months on Broadway was US$250,000.

  The sums of money Burton earned were a huge surprise to Suzy. Her new boyfriend was paid some thirty times more than her husband. After two weeks, Miller left for England to visit her parents.

  In mid-February, with the media still unaware of the split, Burton called Taylor, who was still in Gstaad, and asked her to come to New York. He told her he had something very important to say. He had also organised a 44th birthday party for her on 27th February.

  Burton was incredibly nervous and didn’t feel able to tell Taylor about Suzy over the telephone, mistakenly believing she would be upset.

  When Taylor got to New York, she also checked in at the Lombardy. Later that evening, Burton told her about his relationship with Suzy and asked Taylor for an immediate divorce so he could marry his new girlfriend. He omitted to mention the birthday party he had planned for her a few days later. Taylor was not at all upset about Suzy, as she had been enjoying the pleasures of an affair of her own. She told him she was already aware of his affair with Suzy, but was furious that Burton had made her travel all the way across the Atlantic to tell her about it. Taylor screamed at him: “You mean you brought me all this way to tell me that?” The two had a furious row which failed to subside even when Burton told her about the birthday party he had planned. Taylor thought he had made that up when he had seen how angry she was.

  Storming out, Taylor returned to her room. She called her assistant in Los Angeles and asked for a flight to be arranged for the following day to the west coast. On impulse, she then called the room of Equus producer Alexander Cohen to see if the birthday party story was true. He confirmed that it was, and she told him to cancel it. She was unrelenting in her belief that Burton had called Cohen to tell him what to say after she had left his room.

  Her fury with Burton was not abated, and the next call was to a lawyer called Aaron Frosch telling him to draw up two sets of divorce papers – one for her and one for Burton. She told him to set tough terms, believing Burton would do anything to dissolve the marriage quickly. On that score, she was entirely right. In the end, Burton surrendered almost all of his assets to her.

  The next day, she flew to Los Angeles and straight into the arms of former boyfriend Henry Wynberg. She found she hardly missed Burton at all. When Taylor was asked by journalists about the swap of partners and her new relationship, she said: “What was I expected to do? Sleep alone?”

  Journalists started to report on the relationship between Suzy Hunt and Brook Williams, and, in his fabled gossip column in the Daily Mail, Nigel Dempster revealed it to the world. Dempster reported the break-up of the Hunt marriage and wrote that Suzy had flown to New York where she was “being escorted by Emlyn Williams’ son, Brook, who is one of the Burton entourage.” It was news in itself that the Hunts’ marriage was over, and David Benson found himself in trouble for being scooped by Dempster. So Benson, remembering what Douglas Morrison had told him, immediately rang Peter Hunt in London. James, meanwhile, was in transit to Johannesburg for the South African Grand prix.

  Benson recalls: “I immediately rang Hunt’s brother Peter in London. He professed to be astounded by the report, denied it absolutely and said he knew nothing of this man called Williams. He told me that there was nothing unusual in the fact that Suzy was in New York while James was in South Africa, that they were both friends of the Burtons and that Richard and Elizabeth had invited them both to visit them when they were in New York.”

  Peter told him that was the reason that Suzy was staying in Burton’s hotel.

  But Peter Hunt was lying to Benson; he knew exactly what was going on. But Benson respected Hunt and accepted his denial. He rang the Daily Express news desk and told them there was no truth in Dempster’s story. The denial only stood for a day.

  As soon as Taylor had left for Los Angeles, Burton called Suzy and told her to return to New York straightaway. As soon as Suzy got to the Lombardy, he decided not to waste the party and used it to celebrate the astounding reviews he was receiving for his performance in Equus. Burton was at the very peak of his acting career and the toast of Broadway. This time, he dispensed with any discretion, and Suzy was openly on his arm.

  Manhattan can be a very small place, and Burton and Suzy made no attempt to hide their closeness. But, initially, American reporters were completely baffled as to who Suzy was.

  Burton did not care to e
nlighten them and enjoyed the press’ discomfort at them not being able to caption the many photos of the two appearing in the four New York daily newspapers.

  Eventually, the journalists worked out that the striking blonde was the wife of racing driver James Hunt, and that she had clearly broken up Burton’s marriage to Elizabeth Taylor. There was no bigger media story than that in the last week of February 1976.

  In New York, after his performances, Suzy and Richard would dine with friends or on their own. Burton took her to the same bistros and restaurants to which he had taken Elizabeth Taylor ten years earlier. Burton was immensely proud of his new girlfriend’s magical effect on people. When he walked into a restaurant with her on his arm, people applauded. When she excused herself, the women of New York followed her into the restroom to get a closer look at the green-eyed English beauty who had enraptured New York society overnight.

  With the news suddenly out, and Suzy and Burton no longer a secret, Hunt was in for a shock when he landed at Johannesburg airport for the South African Grand Prix. When Hunt got off the plane, he drove to the Sleepy Hollow Hotel where he was staying before he moved to the Kyalami Ranch Hotel for the race. He was followed by journalists who had flown in specially to work on the story. The hotel was staked out by a throng of jostling journalists and photographers – none of them interested in the race. Alastair Caldwell remembers: “Suddenly we had huge media interest. We had the Sydney Morning Herald and the Punjabi Times, we had every daily newspaper in the world, even Mexico. All were trying to interview us and talk to James. They were being flown in by the plane-load.”