The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  11 Friday Returned home today to La Reine Jeanne. We shall be leaving on Monday for Hotel du Cap at Antibes then away on Wednesday to USA. Sybil's boyfriend disapproved of by all who know her and of the marriage. She has known him apparently only three months and they have been serious, as ‘twere, only three weeks. I hope she knows what she's doing. Burt points out that she knows quite a few people who have happily remained married to men years and years younger than themselves. Let us pray. Weather continually brilliant though everyone native complains of the mistral.90 Not us!

  12 Saturday Old Burt ill with tooth trouble and aching bones. Fussed over her a bit and she had food upstairs for a change – at least lunch. We dined downstairs [...] chicken and tomato salad. No drink at all today. Talk of drink – Michel Jazy has just broken the mile world's record and, according to Figaro, drinks a quart of red wine a day!!?91 No way of finding out anymore about Sybil's feller. The Press (English) have been hounding us a bit – Mirror and Express – probably about Sybil. Talked to nobody. ‘Phoning here is impossible a sort of Olympian shouting match.

  13 Sunday Talked to Aaron today who was dourly opposed to Sybil's marriage.92 The chap's name is Zaroff. Greek American from Ohio. ‘Is 24 looks 18’ says Aaron. Penniless. Syb retains $200,000. Rest goes into trust for Children. Roddy furious.93 Helen Greenford refuses to go to Wedding.94 Ivor delighted! Phil not caring.95 I talked to Kate for a moment. She sounded awfully Yankee.

  14 Monday Left for Antibes. Much farewelling [...] at the local (called the Paillotte).96 Lunched in Leï Mouscadins at St Tropez.97 Stopped for a drink at Carlton in Cannes.98 Went for a walk. Met editor of Sunday Mirror.99 Got sloshed.

  15 Tuesday Woke late (around 11.00) and lunched on hors d'oeuvres at Eden Roc which is of course the restaurant for the Hotel.100 We then went to Nice airport to pick up kids flying from Geneva with Bea.101 Later I took the kids swimming on the rock and gave Michael and Christopher two key-ring compasses which they adore. For early dinner we all went to Juan les Pins to eat pizza.102 We watched with fascination how many people were fascinated by the old Rolls-R. I don't recollect any car getting such attention – particularly in France. Rather a savage game of Yahtsee which I lost.

  16 Wednesday E had fittings for her clothes from Dior today.103 They look very good. I packed for myself and Dick and Bea packed for Burt.104 We went to catch the tender for the Michelangelo and sat for over an hour on the open deck (no place to hide) while the whole South of France took photographs.105 The boat, compared with the Cunard Lines, is surprisingly utilitarian and appallingly decorated.106 Everything looks very cheap and chromy. Photographer scrambling to snap us as we boarded from the Tender hit Maria in the face with a shoulder hanging camera. I slashed him across the neck and back. Impertinent sod.

  The page for 17–23 June is missing. The next entry is:

  24 Thursday In fury one night I tore out the preceding page of diary. Silly of course but there you are. Tomorrow we arrive in NY. J. Springer will meet the boat [...]. We shan't see him or his press friends until much much later. I will leave the rest of this day's journal until tomorrow's over.!

  Arrived NY. Usual Press. Usual idiotic questions usual idiotic answers. Tomorrow have arranged to go out into the country to place called Quogue to see Kate, Ivor and Gwen.107 E. very nervous but as much as I.

  28 Monday Left NY for LA today.

  29 Tuesday Had lunch with Kup in the pump room of the Ambassador.108

  30 Wednesday Met Hermes Pan on train and also he was on the boat!109

  JULY

  1 Thursday Arrived LA from Chicago and NY. Lovely journey on the train. Read biography of Dylan by Fitzgibbon which I am enjoying if an account of so desperate a life can be described as enjoyable.110

  We disembarked at Pomona in the hope that it would beat the Press but they were there.111 Drove back home with J. Springer. [...] The house is alright. Lots of things don't work but the grounds are beautiful and there are two swimming pools. The kids love it of course. Went to see Francis. He moves badly but his brain's OK.

  2 Friday Swam in the pool all morning and searched for Shanni who has got herself lost or stolen.112 She is so minute that she might be stuck in the undergrowth for all I know. Had lunch with Francis and Sara at Scandia113 [...] Saw Mike Nichols and girl called Rosemary Forsythe.114 Mike loves fairly dumb girls. Taught E. to play billiards. Did some good shots.

  3 Saturday Spent day in and around pool. Stiff with sun and playing football with Thomas à Becket.115 Dick and John showed us delicious new car from Italy – a Fiat about the size of a Mini Cooper with chains, four doors and a canopied top.116 Took E for drive around Holmby Hills.117

  4 Sunday Had Francis and Sara for barbecue lunch [...] Two boys went down the beach with their father and Maggie.118 Mike Snr more incoherent than ever. Rex came over119 [...] and taught me new word game. We taught him Yahtsee. Nice guy.

  5 Monday Poolside again. E read V. Woolf for first time – at least new script. Val came over for lunch and dinner.120 We visited her place and tried pool chair with turbulent water. Seems splendid but we shall know tomorrow if it makes us stiff. Waiting anxiously for reply from Syb re. Kate. I hope she'll be alright about letting her come out to stay with us. What will I do if she doesn't comply amiably? Have written letters to Kate, Graham, Gwyneth, Ivor, Syb. Whew!

  [This is the last entry, apart from a table of scores from Yahtzee!. Work on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? began the following day with three weeks of rehearsals at the Warner Studios, Burbank, Los Angeles.]

  1966

  Richard stopped keeping his 1965 diary in July, and did not start making entries for 1966 until mid-March. From July to August 1965 he and Elizabeth lived on Carolwood Drive, in the Holmby Hills in Bel Air, while rehearsing and filming Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In late August they moved from Los Angeles to Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, for location filming. In the meantime their film The Sandpiper was released. In late September they returned to Hollywood, where Richard celebrated his fortieth birthday on 10 November 1965. On this occasion Woolf’s producer and screenwriter Ernest Lehman (1915–2005) presented Richard with an original edition of the essays of Francis Bacon. Elizabeth gave him an Oldsmobile Toronado. Filming on Woolf ended on 13 December 1965, after which Richard and Elizabeth visited Elizabeth's brother Howard and his family in Del Mar, San Diego, before spending Christmas in Los Angeles. January saw both embroiled in legal proceedings with Twentieth Century-Fox. In February 1966 Richard and Elizabeth journeyed to Oxford, staying at the Randolph Hotel, to fulfil a promise they had made in 1963 to Richard's former tutor, Nevill Coghill. After ten days of rehearsals they appeared in an Oxford University Dramatic Society production of Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus, staged at the Oxford Playhouse. The production, which met with a mixed critical response, ran for just one week. Accounts vary of how much money it made – the lowest estimate is £3,000, the highest £17,000. The intention had been that monies raised from the performance (and from the film version that followed) would be put towards a fund-raising initiative (the University Theatre Appeal Fund) designed to provide the university with a new theatre and arts centre. Although these grander designs were not realized, in part because the film itself made a loss, in 1976 the Burton Taylor Studio was added to the Playhouse building.

  Following Faustus, Burton and Taylor moved on to Rome, where they would begin filming The Taming of the Shrew under the direction of Franco Zeffirelli. They stayed in a villa on the Via Appia Antica.

  MARCH

  Friday 18th, Rome1 Lunched at home with Franco Zeffirelli, Alexandre de Paris, Irene Sharaff and Dick McWhorter.2 Irene is a funny contradiction. And enormously concerned with her own dignity.

  After lunch [...] we had a press conference. The usual stupid answers to the inevitable stupid questions. What a bore they are.

  Dinner at home alone and fried chicken. Must read script and original version of Shrew again before Monday.3 De Sica coming to lunch tomorrow we
think.4 We are to dine with Edward Albee on Sat (tomorrow) night.5 I hope he's more articulate than the last time I met him in NY.

  Saturday 19th We dawdled about all day until dinner in Rome at Ranieres (near Spanish Square) with Zeffirelli, Albee and his friend.6

  Albee was very flattering, especially to E!, about V. Woolf and, for him, was very talkative. They were doing a swift tour of Europe – a day here, a day there. He says that he is 2/3 through a new play which should be going on Broadway in the Autumn.7 It contains 4 men and 2 women. He said that it was ‘a very curious play, a very curious play indeed.’ After Tiny Alice and V. Woolf how curious can you, as they say, get.8 He told us that he thinks about a play for six months approx and then writes it in about three. There is no second draft. It is as it is, and so remains.

  We had a hair raising drive to Rome pursued by paparazzi all the way.9 I think Mario the driver takes too much notice of these butterflies of the gutter. They risk their lives too. Why don't they go where there's real risk. Like a war. Like Viet Nam. Like anywhere.

  I finished reading Ugo Betti's play The Queen and the Rebels.10 It is quite good and very actable but weakens quickly at the end. Perhaps they could do something about it. Also some of the dialogue is lamentably old fashioned but all that could be cured.

  Sunday 20th So far we had lunch with Vittorio De Sica and his wife and two children (boys).

  One boy played the guitar – what a horrible instrument, worse than a mouth-accordion, an accordion, a Jew's harp or a paper-and-comb. Worse than beating on nothing with a nought. But, however, fond parents love the idea of a noise – however absurd – made by their dearest and nearest. De Sica really looked on his son with admiration. He had, I mean the son (and the father too when he, the son, was playing) the face of a demented and somewhat stupefied fish. The Beatles have a lot to pay for. Even my own. Boys I mean. How dull I am.

  So. They came to lunch and next Monday we dine with them and we shall also watch Umberto D.11 I must, somehow, get out of that.

  And so the day wore inevitably on to another regret in the lost and in future to be recalled days.

  What shall we do now. Why not if it's so intolerably wearying. Why not go to bye-byes?

  Bugger it then. Let's row.

  Tuesday 22nd On Monday, the missing day in this diary, we went to the studios at 6pm to have chat and drinks with crew and cast. We took Liza, Maria and Karen (their nurse) with us. Everybody seemed reasonably pleased and felt that it was a fairly good first day – especially as it was Franco Z's first film.

  I had been earlier in the morning, though I was not called, to wish good luck and see how things were. There was a long initial hold-up lasting about 11/2 hours waiting for a change of horse. [...] Later that morning I went over to the back-lot [...] to see the first of the glass shots.12 That looks good too.

  I had lunch with Mr Haggiag.13 I had been warned that he was a ‘wheeler and dealer.’ He is, I think, but appears to respond easily to flattery which is always a great weakness in negotiation and a strength if the other gent (for the other gent) can use it.

  I took Liza and Maria to school this morning and then went to the bookshop on the Via Veneto and bought some 20 or 30 paperbacks.14 1/2 dozen detective stories. Ludovic Kennedy's Trial of Stephen Ward a genuine establishment horror story.15 And a palpably unjust trial – nightmarishly so. Harry S. Truman's Memoirs.16 Ingenuous to the point of admiration, and also wonder that a man of such common (but tough) intellect could ever have become the President. And done so well. Perhaps office really can make the man.

  We sat quietly at home for the evening and read. We dined à deux and read and sometimes talked to each other and read out interesting bits to each other even while we ate. It has suddenly become quite summery. For the first time I had to open completely the car windows when driving.

  Rome is now, on certain windless days as smog-ridden as any of the really big cities. That deadly miasma is slowly creeping all over this earth. Will no govt. act to stop this immense planetary asphyxiation. Ah well it won't all be the same in a hundred years. Man's inhumanity to himself is stupefying.

  The British elections take place on the 31st.17 It is, to me, a fascinating thing to watch. The mud slinging and pettish accusations of both sides is almost too childish to be believed but yet I am compelled to read it. The unction of the Tory Press, the immense vulgarity of the Mirror, the blindness of them both, will not be believed an age from now if, as I mentioned above, there is an age from now.18 Wilson will win it appears from Polls.19

  Georgie our Laza Apso is very ill.20 Poor old boy.

  Wednesday 23rd E. had two fittings today for her dress to be worn to the Ballet tomorrow night. What am I doing going to a ballet again? This is the second time in six months. Rudolph Nureyev notwithstanding.21

  We both had medical examinations for Insurance. It appears to be alright. The doctor sweated a lot and looked as if he could do with a check-up.

  We dined at home and E. had her second fitting after dinner. I tried to read Barzini's The Italians but found it intolerably prolix and self congratulatory.22 I'll try it again and will make another desperate attempt to like The Italians and the Italians.

  Thursday 24th We went to the Opera to see Rudi N dance, and dance he did. How he makes the others look like carthorses, even a brilliant fellow like Bruhn the Dane.23 Rudi did an extract from Sylphides.24

  The paparazzi behaved like lunatics, getting inside the theatre and taking snaps even during the performance. The management and the police seem equally helpless. Afterwards we went to the Little Bar in the Via Sistina for a quick drink.25 Met an actor there with Ron Berkeley and his girl Vicky called Coffin!26 [...]

  Friday 25th The boys arrived from La Suisse.27 Liza E and I had lunch at Ostia on the edge of the sea.28 An enormous and terrible lady journalist appeared and asked us questions. I sent her off in a burst of fury.

  I felt dreadful all day long – melancholy and distant – and so did E. Georgie died. He must have caught something from some alien dog in the pound he was at. Now E'en so is ill.29 Pray God she's alright. I love that old Chinese lady.

  We dined early with the children and went to bed quite early too. I'm getting nervous about the film and E firmly believes she can't learn her lines. [...]

  Saturday 26th I woke to my astonishment at 11.00. How late. I would like to awake, until my death, about 6 to 7 in the morning but, life and nerves being what they are, one is lucky to be up and shouting at 4 in the afternoon. There is a kind of lethargy, induced only by vulgarity, which prompts late rising. I remember the days when to sleep more than 5 hours a day was considered self-indulgence. And I am now self-indulgent. It must be booze and age.

  The children were about for lunch. They giggled a lot and found great pleasure in being idiotic. They pretended powerful interest in going to the studio. We procured for them ham and cheese sandwiches and sent Maria home. That left us with Michael and Christopher and Liza. We then went to see a film called The Silencers starring Dean Martin.30 It was of an obviousness so anticipatory as to take one's breath away. [...] I fell asleep. And the children noticed to my shame.

  Wales, I understand, beat France in Rugby and a lot of difference that is going to make to the world.31

  I also saw a vision of myself on the screen. I was gay stupid and fat. So, as they say, I'm fat, I'm gay I'm stupid and I'm fat and that, as they say, is fat.

  I worry enormously about the fact that we have no money. I worry that I will not be able to look after my wife and my children after I'm dead – nobody else will – and that worries me more than the silliness of Good Gracious Me!32

  Anyway we went to a restaurant over a cow-shed and the food was good. And the children were dying of cold and boredom. And so was I. [...]

  Sunday 27th and Monday 28th Took E and the children to the beach on Sunday afternoon in the Toronado. We had some fun, for the kids, in beating most other cars.

  We then had a ‘draw’ for the Grand National
, run yesterday, and we drew 5 or 6 horses each. Maria won with outsider (50–1) Anglo.33 [...]

  Monday lunch with Jack Cardiff and Haggiag.34 Cardiff seems half-diffident half-cocky – continually mentioning Sons and Lovers – presumably his most successful film. I think he was nominated for an Oscar. Or perhaps the film was.35 Anyway he knows a rather promising sounding process owned by Pinewood.36 [...]

  Went to studio and had my hair permed. Ghastly business. Home, supper with the boys, and early bed.

  I have to test again tomorrow. Oh happy Day.

  We had beaten France. Skin of teeth. 9–8.

  Tuesday 29th I went to the studio and made-up and dressed and tested again. E came with me. About 2.30 we went to lunch at the tiny village 10 minutes away – the place with cows called I Streghi or some such name.37 (The cows are on the right of the restaurant looking at it – not in the restaurant.) The entire village is owned by one of the Borghese family.38

  Afterwards we had brandy with the proprietor. And then went quietly drinking down the afternoon and home and bed. E very worried about that old internal bleeding that's started up again.

  Wednesday 30th At last I began to learn the script. What a dilatory actor I am. How to succeed without really trying.

  Some agonizing on the part of Franco Z about my initial costume. I hope he's not going to be a bore when we start to work. They are changing or rather adapting the present costume. I wish I had Larry's and John's – indeed most actors’ love of dressing up and all that goes with it – the fittings, the finicky fussing etc. and always the pouffs.39 I went to the Studio and played a sort of buffer or mediator between Franco, who is not entirely masculine it seems, and Irene who is not entirely feminine, and so I strode in Limbo for a quarter of an hour. And then came home to old fatty who stayed in bed all day to watch, take care of, that bleeding mentioned above. The election takes place in Britain tomorrow. I've read the political columns until I'm sick of ‘em. Shan't read the British ones until the next election. Perhaps not even then.