The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  George Davis told me that Louise [Collingwood] is a lush – she has certainly been drunk every time I've met her so far – and that because of her drunkenness she cost Charles his job as head of CBS (in Paris) in Europe. At one reception she entered the banquet room or whatever and fell flat on her face. She told de Gaulle that she adored the way he spoke French because he was the only Frenchman she understood. She also called him ‘honey’. He didn't take it at all well. Poor girl. She says she did a play with Michael Redgrave in London five years ago, that it, the play, had the word ‘sun’ in its title, that it ran for 15 months and, after much thought, decided that the playwright's name was Hunter. Probably N.C.49 This was at lunchtime before one had had one's first drink! I hope she's not a drunken liar. She's so gay and nice.

  APRIL

  April fool's day, Tuesday 1st Well Louise is not a fibber, she is merely a lush. She did do a play in London with Michael and Vanessa Redgrave and it was written by N. C. Hunter, and it did have the word ‘sun’ in the title. It was in fact called A Touch of Sun.50

  We had the Collingwoods and the three teenage girls to lunch plus Jim, George and two friends called Bronson and Hayes. The latter gets my Oscar for the queerest queer I've ever seen. When I first saw him I genuinely thought he was a woman. He wore an outrageous toupée which he took off later. [...]

  As usual when surrounded by strangers, I drank far too much. Martini after Martini and later drove E down to the town where I drank tequila after tequila. [...] The jeep has turned up freshly painted in lavender and looks very pretty. I am going to paint E's name on the side. Just in case people don't know who she is!

  The above is about as far as I could get yesterday. I was just too impossibly lazy and hung-over to muster up the energy.51

  Wednesday 2nd Yesterday, after failing to finish my daily page, I asked E if she thought we should do a tour of the town and do our duties to the various hostelleries. This was also a sly opportunity to imbibe a few dog's hairs. So about 11.30 we set off [...]. We went to La Oceana first which is right close to the sea. It was virtually empty when we went in, but by the time we'd had one drink, and we only had one, the place was packed to standing room only. It was not quite as marked at the next hotel [...] but that filled up nicely too. That hotel is called La Rosita.52 E went to the lavatory there and said it was disgusting. [...] The next port of call was an [sic] hotel down by Nelly's place on the Muertos Beach. It was horrible and gimcrack and the people equally so. We felt claustrophobic and left in a hurry, not, however, before we had met the Mayor and somebody representing the President and agreed to go to Guadalahara to receive gold medals for being Friends of Mexico or something. Well we surely have been friends to Puerto Vallarta. I remember when Ray Stark told me where the location of Night of the Iguana was that we all had to look it up on a map. It wasn't there and we had to get information from the nearest Mexican Embassy. Now there are huge signs in Los Angeles which enjoin one to ‘Fly to beautiful unspoilt Puerto Vallarta. Only 21/2 hours by Mexicana Jet.’ [...]

  I've been asked with, among others, Noel Coward and John Gielgud, to write a couple of thousand words about Larry Olivier for a pictorial autobiography, I mean biography. E resents my doing it – she takes a long time to forget an insult – but I don't see how I can refuse. I can't say that I think it a bad idea to write about my fellow actors, as Paul Scofield says, because I've done so before.

  Thursday 3rd 10 o'clock in the morning and I am sitting in the dining-room cum-kitchen of the lower house. I type every day at the dining room table, a cigarette burning in an ashtray ahead of me and a cup of tea on a dictionary to my right. The tea is on the book to prevent marking the table. The morning is brilliant as usual and E is still asleep but any second the voice will call from the upper balcony, ‘Richard’ and I will go out on this balcony, wave at her, tell her with signs to come down and see me and the long day will get off to a quiet start. [...]

  Yesterday we sunned and swam a lot and read a lot. E is reading a long fat novel about the Mafia called The Godfather which she says is badly written but un-put-downable.53 I am reading a paperback history of the Mayans by somebody called Von Hagen, famous Spanish short stories with the English text on one page and the Spanish on the other, and am still ploughing through Senor Paz's Labyrinths.54 In bed I read a rather good detective story set in San Luis, Mexico called the Rose Window.55 A bit in the style of Simenon with a hero called Menendes, a pure Indian.56 A lot is made of the fact that there is discrimination between Mexicans of Spanish blood and those of pure Indian blood. I didn't realize it was ever apparent. There have been quite a few Indians who are honoured and revered Mexicans. Wasn't Juarez a pure Indian? And Zapata too?57

  The language is giving me hell. I find myself unless I think slowly and carefully speaking either Italian or French to the servants all the time. I must, since we are hopefully going to spend a long time here in future, God Willing, get a better command of the language. [...]

  Good Friday, 4th Yesterday was a funny day. It went splendidly for the first half and degenerated into bickering around 3.30 in the p.m. It was largely my fault. I suddenly became testy for no very good reason and remained so for the rest of the day though I tried to get myself better around five but to no avail. E of course was no help at all and bickered back with almost masculine pride. This was some of the dialogue, roughly speaking:

  Me: (having gone to read upstairs in the bedroom about 8pm. ‘Is the bathroom still smelling?’

  She: ‘Yes.’

  Me: ‘I can't smell anything in there. Perhaps it's you.’

  She: ‘Fuck off.’ (She leaves bedroom and goes downstairs, while me remains reading on bed)

  She: (having come back upstairs twenty minutes or so later standing at the door with a look of real loathing on her face): ‘I dislike you and hate you’ (It may have been ‘loathe')

  Me: (Getting into a dressing gown.) ‘Goodnight, have a good sleep.’

  She: ‘You too.’

  Me exits, and goes to Chris’ room where me lies on bed and reads.

  N.B. For the benefit of the actors in this little study of home life among the Burtons, it must be emphasized that though the words used are relatively innocuous, the speaking of them is instinct with venomous malice.

  The rest of the dialogue which was perfunctory and consisted of similar equally boring exchanges, which took place at four hour silent intervals, culminated in my going back upstairs to finish my detective story in bed. To sleep at 4.30 approx.

  The exchanges this morning have been polite but mid-distant. E is now making a ‘salty dog’ so presumably things will warm up after that. One of E's typically strong-woman-feminine traits is that she's incapable of apologizing unless I apologize first. [...] I hated yesterday. I wasn't even drunk and in fact had only had two drinks, one before lunch and one before dinner, all day. Perhaps I should get sloshed.

  Sunday 5th Well I did get sloshed yesterday. The damage was done when we arrived at the airport to find that the plane was an hour late and there was nothing to do but sit in the airport bar and drink. Scotch whisky at that which never agrees with me anyway. But I remained in an amiable state all day. The kids all look fine though Liza's hair needs cutting as usual. She has got a certain thin-lipped pointed chinniness (from her father) and she needs a clever hairstyle to reduce its slight witchiness.

  Michael has become very Anglicized but Chris is still hanging on to his American accent, though his too is fading. [...] I drove E and all the kids back in the Beach Buggy which was a success with all. [...]

  The town is a mad house. Holy week has brought people in by the thousands. Even the Garza Blanca which is normally uncrowded was full and were we not us we might have had difficulty in finding a table. [...] Sitting at the next table inevitably it seems nowadays were Chas and Louise Collingwood. He gave me a fragment of a novel he is writing asking me my opinion and saying that if I thought it was any worth he would go on with it. [...]

  As we arrived ba
ck at the house we were hailed by a negro. It turned out to be James Baldwin and a French boy who spoke no English.58 He was down here escaping from Hollywood he said. We discussed Black Power, Black Panthers, Black is best, Black is beautiful and Black and White. He said quite openly and not at all sneakily: ‘Richard, can you let me have 20 dollars?’ (‘Let me have,’ mark you, not ‘lend’.)

  I was rather surprised, as I would have thought he was fairly affluent and said: ‘Twenty dollars?’

  ‘I mean 200 dollars,’ he said. I said certainly and Jim is going to give it to him today. We are seeing him again tomorrow.

  Wednesday 9th On Sunday we went on the boat for a little fishing and a little sightseeing for Val and Jane. It was not a very successful day as the boat was extremely uncomfortable, cramped and engine-shuddered the whole day. We did catch three Sierra for our supper.59 [...] Small motor-boats [...] are the most anti-social means of transportation. Every comment, every conversation, every observation has to be shouted. There are innumerable legs to be tripped over, and all kinds of bits of boat to bark shins on, or stub toes. I loathed it and will never go again except from the Kalizma to shore etc. [...]

  We think that James Baldwin is a thief! Val had $220 or so stolen from her purse when J. Baldwin came to lunch on Monday, and after several reductios ad absurdum have decided that the guilty feller is Baldwin. It may be his French ‘friend’ but then that's the same thing. [...]

  Thursday 10th Well, we decided that J. Baldwin had stolen Val's money for the following, mostly psychological, reasons: The servants have not stolen anything in 7 years, despite my habit of leaving money all over the place in trouser pockets etc. and E leaving baubles all over her dressing table and other locations. The children have never stolen anything in their lives. James and George could have robbed us of thousands if they had wished to in the last many years. It's inconceivable that the Collingwoods would have, and anyway they had no opportunity. Neither E nor I did.

  I have already recorded in this diary that Baldwin had asked me for 20, no 200 dollars. Two days later he asked Jim for a further 50. Then a further hundred. Some couple of years ago he had borrowed $10 from Jim (while travelling 1st class on La France) and has never paid him back.60 He was sitting at the table with us over lunch when he saw me give the money to Jim to give to Val (I had been holding it for her) who put it in her handbag. She had later taken it to her room in the lower house and James had made a tour of the houses alone. We shall never be able to prove it and the money doesn't matter, but why does he do it? Does he also steal from blackmen or does he think that the white man owes him a living? I must find out from others if James has a reputation as a kleptomaniac.61

  At the same lunch a somewhat sozzled and belligerent Chas said something like how could I continue to do a job as degrading and despicable as being an actor. I said I'd prefer to play Hamlet than read the news. He had prefaced his whole attack on my profession by saying what great potential I had as a writer, and how I was wasting my time on acting etc. His wife later on, so E tells me, embarked on an attack on E. Her back was worse than E's. Liza (E's blood) was sullen while Maria (adopted) was delightful. [...] Envy was out in force that day.

  Baldwin on the other hand was kind and generous about all and is very intelligent. So he can steal some more if he wishes. [...]

  Friday 11th [...] Yesterday was an indifferent day. First we had a slightly demented and prima donnaish letter from the boring opinionated mediocre headmaster of Michael's school which I enclose.62 It's almost feminine in its pique. We have decided not to send them back there and a telegram and following letter will be sent off today to that effect. This is not only out of our pique, but because, on reflection, the school has been bad for them. Their values have become tremendously coarsened, Michael started to smoke there and drink there and found jail-bait companions. Though admittedly he might have found them at any other school. Poor Michael, he is a good hearted boy but, outside the family, is incapable of exercising charm. His mother and father both have it and his brother has it in excelsis, but he gives the impression of morosely mooning all the time.63 He cannot for instance sit down in a chair, he sprawls. If his mother asks him to do anything for her it is so charmlessly and apparently unwillingly done that I can understand why masters in school mistake it for spoiled-ness. Since coming here I have seen him read nothing but comic strips. Come to think of it though, I haven't seen Chris read anything else either. Maybe they are just not intellectual and that's that. The truth is though, I suspect, that [...] they are slow starters, and won't really begin to move until they're in their late teens or even their early twenties but unfortunately, unless one is a genius, the modern educational system doesn't cope with the late starters, and their lives are ruined thereafter.

  [...] Last night as I lay reading in bed and E was around the corner of the room I asked: What are you doing lumpy?

  She said like a little girl and quite seriously: ‘Playing with my jewels.’

  Thursday 17th I have been so engrossed in the last few days with the letter enclosed from the Millfield headmaster and my reply to it, also enclosed, that I have neglected this daily chore.64 So the boys are not going back to the school which is a pity really because it means yet another change of school and a lot of bother. And it means searching for another school for Liza. Anyhow, we'll sort it out. So the two boys stay for a bit longer and, as a result of a very important event yesterday the girls are staying for another week also. Liza has had her first ‘period’ and we feel that she should not do this enormous journey to Europe involving an eight hour time change at this particular point. [...]

  Elizabeth has just called down from the upper house to say she's going to take a nap. Can one believe it? She slept for eight hours last night and already wants a ‘nap’ at 10.30 in the morning. Well maybe she needs it. It's kind of despairing though. [...]

  We are beginning to count the days left to us here. Time's winged chariot really hurries along when you would ask him to take it easy.65 I have no interest in the next film whatsoever. I have been growing a beard for about a week and I loathe it. It is badger grey with smudges of black brown and ginger. Horrible! I must start to learn the part soon, probably tomorrow. We hear news that, despite silly notices where they don't recognize the genre of the picture, Where Eagles Dare is making a big gross. [...]

  Friday 18th Yesterday we went to Garza Blanca [...] We drank something called Mai-Tais, at least it sounds like that though I don't know how to spell it, and it is a fruit drink with three different kinds of rum, light, medium and black.66 [...] As we were sitting there over lunch Skip Ward and his girl friend Stella Stevens (a film star) arrived from the other hotel in town which they had found impossibly touristy.67 I was forced by E to leave for home, not without a lot of scowling on my part, before they came out from their suite to join us for a drink. She suspected, not without reason I suppose, that one drink would have led to another and another and another lost day. So I drank at home instead.

  [...] Tomorrow two people arrive from England to fit me for my costumes for Anne of the Thousand Days. The day after, I believe, we are to be given the freedom of Jalisco or whatever it is.68 So two horrid days loom ahead.

  Chas and Louise Collingwood came for a drink before going off to dinner somewhere. I like them both very much when they are sober but both get a little malicious when they've had a few. They come out with the not uncommon resentment of our fame or notoriety when sufficiently into their cups. I wonder if we'll feel the same when our fame has diminished and we are in the company of somebody more known. I don't think so. I have been in the company of your Churchill and Picasso and didn't feel any particular resentment that people stepped on my toes in a blind effort to get near the two ‘great’ men, and ignored me. [...]

  Sunday 20th The costume people arrived from London yesterday and I did the fittings in about 1/2 an hour. Imagine if I'd flown 7000 miles to London for a half hour fitting. I'd have been a pretty picture of a feller, espe
cially, as it turned out that the two fitters had to be in Hollywood anyway to do something for Barbara Streisand.69

  I have been going through one of my periodic moods of depression for the last three days. Periods when the very thought of seeing anyone except Elizabeth gives me a real physical pain. And when I'm not drinking which I've not been for the last three days it is at its worst. Actually during the last 12 months or so I have become increasingly anti-social and am only really at comparative ease when fairly drunk. [...] The fact remains [...] I simply don't want people, including my own children whom I love, around. The first two or three weeks here without anyone except E were happy-as-sandboy days. It is the damnedest paradox. I miss the children terribly when they're not here, especially Liza. My heart does several varieties of dance when I first see them coming off the plane or whatever, and within three days I wish them gone. It is very puzzling. [...] Time was when my chiefest enjoyment after love-making and a good poem was standing at a bar with a convivial few and rambling around poetry and politics and ideas of all kinds – generally second-hand of course – and talking of every subject except the loathed one of acting. And now ... nothing except to be crouched over a book in our bedroom with the air-conditioning turned on to drown the noises of the outside world. The mood is only temporary of course and even this illiterate apologia may go some way towards dissipating the gloom. [...]