The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  Have just heard from Hugh French that Ustinov is ecstatic about our enthusiasm re Hammersmith is Out. Shall have a quick word with Peter's partner Alex Lucas, I think, today at lunch.180

  JULY

  Friday 3rd, San Felipe, Mexico Drove into Mexicali yesterday, took a room for the day at the Lucerna Hotel, phoned Elizabeth, borrowed a bell-boy from the hotel and raided supermarkets for food and bits and pieces for the apartment here.181 It was delicious talking to E. I had wondered why I felt so peculiarly lost without her this time of parting as we have been apart before for a couple of weeks – when I was in Geneva two years ago and Ivor had his accident and two or three years before that when she went to California when her dad had his stroke and a few days when she went to Paris for the funeral of Gaston's son – but suddenly realized why I felt so lonely this time. Reason being that before we were always able to talk on the blower but not so from here. So for the first time in my life I appreciated the normally despised telephone. I talked to her twice in a couple of hours! She will be here in a couple of days. Hip! Hip! Michael! She said she missed me as badly as I missed her and that she mooned about at night and felt almost tearful over a pair of my socks that she saw hanging about. [...]

  I feel extraordinarily fit since I talked to her and feel as young as 25 or something. Stopping drinking is the best thing I've ever done for my physical well-being. Twice since I arrived I was immensely tempted to have a drink – once when I was alone. This is the kind of place and the kind of situation where one is naturally driven to booze. Waiting for the film to start, waiting for the tanks and guns etc. to get here, the uncertainty of the Mexican immigration [...]

  However, we do start work tomorrow so they told me last night.

  I have been learning the German I have to speak in the film from a German actor who plays the part of Schröder.182 He invented the reason for yawning. He is so boring that it is almost hypnotic. All I ask him to do is speak the lines for me and I will write it down phonetically in my own way and then learn the whole thing off like a machine-rattle. BUT he expatiates on every line. ‘I do not zee Cherman think would say to a check-point man dese thinks mit deses words’. So doing a page of script consisting of perhaps 3 lines of German for me, takes a full hour. I faint with ennui. ‘I disapproove of all military thinks and should not be doing ziss film but one must work I suppose and you are much admired in my country.’ He has a great soft white face and refuses to go into the sun, and a large elephantine bum and belly. He is most unattractive and his smile is horrifying. He gives the impression of unredeemable smugness. But the new Burton says ‘Yes, I see, of course, quite, See your point. Yes "krankenhaus"’ is right but you think a cultured German might say "Hospital" with the accent on the last syllable so good let's say that because our chief public for the picture are English-speaking and it's good if they recognize a word that is common to both languages.’ instead of: ‘Look, just speak the bloody lines for me and bugger off.’ I am so tolerant and understanding that I frequently give myself a nasty turn.

  I am still surprised and pleased at the impact of my name on people. I arrived (with Brook) at the Hotel in Mexicali, unannounced, yesterday and within minutes was waited on hand and foot. The people in the supermarkets – we went to three altogether – were without exception delighted to see me, and all proffered advice on where to go and what to buy and all seemed delighted that I spoke Spanish. I like being famous. I wonder how I'll feel when I'm not. After twenty years of it now and a further few years I suppose it will feel very strange to be R. Jenkins again as it were. The manager of the hotel reserved a room for us at the hotel – a suite I mean, which is three rooms in effect, – even though it's his biggest week-end of the year, being the 4th of July. The young boy, terribly pretty and looking about 15 but is actually 21 and answering to the name of David was in his seventh heaven showing us around the shop calling out to his friends as we passed them in the hired Impala which I drove. ‘Gustavo, Como ‘sta?’ He was a proper little lord for a day. ‘I will be waiting for you when you come back and I will tresore your Elizabeth Taylor,’ he assured me when I left.

  Saturday 4th, San Felipe, Baja California [...] It's the first day of the film and everybody is more nervous than usual because of Hathaway's reputation as a shit of the first water once the film starts rolling. Yesterday he had a dress parade and it was every bit as realistic as a real inspection by a real commanding officer in a real war. The poor actors were terrified out of their wits. He bawled and screamed and cursed. Colicos was ordered to have his hair cut not once but three times. Side-boards had to be trimmed to the top of the ear-line which is difficult for some of the other actors as our film is so short in schedule and quite a few of them are off to do other films in which they wear long modern hair within a few weeks. [...]

  We tried to go to dinner last night, Bob Wilson, Brook and Ron Berk, to a restaurant called ‘Reuben's’ which is in a trailer park on the beach on the far side of town, but curiosity-seekers and a group of hippies very high on pot drove us away and to the anonymity of our protected motel.183 One immensely tall young man with the lost eyes of the hopelessly stoned tried like a man in a nightmare to put something in my pocket. Ron got him away. He was trying to give me a ‘joint’ i.e. a marijuana cigarette. Ron said to him after having wrestled him away ‘It's very kind of you and Mr Burton appreciates it but he doesn't use them.’ [...]

  I was also driven off the beach yesterday where I was sitting reading a book called An American Melodrama by three English writers from the Sunday Times called Chester, Hodgson and Page.184 Everything was alright for about two hours. I had walked with E'en So for a couple of miles along the beach and had had a couple of dips in the ocean, reading between times when suddenly I was surrounded by a crowd of people who simply stared. Jacques Charon (a French Professor of Art from Berkeley) came over [to] rescue me, and I went indoors for the rest of the day.

  [...] A letter from Buck House arrived yesterday telling me of the investiture on the 28th of July.185 I shan't be able to be there so other arrangements will have to be made. It can be done by a vice-consul I understand which will be much more satisfactory and much less fuss. I shall try to arrange that.

  [...] I have become so obsessed lately with the hopelessness of any rebellion against authority that I can only assume that I have come to a sort of climacteric. I read the political page every day and am continually astounded by what I read. To read an intelligent man like William Buckley writing of Nixon with reverence!186 [...] I shall learn my languages, live at ease, look after my wife and family and deride all else. I love the world and shall be reluctant to leave it but if I take it seriously I shall go mad. I must regard it all as a vast cosmic joke. Even his infrequent bursts of nobility can be attributed to a self hypnotized conceit, – I mean man's. I am infinitely more lucky than billions of my fellow men and that is the only fact that awes me.

  I am going out on the set to see the film begin and wish luck to my fellow prisoners. This film shows every sign of being the most eccentric I've been in for a long time. Perhaps since the Night of the Iguana. Hathaway said yesterday to a perfect stranger who was sitting in the bar: ‘Get your goddamn hair cut and get rid of those goddamn side-boards. How many goddamn times do I have to tell you?’ The innocent was an astonished tourist.

  [...]

  Sunday 5th, Lucerna Hotel, Mexicali Am in ‘unit’ 114 of the above hotel which is quite nice and air conditioned and room-serviced and indistinguishable from its USA counterpart.187 [...] I talked immediately to Elizabeth when we got in. I'd forgotten what a sweet voice she has and how very young she sounds on the phone. She is coming on Tuesday with all the maniacs. I'm longing but longing to see her. [...] It seems that Hathaway gave the German actor Karl-Otto Something a dreadful time yesterday and did 57 takes on one scene, most of which takes were cut by Hathaway on the first line with suitable endearments like ‘You are the goddamnest stupidest actor I've ever met.’ Lucky I wasn't there. Such behaviour ag
ainst a defenceless small-part player makes me angry to the point of blindness. Even a German small-part player. I talked on the beach to Greyn's girl friend who seems very nice and very intelligent and to Danielle De Metz who seems nice but not so intelligent [...].188

  [...] This Hotel-Motel is very crowded and I had to settle for a room instead of a suite. What an eccentric idea of a holiday people have to spend it in a shabby hotel in the middle of a hideous town in intense airless heat with the only reliefs being to stay in the box-like rooms with the air-conditioning going full blast or to dip into the pool with scores of other people – the pool being no larger than a very large bath-tub which is full of screaming children. Much better to camp out at San Felipe or stay at home and eat out of a can. The herd instinct is extraordinary. Like those people at home in Britain who will drive for hours bumper to bumper in a holiday traffic-jam to park finally on a grass verge take out the collapsible tables and chairs and picnic amongst the fumes while watching the jam go by before placidly joining it again. [...]

  Monday 6th, San Felipe Talked to E again yesterday morning. She is coming in with kids on Tuesday and one would think I'd been away from her for ten years for I'm so excited. [...]

  I feel terribly lazy. Having wanted to work theoretically for months I now don't want to do it at all. [...]

  I read late last night – still that same book An American Melodrama which really should be called An American Nightmare. Politics is a filthy game but American politics are the filthiest of the lot I suppose because of the lip service that has to be paid to the American Dream and the anti-negro south. Lying is obligatory even from the most honourable men – at the very least even men like Adlai Stevenson and Eugene McCarthy had to lie by omission, if nothing else.189 How could a Stevenson or a McCarthy or a Bobby Kennedy tolerate for one second the demagogues of the ‘nigger-hating’ South were it not for the fact that they had to garner Southern votes? The politician in Britain stands a slightly better chance of remaining honest but only slightly. Some of course are out-and-out liars on simple matters of fact, like Reagan for instance.190 To quote him at a fund-raising dinner in Minneapolis he said 6 policemen had been killed in Chicago that year (1968) whereas it was actually one. This was pointed out to one of his spokesmen. ‘Gov. Reagan stands by his text’ was the reply.

  [...] All the bars are closed because it's Election day. Luis Echeverria Alvarez is the President. Jim told me that General Barragan has given me a five-foot sword and that therefore I must do a costume picture in which I can use it. I shall wear it as Don Quixote and trip over it a lot. Jim also said that Echeverria was already and had been for a long time thoroughly ‘bought’. ‘What's new?’ I said. Barragan is in Mexico City in case of student rebellion etc. Have heard nothing yet. I hope they keep quiet. It won't get them anywhere and he'll kill them for sure.

  It's the usual glorious day. I am full of coffee and idleness and am writing this more to fill in space than anything else and to avoid reading the script and learning the German and my daily stint of Spanish. [...]

  Tuesday 7th A typical film day. I went out twenty minutes before time and was at the location by 10.40. I waited until 5 o'clock in the afternoon before I worked. I drove a half-track pretending to be unconscious at the wheel and weaving my way across the desert.191 It was my only shot. I was dismissed for the day and came straight home and under the shower. Did not feel like going out to the restaurant so stayed in and grapple-snapped and read the LA Times and switched between the political book and a thriller called The Naked Runner.192 [...]

  This Hathaway is fairly mindless as a director. He doesn't give the actors any respite between shots. Brook and the others sat on the back of a truck for several hours yesterday with a break only for lunch. Brook says that most of the time they weren't even seen. I simply don't understand that kind of mentality though I mentioned yesterday that a man who so patently couldn't care less whether he was liked or not couldn't be all bad.

  [...] I have a lot to do in the mornings and if I don't work then I don't work for the rest of the day. I cannot, as some people, work between shots in the caravan. [...] I find it difficult even to do a crossword, though I will try today. Can't even read with enjoyment and it isn't as if I'm thinking about the next scene or something. I don't think about the film at all until I'm forced to. Not just this film – any film. Or play for that matter. Other actors fuss all day long and enjoy it. My heart sinks at the thought of a rehearsal. ‘Where's the camera, where's my marks, what're my lines’ is my attitude. Elizabeth's too as far as I know. Rex Harrison for instance will run lines all day long and, it seems to me, get more and more inhibited the more he rehearses. I have my first big scene today and have only read the scene twice. I have to lie there and pretend to be suffering from shock and dehydration. The scene is a couple of pages long and is likely to be uncomfortable in that heat though the more physically uncomfortable the better.

  Somebody said what a thrill it was to act with me. ‘Thank you,’ I said lamely. I think you and Peter Ustinov and Orson Welles are the best actors in the world, they said. I thought you were marvellous in Look Back in Anger but obviously you walked through Anne of the Thousand Days didn't you. ‘Well, not exactly,’ I said, ‘not – er – exactly.’ Ah I could tell, said the other. [...] Gives one a bit of a turn, especially after the overpraise of the performance. [...]

  Wednesday 8th A horrible day. The heat in the desert was insufferable and I spent half the day lying in the sand with my mouth agape pretending to be unconscious while the sand, stirred up by the wind which was blowing in exactly the wrong direction, blew up my nose and into my mouth. However I was excited at seeing E so I was stoically good-natured. The plane carrying E and the kids and Norma buzzed a couple of times and I panted with impatience to finish and get home. Like all things too eagerly awaited the meeting was a fiasco. I arrived and tore into the ‘suite’ and there was nobody there! Kate came in and said ‘Hi’ and went out again. Somebody had turned the air-conditioning off and the living room was like an oven. E came prancing in and we hugged and kissed though I was filthy and covered with grease and sand and wasn't very huggable. Immediately everybody started making cracks about San Felipe and what a terrible place it was, and one would have thought they had attacked Pontrhydyfen – I was so defensive. Never has a man been so chauvinistic about a shit-house. I feebly pointed out the beauty of its beach, and lamely said the sea was wonderful. Kate said it was too warm and it was like taking a hot bath. I lamely and bravely said that there were horses for hire. I said it was much more cosmopolitan than Bucerias which is like saying that hell is better than purgatory. We went in a sullen silence to dinner at Reuben's [...]. E made me as jealous as vengeance earlier on by saying that she'd called Marlon on the phone and that they had talked for an hour and that he was very solicitous about me. He really is a smugly pompous little bastard and is cavalier about everybody except Black Panthers and Indians.193 ‘He's been keeping tabs on you,’ said E. That infuriated me even more. That sober self-indulgent obese fart being solicitous about me. You can't get any of those surrounded-by-sycophants one-time-winners on the phone unless they want something from you. Sinatra is the same. Gods in their own mirrors. Distorted mirrors. [...]

  Thursday 9th Yesterday was a lovely day. I left for work for the day at 7.00 and E came with me, despite the heat [...] she stayed until after lunch [...]. Everyone was delighted that she was there and everybody said afterwards that it was the best day they've had on the film yet. Hathaway was mellow by his usual standards and at one point when he started screaming at one of the actors I told him he was mistaken and that he had told the actor to move earlier. He said ‘Goddamn it I did not.’ ‘Goddamn it, you did,’ I said. ‘I apologize,’ he said to the actor. Everybody was astounded and one chap said to Ron that it was the first time in thirty years of working with Hathaway that he'd ever known him apologize to anybody. So I was a little hero, the leader of my little band, the little Robert Emmet.194 Elliott Kastner a
rrived with ‘Dirty’ Brian Hutton who very sweetly drove the former all the way from LA in his Mercedes.195 That's 6 to 8 hours hard driving. Both were exhausted particularly Elliott as he had flown over the Pole the same day I believe. Elliott brought a script called Plea for Defense or some courtroom title which is going to be changed.196 It is a racy sadistic London piece about cops and robbers – the kind of ‘bang bang – calling all cars’ stuff that I've always wanted to do and never have. It could be more than that depending on the director. I play a cockney gangland leader who is very much a mother's boy and takes her to Southend and buys her whelks etc. but in the Smoke am a ruthless fiend incarnate but a homosexual as well.197 All ripe stuff. And over in a minute. They can do me entirely in five weeks, possibly six. He has a much more significant piece for Elizabeth – an original screenplay by Edna O'Brien but it will not be finished until next week.198 He says that E's could shoot at the same time as mine which wouldn't be a bad idea. It would also be in London. Hammersmith Is Out could go at the end of the year and E wants a bloke who is very hot at the moment called Robert Redford.199 She says he's very good but won't be available until the end of the year which would be very suitable. London in the fall can be lovely and the thought of Europe is very stimulating. I shall watch us to note how soon we'll want to come back to this hemisphere again. We are both a pair of old nomads. Since taking our Sabbatical we have lived in Switzerland, France, (Evian), Monte Carlo, Hawaii, Vallarta, Beverly Hills, Vallarta again, Beverly Hills, Malibu, Beverly Hills, Palm Springs, Malibu and now San Felipe. Otherwise we haven't moved a step.