The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  It is magnificent country up here in the mountains – the famed Montenegrin mountains – and I could live here a long time if asked to. It is apparently cut off from the rest of the world completely in the depths of winter. I would like that. [...]

  To my astonishment the actor with whom I have most to do in the film doesn't speak a word of English and was prepared to speak all his dialogue in Serbo-Croat. I refused to do this saying it would give the dubber into English an impossible task and ruin the film for distribution in the Western world. As it is, I don't see it having a chance even with them speaking all the dialogue in broken English with me speaking in perfect Oxford. We can, I think write this film off before we start. The Jugs are also particularly thick when one tries to explain this to them and I have almost given up. Even the Englishmen, Deakin, Stewart et al. are Serbs. It's hair-tearing. I plead with them that Deakin and Stewart are upper class British, one of them, Deakin, being an actual Oxford professor. But to no avail. Actually, assuming that they speak the English lines reasonably well they could be dubbable without it being too obvious but it will still look cheap.

  I would willingly have learned my part in Serbo-Croat if they'd given me time but I cannot do it at short notice. I am in with a bunch of child-amateurs and must settle for it.

  However it is lovely up here and the people are charming and willing and I must regard the whole thing as a working holiday. I'll do my best and hope for the best. [...]

  23rd, Zablja [...] Have given up the film as a film and will now concentrate on doing my bit as well as possible. [...] If I'm not happy in a film it affects my whole attitude to everything. I am beginning to dislike this place and can't wait to get away from it though it is unquestionably delightful. There was a party given, I suppose, in honour of the film company which was friendly enough but my sour reaction was that all the actors there should be home learning their lines in English. Why the hell didn't they do it all in Serbo-Croat including an Yugoslav actor playing Tito instead of this half-assed thing that will appeal to neither the Slavs or the English audience? [...] I left the party early, unable to stand any longer the false bonhomie induced by showing off to the foreigners and the drunkenness. Being sober among a horde of drunks is exquisite torture. I slid quietly home and talked with Claudye for a while who had been as bored as I was and then tucked myself into bed with, surprisingly, a bad book by John D. Macdonald who usually can be relied on in his mock-tough-sentimental holier-than-thou way to be readable. [...]

  24th, Cavtat-Stefani We are on the Kalizma en route to Stefani (I believe) where, we understand, Carlo Ponti and Sophia have a house.91 It's supposed – the island I mean, not the Pontis’ place – to be a location of staggering beauty. It is typical of us to be sailing in the dark to anchor at Stefani when we haven't yet seen the world-famous Dubrovnik which is a spit and a yard away from where we're living in Kupari.92

  When we arrived at the Kalizma which is, was, moored at Cavtat there were a couple of hundred people standing on the pavement simply staring at the boat. They were delighted when we arrived and we were applauded royally. I was feeling terrible and for a second I had a feeling of panic but the crowd were so nice and friendly that I was alright immediately. E was very touched. We talked to Pedro who consulted the harbour pilot who told us that Stefani was about 3 hours away. We untied and left as soon as we could. The people waved and shouted us away as we stood beside the bridge. It was a good moment and we were both in a mood of divine content. [...] E is a magnificent midwife for the birth of the blues – it was her idea to go to the yacht as soon as we came down from the mountains. She didn't even consult me. And I was at bursting point. I had been very cruel to Liza this morning – viciously so. She had said that I ought to keep the film dog with me at all times while I was doing the work.93 I said the bloody dog was so infatuated by his master that he would whine and scratch all night and in any case I said the bloody master was reluctant even to have me tickle his ears. Liza said ‘But he's your dog.’ And out of that cesspool of cold cruelty which some people call a brain came ‘Don't be bloody stupid. He's no more my dog than you are my daughter.’ Liza was as brave as hell and said with a strained little laugh ‘That was very nice.’ E was quite rightly livid and I wanted to cry or slit my jugular. I did neither except compound the crime by snarling at E upstairs that Liza was so insensitive that she was probably impervious to such an insult. I am so ashamed of myself for saying such a terrible thing to a creature that I love so blindingly and love her in a crazily compounded fashion. I love her for being Elizabeth's alter ego, for being lovely and so loving, for her pretty ruthless determination to get what she can get away with, for her genuine and occasionally staggering beauty and for the fact that though like me she cannot express it in so many words from some inborn refusal to give herself away I am pretty certain that she loves me. I could have cut out my vile tongue with a blunt razor. From what twisted root did that bastard tree grow? I do it again and again. In most cases where I maul and savage a victim I can generally account for it in some way. How can I attack myself so unbelievably – it is I who insists that she be Liza Todd Burton. It is I who boast about her beauty, her horsemanship, her good reports at school and even her bad ones. ‘Her spelling is sometimes amusingly phonetic.’ Just like her bloody mother to the T.

  Eventually, I made it up with them both. But ‘taint good enough.

  Friday 27th, Kupari We spent yesterday in the bay of Kotor which Princess Margaret was so enthusiastic about.94 [...] We entered through the straits of Verige – my little book tells me – so named because the locals would block the entrance in the middle ages with a chain and ‘verige’ is apparently the local word for chain.95 The Turks appear to be the most persistent marauders and I wouldn't have thought that chains would have proved a very formidable obstacle to so tough a people. Anyway it appears that nobody over the centuries ever succeeded in penetrating into the city of Kotor. According to my little book Bernard Shaw thought it the most beautiful place on earth.96 [...]

  Wolf Mankowitz has arrived and has already re-written my part and simplified it. Good and hard-working man. But I think all to no avail. [...]

  Sunday 29th, Fiord of Kotor [...] I said, at one point yesterday, that I thought the ‘bungalow’ arrangements were fine for an actor on location but that I found it surprising accommodation for the President of the country. Ah, they said, so do we, but it is to impress the people that he is still one of us. I said I thought it didn't work as far as I could see as the people are more impressed by our, E and me, display of enormous wealth – as they thought – and would be far less interested by a Ford, an arrival by Air Italia and a simple cotton frock than they are by a gleaming white yacht, a private jet and a giant Rolls-Royce. Of the scores of newspapers and magazines they bring to me occasionally which generally contain lots of pictures of me as Tito, E and me, E and me and Tito etc. there is invariably a very glam shot of the Kalizma and the Phantom 6 with a description of its inside, its TV etc. [...]

  We steamed from Cavtat last evening as soon as I'd had time to arrive home from Sutjeska take my make-up off and shower and shampoo and get to the yacht. Liza left for England with wet eyes and much kissing from Mum and daughter, so Mum tells me, and weeping servants and all. We miss her already, rather more than usual as she has become more of a companion than hitherto and now, God be praised, has started to become our favourite thing – a book worm. The Gabrielle Hounds by Mary Stewart and Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin which is a considerable advance over no books at all for thirteen years.97 [...]

  There is a big house opposite us that seems to be at least pre-war and has an air of neglect. Our Chekhovian imaginations run riot.98 It could be very handsome if done up.

  Monday 30th, Sutjeska There is no such definite locale as Sutjeska – the latter is the name of a river over which the Germans and the partisans fought so bitterly. Also here were the Italians but they are very much neglected both in history and in our script so I presume their contr
ibution to the German slaughter of the partisans was probably as negligible as it was in every other theatre of the last war. Nearby – a short walk from this ‘villa’ which we are living in – is a very impressive monument to the Sutjeska dead, some 25,000 or 20–40,000 depending on which authority you listen to last, which is to be unveiled by Marshal Tito this week.99 [...] There are many soldiers about who sing a lot around fires – a bit like my old Welsh lot. They seem very contented, or at least as contented as one can expect conscripted soldiers to be. [...]

  Kathy Green, the giant daughter of Johnny Green – for many years head of the Music Dept of MGM – appeared on the set today with a man called Richard Chase.100 I think the latter is a musician. However, while we were all waiting for the helicopter to arrive with E and Maria and Claudye aboard, she, Kathy, found a half-blind kitten, minute, in a hedge and kept it and gave it to E as she arrived. So now we have another member of the family, it seems [...]. It is already the centre of everybody's attention and is being fed with sugared water and milk and is being house-trained. It is a tom we think but no name has yet been chosen. I want to call it Jack. I've always like the name Jack. Dunno why really but possibly because it sounds honest and strong and masculine. Jack Stevens the Fruiterer who always thought the English language inadequate and added ‘strengthening syllables’ like collossical, majestical and monumentical etc. And Jack Jones Edwards, a rogue, smalltown politician in Cwmavon, and innumerably over-masculine Jack Joneses and Jack Jameses four square and brutally forward and overbearing affronters of pomposity and weak arguments. It looks however as if it might be called ‘Sutjeska’. [...]

  Tuesday 31st, Tjentiste I finally told Elizabeth this morning how ill her mother has been for the last nine days. I couldn't even confide my worry to this diary as E dips into it sporadically. Anyway her mother was operated on two days ago and the telegram we received yesterday said the five days following the operation are critical so now it's three days. [...] The latest telegram mentioned above was signed by some people called Karl and Mary Frances Voldeng, and of course Valerie who has been the signee for the past week and a bit.101 [...] E has taken it all badly as she has a quite unjustified guilt complex re her mother. Nothing that can be reasoned out so I don't try. Also, I feel that I genuinely do not have the capacity for suffering that other people have and in particular Elizabeth. I am as dispassionate as it is possible for a human being to be and not be a machine, and what compassion I do have I find almost impossible to express. God knows what will be my feelings if anything happens to someone I greatly love but I generally console myself that I will have gone to my long home long before they. I am prepared for Ivor, even for Cis. But not for the children and above all E. If anything happens to E I am fairly positive that I won't be long after since I cannot believe that life will be worth living without her and indeed cannot believe that I ever did. I mean live without her. It was such a dreary plain with only an occasional high peak of excitement. [...]

  SEPTEMBER

  Wednesday 1st, Tjentiste [...] Yesterday was brilliant sunshine until lunch-time when a huge wind sprang up and by the time I finished work – about 4.30 – it began to rain and has continued to do so ever since with very few let-ups. It is pouring in torrents now at this moment and has been all night [...] I wonder if they can shoot in this monsoon weather. [...] I'd like to work because (a) I feel guilty when I don't as I cost so much money and (b) because I like these Yugoslavs so very much. I do not suffer any guilt pangs at all when working for a big studio though then I simply feel frustration at not getting the damned film finished as soon as possible. The thought of bad weather or bad luck causing a Zanuck a Warner or a Wasserman to cry into his Scotch gives me infinite pleasure.102

  And still it rains and there are all our soldiers under canvas. Shades of Alun Lewis.103 Unlightable fires and damp matches. Blue-cupped hands. Give us a light mate. [...]

  It is now eight at night and still it rains and confuse it not with a drizzle. It is an unremitting Dickensian God-despairing world-ending Noachian deluge promising the end of the world by dawn. [...]

  Thursday 2nd [...] The rain is coming down comme une vache qui pisse, a charming simile I learned yesterday from Claudye, and is not raining so much cats and dogs but mastodons and megathings and other prehistoric reptiles. [...]

  Yesterday, while E stayed sensibly in bed and wrapped up, I went with Claudye, Gianni, Brook and E'en So to view the ‘villa’ up on the mountain called Bare. The situation is breathtaking. The house, very alpine looking on the very edge of a lovely little lake about 150 yards by 100. The road was unpaved and occasionally very dangerous, avalanche-prone, and interminable, hairpin after hairpin and in this torrential weather a real monster. We took no chances in the Phantom 6 and crept up. This meant a journey in pouring rain, of course, of just over an hour. Nevertheless I would have settled for the extra hour or so a day getting to work were it not for the fact that the interior of the house was a complete shambles. No heating except for a huge fireplace which could be jolly enough. No hot water, wood-burning kitchen stove, no electricity and no prospect of getting any as far as I could gather. Filthy, rusty bath and a blocked shower with a fin de siècle wood-burning stove to heat the water presumably. One of the ladies spoke a little French and was totally flabbergasted at the prospect of anybody staying there. But, we said, tout le monde dit que le President reste ici quelque fois. ‘Jamais,’ she said, ‘he once came here and killed a bear, of whom the forest is full. But he has never stayed here.‘104 So thereby is killed another lie or, to be charitable, another bit of misinformation. [...]

  Thursday 2nd, Kupari [...] Better and better news of Sara and hopes are now that it will not be necessary for either of us to fly to Arizona. We had more or less decided that E and Claudye would fly tomorrow. Temporarily, at least, that possibility is now in abeyance. [...]

  Friday 3rd The Hitler War started 32 years ago today. A fine day like this I remember and a Sunday morning I think. I was excited, like all the other boys – I was 13 years old – and pleased enough that there was a real war, never dreaming that it would last long enough for me to be in the RAF toward the end of it.105 The only disappointment was that I was quickly assured that the war meant I'd lost my chance for a schoolboy rugby ‘cap’ for Wales. I was an obvious certainty having been there or thereabouts the season before and was massive for my age – 12 stone and 5ft 8 or 9. I've hardly grown since. I might have got one as a grown-up largely through personality rather than genuine first class ability. I was a natural Captain wherever I played and might have sneaked a cap or two when one of the standard boys was crooked or something. I regret it a lot less than I used to do when I saw so many of my contemporaries getting caps while I was playing Shakespeare. Too late cock, too late. [...]

  James Wishart expected any minute from London for me to sign some papers anent Harlech TV. It goes public shortly. I could make a fortune and pull out now but I suppose I shouldn't. Wait and see what James has to say. I wish he were a younger man and I wish he hadn't been so ill. Always affects people's judgements one way or the other.

  Since writing the above we have been in to Dubrovnik again. [...] Bought books – not much choice but took everything unread. [...]

  A letter from Liza [Todd]. How sophisticated her fist has become. Also one from Lil Williams who says that notices for Milk Wood are ‘fabulous’ and that one has to queue up to see Villain everywhere. Now if, as I expect, XYZ hits the jackpot too we shall have had a very good year. Even the joke film Raid on Rommel is surprising everybody. There's life in these old dogs yet.

  Wishart's plane three hours late so shall see him tomorrow sometime. Going back up to Tjentiste tomorrow [...] to see Tito. Apparently he wants to see us before he sees all the other odds and sods. [...] And so, Samuel Pepys, to bed.106

  Saturday 4th, Kupari James Wishart came with me [to Tjentiste] to tell me all the tales of Harlech TV. He seemed in good form and rubicund and jolly like an animated doll's head. He told me
that the Harlech shares which we paid 2/6d a share for are likely to open on the market at a quid.107 We could if we wished sell half the shares and pick up a half a million or so and still be rich holders – at the moment we are the principal shareholders by a considerable amount. I am accustomed to earning vast monies but they were earned. Picking up millions from an investment which was, I think, about £100,000 is fairy tale stuff. So after the horror of the first four days of this week everything is turning out golden again. Sara is going to be alright, God Willing, Milk Wood has had magnificent notices not only in London and Italy but now too in NY, Villain is packing them in in Britain and Raid on Rommel is doing likewise in Paris, Rome and Milan. And, most importantly of all E has come back to life again after being moribund for these horrific last few days.

  In the car on the way up Wishart told me that he had guessed from various snippets of stock-exchange gossip that Stan Baker is having some financial difficulties.108 I can't believe that hard-headed old Stan hasn't salted some nice sums away somewhere. He must have got himself into trouble with the tax people. He'll whistle his way out I'm sure.

  We arrived at Tjentiste about 20 minutes early for Tito [...]. Then at eleven on the dot it seems we were summoned to the presence. For the first half hour or so it was just Tito and Madame and Popovi and Deli and of course Tito's interpreter. We – Deli , Popovi and I – all told Tito how good everything was. I said how efficient Popovi was and he said how professional I was and I said what a splendid director Deli was and Deli said what a magnificent actor I was etc. Tito was in a very jolly mood putting what seemed like the fear of God or a firing-squad into the other two blokes when he said that he expected me to be in his old uniform tomorrow for the ceremony. They took him quite seriously until I said ‘Come on, the President is pulling your leg!’ Which of course he was. Afterwards all the other actors were presented to us and a dozen or so old comrades and I presume local big-wigs. From then on it was hard work for Tito, looking across the valley and at the mountains where he and his lads had fought so desperately 28 years ago, naturally began to reminisce and was so far gone in memories that he rarely gave his interpreter a chance to speak. This meant long periods of listening to stories in a completely alien tongue, only some of which were translated.