The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  E is in the worst state of lassitude I ever remember of her. She has always been naturally somewhat indolent – not the kind of girl one finds rushing off to play golf and tennis, God Forbid – but now, I mean for the last couple of days, she can barely move one foot in front of the other. It's largely of course the reaction from the tension of the past week but it's bloody worrying. [...]

  Monday 6th [...] The helicopters yesterday were the usual farce. For once we left on time but only seven people allowed again. From the air we could see huge concourses of people milling about before we landed and endless streams of buses. And thousands of cars. We landed on the football field where there was of course no one to meet us. [...] However [...] we were escorted to a car and drove off through dense crowds to the new hotel. [...] To add to the mania, incidentally, when E, bright with fury at the whole mess-up of the lunch came with me to location she sat down in my trailer on one of the banquettes and went right through it, legs kicking in the air. Nobody dared laugh or they would have been brained with a hand-bag but it was unquestionably funny. Ron had to leave the cabin. Once I knew she hadn't hurt her very vulnerable back I became faintly cracked myself. That sort of thing only happens when an entire day turns out to be a bastard.

  Tuesday 7th, Tjentiste Am in Tito's hut and shall tonight sleep in his bed. For the first time it is really cold and fortunately the two little heaters from the other hut are with us and are going full blast. If the electricity fails again it will be mittens and woollen stockings all around. [...] As I say, once this lot get going they are very efficient but getting them going is torture. I doubt whether I've had more than five minutes on film in two weeks, and I have a definite stop-date. I am playing the part of a patient actor and hope to God I don't have to lose my temper. [...]

  And now to await lunch and work and my lovely old E in the evening. It's not a bad life. Not really. Not like the other morning when I was figuring out the repercussions of my suicide on the people who like me.

  Wednesday 8th [...] A miserable night in Tito's bed which for some reason, what I'm beginning to believe is typically Jugoslavian, refuses to have sheets or blankets which adequately cover the bed. This meaning a freezing shoulder or a damp calf. Went in to get Maria's mug this morning – the only adequate drinking vessel we have – and she was completely covered with the clothes. Woke up with an awful feeling of deja vu. I was back in my cold damp childhood without even the prospect of a fire to light and leap and dance of burning anthracite. I shudder to be reminded of anything that happened to me before the age of about thirty and though I had a fantastically happy childhood I don't want to be reminded of Caradoc Street and that awful bathroom window which was broken by Rhys Oates’ daughter when she was taking her monthly bath and which was never mended throughout my children [sic], and what is more ludicrous never allowed to be mended.113 What a monster that Elfed was. Eleven years with the same broken window which would have cost sixpence and fifteen minutes to replace. If anybody had mended it he would have broken it again. What a foony mann. It is hard to remember that that idiot of my childhood is now a benign and elderly man. Had a bitter little contretemps with E this morning. [...] Ended up by her saying she would go on the boat and me saying good idea and her saying that when I was sober I was a pain in the ass and perhaps I should start drinking again. So you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. [...] We had the Bozzacchis all evening. They mean sweetly and Claudye helps to unpack etc. but it means eternal conversations and no long readings of books. I must have dropped hints by the thousand that my favourite occupation is sitting alone in a room with E drinking tea, me, and drinking, her or not drinking and simply and simple-mindedly reading books or occasionally chatting. But one might as well drop a canister of water on a prairie fire. [...]

  Thursday 7th, Tjentiste114 [...] Last night we sat and made our own supper. I looked up the various articles in the dictionary and asked for everything in Serbo-Croat. What's more, almost everything arrived as asked. I was flushed with success. E made some soup with an egg broken into it. Very good. I desserted on chocolate and fancy biscuits. [...]

  Have just written a telegram to Kate who has a birthday on the 10th. She will be 14 years old. How she goes the time. And how she grows the girl. She is a head taller than Liza and as tall if not taller than E which makes her around 5'4". I hope she doesn't grow too tall. 5'6" is enough I think.

  [...] How much happier E and I are when we are left alone. Last night, apart from the waiter, we saw nobody and it was delicious. People get on our collective nerves and as one attacks one of them the other defends. E attacks Brook. I defend. I attack Raymond. E defends etc. Fact is that we're wearing them all out. Raymond's relief when I say or we say that we shan't need him for a few days is palpable. He can't wait to get away. He is rapidly getting old. Any minute or dark day now he is going to look his age. Terrible to be a middle aged pouff. He's actually 50 odd. I hope he's no longer in our employ when he's 60 odd. Still ogling fellow travellers. Creeps-giving. [...]

  Received a cheque yesterday from Ron's Vicky for $3,350 which means $10,000 return on a $40,000 investment in about six years which is not bad. She is certainly the only one of our friends who has ever paid back anything. John Sullivan – over $100,000 and not a cent return. Heyman, ditto. Tim Hardy £12,000 and nil return. etc. etc. Including our various friends we must be owed a million dollars. Alexandre of Paris too yet owes us about $125,000. No sign of repayment – not even the interest. [...]

  Friday 8th, Tjentiste115 [...] Yesterday having sat around in make-up all day long I worked in Foca at 5.30pm. Did a scene with the girl who plays Vera who, of course, doesn't speak a word of English.116 She shall be dubbed. However she was obviously experienced and had a go and was very nice. She had a ‘film face’ – a dark haired girl of about 30 that I'm pretty sure I shan't remember when next I see her where I saw her before. I mean if I saw her in the street. Or at a party or something like that. An oval face, regular features, a good standard voice. about 5'4", standard build. In short, like a thousand other actresses everywhere. [...]

  We had sent Maria back to Kupari with Raymond the day before yesterday as she was quite clearly and understandably bored up here when the rain came down without stop. [...] So with everybody else congregating in the other hut and waiting for the call we sat and read all day. E reading thriller after thriller and me alternating between a ‘Bony’ thriller and a book called Bridge over the Drina described as Yugoslavia's ‘greatest novel by Nobel Prizewinner Ivo Andri ’ and good it is too though it's not a novel at all in the ordinary sense of the word so far anyway.117 More a series of anecdotes loosely woven in and around the history of the bridge over a period of 300 years. I doubt if I would have read it with the same interest were it not that I am close to the actual scene of events. There is a description of an impalement, in detail, which horrified me. I didn't know that impaling was so exact a science. The ‘master’ impaler was able to so do his job that though the pointed stick went right through the body from bottom to shoulder through the anus it must avoid all the essential organs so that the poor bastard would live as long as possible, some for a few hours, some for as long as a day. [...]

  Saturday 9th, Kupari118 [...] Am going into Dubrovnik to buy things. Don't quite know what. Lighters and lighter fluid and a book or two peut etre. [...]

  Walked for an hour in Dubrovnik looking for a bacco shop. Finally found one and bought a gas lighter, cheap, and a pen-and-pencil case for E as an encouragement for her sudden letter-writing. Doubt if it will be used much but you never know.

  Dubrovnik is made ugly by all its tourists. There are always thousands and I had an audience the whole time swelling to a hundred or so when I stopped to buy the lighter. I with Maria got out fast. Went in the mini-moke which is made for these narrow winding roads. I wish it had a little more power however. When I came back I saw John Heyman who stayed for a couple of hours chatting of this business and that business finally ending up chatting o
f cricket in the old days – i.e. the thirties. I told him of the enormous excitement of the ‘bodyline’ tour of my childhood when cricket made headlines not only on the sports pages but on the front pages and was the subject of editorials in solemn journals.119 We shall never look upon its like again. Bradman and Larwood, Macabe and Voce, Ponsford and Hammond and Gubby Allen and Bowes bowling Bradman middle stump. And the imperturbable Jardine.120

  Everybody, which means E principally, in a foul mood about going to Niš this afternoon for the bloody actors’ do when we are presented with awards etc. and have to meet mayors and presidents of republics and cocktail parties and supposed to see a film in Serbo-Croat yet which we are determinedly holding out against seeing. And another cocktail party tomorrow morning at 10am if you please before flying back here. All the things in fact that we loathe most in this world but which have to be done. Sometimes.

  If it were anything but a communist country, especially a nice one like this, they would be told in no uncertain fashion where to stuff their awards and cocktail parties and mayors and presidents. But we are being fixed-smile-diplomats. Shit.

  Found about three books by unknown authors which will plough through if things get bad.

  Heyman told me that everyone is agreed that The Burtons are as easy as pie to handle but that The Burtons’ Entourage is a pain in the ass and every producer, when they are mentioned, hopes fervently that they will all die in the night of galloping heart attacks. Too bad, I said, though I agree about some. The great exception is of course Ron and though I like the others I don't think that any of them are necessary to me. I like Bob Wilson to be around and be barman and man of distinction and Jim is useful with mail but lacks the charm so essential when handling so many different kinds of people. He's no Dick Hanley. Raymond, Claudye and Gianni actively bore me if they are around for any length of time. Brook is intelligent but is now so circumscribed by something, possibly E's and my hidden but perhaps not hidden enough distaste, that all his wit and humour seem to have fled except sporadically. He used to be very amusing.

  Saturday 11th, Niš Same day and late at night – about 11.30 – and I've changed the date on the heading above as everybody assures me that it's not the 9th but the 11th. That means that all the dates for the last several days must be skew-whiff also. Probably came from making two entries on the same day – as today – and getting distracted or something.

  Any road [...] the dreaded visit here didn't go too badly. At least we're home and safe. [...] there was the time-honoured conglomerate of stick mikes and TV cameras. They pounced and preyed on us of course immediately but we went straight into our car and then watched with astonishment the almost ludicrously old-fashioned posing of the German actor Hardy Krüger who really and truly struck dramatic attitudes – looking up at the sky and showing now this profile now the other. I could hardly credit my eyes while E had some very XYZ remarks to make re that particular kraut. When my baby don’ take no fancy to somepoorbody she sure don’ take no fancy. And the poor-spirited son of envy compounds his lack of charm at every opportunity. He can barely speak to or look at either of us. He reminds me oddly enough of a chap called Raymond St Jacques. A very handsome and some say homosexual American Negro actor who said in Cotonou that the waiters (all coal black) in the Hotel Croix de Sud were discriminating against black clients as for instance ‘whenever the Burtons appear we might as well not exist even though we might have been sitting and waiting for 10 or 15 minutes.’ ‘Ah my friend,’ said the delicious Roscoe Lee Browne, also a blackman, and who speaks as pedantically as a professor, ‘Royalty itself has been known to wait when the Burtons are around. It is a fact of nature this attraction, like the moon's effect on the tide.’

  Sunday 12th [...] After watching Krüger baring his profile, we left the airport, a military one by the look of it with no flare path and a dozen helicopters, we roared through the traffic with a police car leading us with its light flashing and its hooter going (the roof-top light being blue not red) and with a cop leaning out of one door with a round object on a stick waving all traffic to the side we swept into the oddest looking hotel that I'd ever seen. It was peculiar only in that it wasn't the hotel but a totally unannounced halt where we were made a speech to by a nervous and at the same time pompous manager about ‘workers wanting to see other workers like ourselves even though the two workers her with them were a little better known than Jasha in the canteen’ etc. He gave us some presents and the factory workers presented E with lots of flowers and they pressed in on us from all sides feeling our faces and smoothing our hair, particularly E's. It was all terribly embarrassing as the factory had arranged a table with drinks, including Scotch, on it and there were canapés and cigs in boxes etc. all ready for a little cocktail party. All this time the TV cameras were going and the mikes and before we could attempt to make any sort of thank yous and how delighted we were to be one with the people we were whisked away [...] without giving us a chance to show something other than startled and bewildered shock. [...] From there we went to the hotel which was another mad-house, the police not being able to control the crowds at all. [...] After 45 minutes or so we were summoned down to the cocktail floor where the crowd outside in the square chanted our names. We stood there for some time on the balcony with E bravely and regally waving and me like some dumb Prince Albert giving an occasional half-hearted waggle myself.121 We met the Mayor and I think two governors and other people who were never explained and then totally without warning there was a sort of native nightclub act. A horrible boy said into a mike that he represented the children of the world and proceeded to beat a funny little drum and hop around. There was no applause when he finished. Then a fat girl sang a couple of songs accompanied by a sort of flautist, a concertina, the boy on the small drum and a guitar. [...] After that [...] we went down to dinner. There was a long table seating about forty. We sat next to each other. E had the organizer of the Festival on her right and I had an actress-judge who spoke reasonable French on my left. Next to the actress, who seemed a nice woman there was a critic who spoke English. He was a crasher and talked about British theatre all the time. Since I've only seen two plays in England in 10 years I wasn't able to make much contribution. [...]

  Airplane Sitting in the plane [...] having had yet another encounter with TV and radio and all its appurtenances. To my delight the Heavy Luger is late.122 Presumably he wasn't informed. Have just been told that Luger has now got a snapper with him too just like Burtons have G. Bozzacchi. Am beginning to enjoy this. The poor sod has no chance of winning this somewhat unequal battle. Others have tried and failed. I learn now from E that the snapper is here to do the film, including me tomorrow he hopes, and not just the Bertha Krupp. They just happen to be all Germans together. The Panzer leutenant duly arrived and greeted everyone with a broad gesture and a ‘Hi there’. There was no apology of any kind according to Radie Louella Hedda Taylor Burton.123 [...]

  After the dinner [...] we set off for the award-giving. I had also said that the best plan would be for us to arrive, be announced, and go straight onto the stage to take our bows and accept our awards which are called ‘Constantines’ the male award being called the Czar and the female the Czarina. And then, complete again with escort, bugger off back to the Hotel Ambassador and faint a lot.124 [...] We were announced by the Festival's director and went on stage to a standing ovation. There were two microphones and the poor bloody Mayor read a speech of welcome to the great world renowned couple and then I was invited to give them a few deathless words. I was thinking of a few words rather on the lines of the Gettysburg Address but settled for ‘Comrades, I am very nervous at the idea of my playing the greatest Jugoslavian (ovation) and probably the greatest Jugoslavian who ever lived. (Ovation) Especially as, if my work is not good today, he can have me deported tomorrow. (Laughter and applause) Thank you.‘125 Then came Female Lib herself, the Mrs Pankhurst of Culver City, who said: ‘I love your country and your people.126 (tumultuous rapture) I love your p
resident and his lady (ecstasy) and would like to live here forever, if you would accept us.’ (End of speech partially drowned by the ultimate in cosmic approval and the music of the spheres.) There goes, we both thought, our American visas! Quite genuinely though the audience were really moved. We then received our awards – E from a very good actor who had won the Grand Prix that night and I got mine from the actress equivalent. [...]

  Monday 13th, Kalizma [...] Yesterday received a long and incoherent letter from Larry Olivier re the National Theatre.127 He must have been very drunk the last times we talked to him as nobody could have turned down the job with more firmness. But he has obviously been persisting so I wrote a long letter, long-ish anyway, explaining that he mustn't worry about his not being able to get me the job and that I wouldn't take it if offered. Not at least unless there were drastic changes. That is to say, I couldn't see myself being overruled by a board of governors over some project I had in mind. As Larry was over the Hochhuth Churchill play.128 Granted the play was a travesty and badly written or translated or both but I would have resigned. He also said in the letter that they hadn't been allowed the money to put on Guys and Dolls.129 Well, what sort of National Theatre is that? Those Old Etonians etc. would drive me mad in five months.130 I love Larry but he really is a shallow little man with a very mediocre intelligence but a splendid salesman. But it is quite clear that when he is not active in the productions themselves the National loses all its glamour. It is impossible to get over-excited about people like Robert Stephens and his wife.131 They are good but lack ‘glamour’. And I don't mean ‘glamour’ in the vulgar sense of the word. I mean the sweeping grandeur of Edith or Gielgud or Larry himself.132 The National should be full of the towering oaks of the profession. Scofield, Guinness, Redgrave should be permanent members of the company while those anonymous ‘stars’ like Stephens et al. should play the supporting parts with their usual brilliance. I saw both Stephens and Maggie Smith in the film of Jean Brodie and thought they were the dullest couple I've ever seen in an important film.133 Also, alas, the National has lost its initial excitement and has become the Old Vic again – upsydownsy and again slowly being invaded by a younger generation of Paul Rogers and William Squires.134 No offence to either of them but they do not illuminate Shakespeare with flashes of lightning. I told Larry also, to ease his conscience if any, that when I went back it would probably be to do something with the Drama Faculty at Oxford if and when it's created out of the Faustus monies. And indeed the latter is an attractive idea and a nice thing to do in my fifties. Keep me active but not too active and I would delegate like mad.