The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  I read David Niven's autobiography yesterday in one sitting.290 It is very funny though not very well written and is, like all actors’ biographies, very anecdotal and full of ‘and then Mike Todd called me and said "Get your ass over here"’ etc.291 He describes one scene on Bogart's yacht which is not what happened at all as I was there. He describes Sinatra singing all through the night on a motor yacht with a lot of other yachts around ‘awe-struck’ he says.292 Frankie did sing all through the night it's true and a lot of people sat around in boats and got drunk it's true but Bogie and I went out lobster-potting with Dumbum [...] while Frankie was singing kept on making cracks about Betty [Bacall] sitting on Sinatra's feet etc. and Frankie got really pissed off with Bogie and David Niv who describes himself as bewitched all through the night was trying to set fire to the Santana at one point, because nobody could stop Francis from going on and on and on.293 I was drinking ‘boiler-makers’ with Bogie Rye Whiskey with canned beer chasers so the night is pretty vague but I seem to remember a girl having a fight with her husband or boy friend in a rowing dinghy and being thrown in the water by her irate mate. I don't know why but I would guess that she wanted to stay and listen to Frankie and he wanted to go. And Bogie and Frankie nearly came to blows next day about the singing the night before and I drove Betty home because she was so angry with Bogie's cracks about Frankie's singing. At that time Frankie was out of work and was peculiarly vulnerable and Bogie was unnecessarily cruel. But any way it is not at all like Niv's description. He's very sweet about E and indeed about practically everybody.

  Alexandre has just arrived with a message from Marie Hélène Rothschild inviting us

  Tuesday 9th, Rome (continued from yesterday) to a party at Ferrières on December 2nd and to stay the night before, which is a Wednesday, and to stay on over the following weekend. Now with the news about Jugoslavia, we are able to go. I had made it a condition of the party that we stayed at Ferrières the night before and after. Two reasons: I love Ferrières. And I don't have to worry about E being on time.

  The first is the real reason. The vastness of the chateau and, at the same time, its cosiness gives me immense satisfaction. The grounds, seemingly endless, laked and forested and bridle-pathed are a huge world of their own and I walk around and about it for miles. Also I like the Rothschilds very much. I am not much given to ‘Society’ but Marie Helene and Guy will always command my respect and loyalty as they were so nice to us when nobody else was. During the time of the Scandale they went out of their way to be warmly polite to us when we were front-page and vulgar sensationalism every other day and every paper. Much lesser people cut us dead, even, if you please, people from our own profession. An idiot like Audrey Hepburn, for instance, a supposedly long time friend of E's was unobtainable on the phone and refused to acknowledge flowers that were sent her for her birthday. David Niven was toffee-nosed too, though he has apologized since. Grace wouldn't have been seen dead in our company though I'm sure now that Rainier didn't give a bugger. We didn't give a bugger either and were perfectly content to be left alone and therefore the nice attitude of Guy and M-H was of no real importance personally to our happiness, but it was a splendid smack in the eye for the black crows crowing at our ‘disgrace’.

  I gather that the party is in honour of the centenary of Proust's birth. Christ, he was dead in 1922 at 51 years of age and here I am only 5 years away from his death age without a book to my name. I have never liked his 7 volumes of A la Recerche but nevertheless recognize the enormity of the attempt.294 Perhaps I will understand him and enjoy him better than I did when first I read him. I must have been in my teens. I will have another go when we get back to Gstaad.

  The ladies are asked to dress in the style of the period with their hair in the period adorned only with ‘flowers, feathers or diamonds’. The men are asked to wear tails! Marie Helene nearly got a ‘go and take a running jump into Ferrières Lake’ message in reply to the last request but E persuaded me otherwise. I am actually looking forward to it.

  Yesterday was a blood and sweat day. Me being wheeled, dying from a terrible wound in my head, down a hospital corridor and in to the emergency operating theatre. A thoroughly messy day with false blood drying tackily in my hair and on my face and Cortese crying at my dying even in rehearsals. How I shrink from people who really ‘act’ like that. They are always so bad too. But they think they are being great instead of bloody idiots, self-indulgent idiots. Creepily embarrassing. E came in the afternoon to cheer me up. We worked at what was the Jewish hospital on the Isola Tiberina, a diabolical place to get to as the bridges Fabricio and Cestio are one permanent traffic jam. No wonder they've abandoned it as a hospital – an emergency patient would be killed by the traffic. Ponte Fabricio was built [in] 62BC with modern traffic not being its main concern. The Ponte Cestio was built in AD192 and rebuilt last in 1890 so that too was made for horse and cart and pedestrians. We work there again today.

  Brook told us on Sunday that Emlyn [Williams] wanted to sell his cottage at South Moreton and I immediately said we'd buy it. They want £16,000. It's a bit steep but is worth every penny and will be worth more in the years to come. Liza can have it when she's older. It is perfect for us for a weekend cottage. It is not far from a railway station and there is a good pub within walking distance and shops in the main street only a couple of hundred yards away and unlike Brook's cottage it is off the main street so that dogs and small children are fairly safe. A railway line runs between London and the West Country and Wales about a mile away and I've always loved the sound of trains at night. I prefer it to Sussex and Paul Scofield's part of the country while Kent, though lovely is a monster to get to. It is pretty convenient too for Shepperton and not outrageous for Elstree. All in all, I can't wait to work in England again. As long as it's summer time. I wrote to Emlyn this morning and Brook will take the letter back with him. I've told Emlyn that he can use the cottage whenever he likes for as long as he likes. We shall be there so seldom anyway. Did not note that on Sunday E and I had a martini each and two glasses of wine while yesterday E had a jack daniels. [...]

  Wednesday 10th, Rome I am 46 years old today. I am sometimes surprised that I got so far. I always had the feeling that I would die in my thirties and in my twenties was firmly convinced that I would die at the age of 33. This belief was induced in me by an Irish (Welsh-Irish) idiot many years ago in the ML Club in London on a wet Sunday afternoon, late afternoon, when we were having a break from poetry reading. Dylan was there and Constant Lambert, Louis MacNeice and Esmé Percy – by God all of them are dead – and we were drinking well with no particular thought for the fact that we were broadcasting ‘live’ in an hour's time some intricate verse – at least Esmé and I were.295 No we weren't, we were doing Thomas Love Peacock's Nightmare Abbey.296 The ML Club was and is a most unattractive, badly run, filthy hole in a wall just off Upper Regent Street. I have never found out if I was a member though I must surely be one now as I ‘loaned’ them £500 last winter via John Dearth.297 Its only use was as a place to drink when the pubs were closed. One never dreamt of going there if the ‘George’ was open a hundred yards away.298 Anyway this particular afternoon we had the usual ‘break ‘til 6.30, run through until 7.30, the red light comes on at 8’ injuction and Esmé and I repaired to the ML. It was my idea of total bliss. A Sunday in London at the BBC on the Third Programme – surely the best radio channel in the world – playing Shelley in Peacock's marvellous piece, surrounded by a melodrama of brilliant English actors – Esmé himself, Count Robert Farquarson of The Holy Roman Empire who was reputed to be a Satanist, Ernest Thesiger, Andrew Cruikshank, Robert Speaight, Michael Hordern and sometimes Dylan and James Crock of Gold Stephens and always the BBC stock company one of whom was, if such a thing is possible on radio, a truly great actor – James McKechnie.299 So there you are in my drab paradise of magnificent language for the speaking of which you were actually paid money, on a Sunday in Studio 8 of the BBC Portland Place, the Sunday papers strewn hi
ther and thither and much chat between the boys who matched story after story and, because the competition is so intense, no one person was able to hold the floor for too long even if Dylan was there for Dylan – the most compelling talker I've ever met – was oddly constricted by these precise cold English actors with their impeccable accents. Lunch was at someone's club – I would sometimes go with Esmé to the Savile – but more often it was in the BBC canteen a hellish place appositely placed in the sub-basement of the huge building.300 It was a serve-yourself cafe and a pretty sight it was to see the august Count Farquarson, cloaked like a bandit, and all the other great presences queueing up for the appalling BBC fare. The drinking men however lunched out of a bottle at the George or – not quite so popular as it was that bit further away – The Stag or The Roebuck or some such name. But it was the work itself that was the wonder. The audience was a minor consideration as it was so small. Apart from the fact that the channel for the Third Programme was unfindable in most of Great Britain this brainchild of the BBC would play plays in the original Greek and was indeed deliberately steered away from the mass audience. If they accidentally hit on a smash success it was almost always replayed on the Home Service or Light Programmes. The best work I have ever been associated with was with that programme. I did endless poetry readings there and every kind of adaptations from great works, particularly the lesser known stuff. Your Hamlets and Henry Vs were common fare and one did those on the vulgar airwaves but ’Tis Pity She's a Whore and Love Peacock and Bussy D'Ambois and Chaucer and Jones’ In Parenthesis and Anathemata and Joyce's Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses etc. were all done on ‘our’ programme.301

  Anyway this Cardiff Welshman – a feature of the sleazy drinking houses in those days and vividly remembered though I can't remember his name – a writer who never published and an actor who never acted elected to tell us from our hands when we were going to die. My father was up for a week from Wales and I'd taken him to the BBC to have a look at it and was going to send him back to Hampstead after the afternoon drinking session was told he was going to die when he was 81, Dylan when he was 39, Lambert when he was 55 and me when I was 33. I was very impressed – so much so that I have remembered it to this day. It was made more frightening as Dylan did die when I was 29 at the age of 39 and Dic my father died when I was about the same age at 81. My brothers say that my father was 83 but there has always been some confusion re the old man's age and in my case he was, the prophet, only a couple of years out.302 Lambert died but I don't know at what age and I can't remember whether he foretold Esmé's death date, but Esmé also died. My behaviour to anyone who didn't know during my 33rd year to heaven was high comedy. I went by car and train and boat whenever I had to travel. I turned down a film in Durango with Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn and directed by Huston because of the unavoidable flying.303 Were it not for the fact that I was ashamed to tell anyone I would not have worked that year at all and celebrated my 34th birthday with a stupendous booze-up. I was already very rich and kept on saying to myself as the offers came up ‘why should I risk my life for a mere $150,000 when I have a million in the bank, why don't I settle here in Céligny and never leave the grounds of the house even until the year is up. I can learn Hebrew or something. The thing is not to give the gods of retribution the slightest chance.’ The anomaly is that I am not even mildly superstitious ordinarily and am certainly not a fatalist. I must find out, as a matter of mild interest at what age Lambert died. I wonder too if in death Lambert is still considered to be the genius he was thought to be when he was alive.

  I have the day off today and tomorrow I think. I have received beautiful presents. E has given me two cigarette lighters – an exquisite one, very light and thin, of gold and polished walnut and a sturdier one for everyday use of heavy gold made for her especially by Braun of Germany – the best lighters in the world unfortunately. How the British have lost out to everybody not only in quantity but quality. Claudye and Gianni had a large brief-case made for me out of antique leather with many neat and practical compartments. My favourite kind of things.

  E is still being a good drinker. Yesterday she had only a glass of wine at lunchtime and a Jack Daniels at night. She continues to look like several dreams of avarice and is happy.

  Two books arrived from Jane Swanson and her daughter Sarah and Bob gave me a sweater from Battistoni's.304 Several telegrams including one from Grace and Rainier and we realized that we haven't sent one to her and her birthday is about now too.305

  I did an interview for L'Express yesterday for their cover story. My interviewer was an earnest young man with spectacles who spoke no English and talked a mile a minute and I virtually had to ask him to repeat every single question he asked me. This went on for an hour until I was practically screaming. In desperation I asked them to play some of the recording back for him to realize how impossible he was. He then confessed that he had never been so nervous in his life as he heard that I was an extremely dangerous person! [...]

  Thursday 11th, Rome The discerning scanner will realize immediately that the title heading is not in red letters. My birthday was a semi-drunken one for both of us. The rot set in when I made a large martini each about 1 o'clock. Then I went down below to chat it up with a reporter from the Daily Mirror called Donald Zec.306 Elizabeth was unbelievably late even for her and Mr Zec is very hard going so, fatally as it turned out, I had a 2nd Martini. Off we went to Valentino's for lunch. The latter is apparently a very swank haute couturier and is making E's frock for the Rothschild Ball.307 I had invited myself together with Zec who was completely out of his depth and betrayed his discomfort by being a silly kind of smart-aleck while I, not unpleasantly, pretended with the assistance of several glasses of wine to anti-semitism, negro, anglo-saxon, American and anything else I could think of. In deference to my host I excluded the Italians and, for Claudye, Corsicans. The reaction set in later when I got back home refusing to fit for my new suits and slumping off to bed where I slept for a few hours. I was suitably grumpy and snarled at E a lot – one more indication that life is sweeter off the sauce. Today therefore I feel somewhat fragile while E, who decided that if you cannot fight ‘em you might as well join ‘em, has a monumental hangover. We both agree that heavy drinking doesn't suit us anymore at all.

  Presents: Apart from the above-mentioned I was given a large soft leather travelling bag by Joe Losey and Patricia and a lot of Cashmere sweaters from Ron and Bob and Ray Stark who is in town trying to persuade E to do a film for him but the present of presents is the Complete Oxford Dictionary in micro-print, the 17 (I think) volumes being reduced to two with a magnifying glass on a little wooden stand. You have to close one eye. To a bibliomaniac it is a thrilling present. Not to be all stingy about it E gave me three sets, one for Gstaad, one for the yacht and one for Vallarta.

  An effusive letter came from Princess Maggie yesterday. About the £100,000. Of course. Must write back.

  We are all going to see XYZ at the Columbia private theatre tonight. We are trying to get a few people together to see it who have never seen it before, in the hope of finding out where the laughs come, but the place only holds 30 people.

  Friday 12th, Grand Hotel Another non-red headline as E had a few beers and a bloody mary (at my insistence) and two Jack Daniels while I had a bloody mary. (E, I remember said she had only 11/2 beers). This has been one of those mornings where through haste everything goes haywire. I didn't take a shower as not having been to bed until 3 I awoke by courtesy of E at 9 to be told immediately by Bob that I was wanted toute de suite. On opening the diary I dropped it and all the loose leaves fell out and had to be painstakingly put back in again. I tried to extract my vitamin pills from the box while holding a cigarette which dropped and burned my fingers while all the pills fell out on the bathroom floor. I managed to cut myself shaving – mildly it's true – but a considerable feat with an electric razor. I always order tea for two in the hope that E might join me. This morning I ordered only one – because I was in
a hurry I guess – whereupon E arrived from the bedroom and asked for her tea. Not only had I not ordered my usual two teas but this morning she had asked for one. I hadn't heard her. The sun was brilliant when I first got out but is gone in again and today we must I think have sun. If Joe's and my luck hold we shall finish that shot today. If not it means working tomorrow and possibly even on Monday unless they can devise a shot without the sun's assistance. It is an awkward shot using a technique that I had never heard of. I talk of Stalin and pause to think and the technicians throw an image of Stalin onto space, suspended over my shoulder. I hope it's not too tricksy. Those are – there are a few such shots – the ‘almost subliminal’ shots described in the script and which I made so much fun of to Joe. So to work. Will write about the film which is, to me and will be I think to many people, absolutely shattering. I thought about it for several hours after the thing was over.

  Evening.308

  Well, we had the luck and I finished the film with two ‘almost sublimal’ shots in glorious technicolour and sunshine. Then the weather turned round and now it is grey-black and threatening again. There is a company party tonight down at Tor Vaianica but at the last moment we have decided not to go as (a) company parties are invariably as flat as pancakes especially as the company has to work some more tomorrow and the main reason is (b) it is 40 minutes in normal end-of-business-day traffic and likely to be much more on a Friday. Hence nous resterons chez nous tranquillement avec des livres, des journaux et cette machine a ecrire.309

  The film I'm talking about above is of course XYZ which on seeing for the first time with everything finished – matching, music, titles (which I adored) and end titles etc. – I found more rewarding than ever. I am not much of a judge as I see so few films but I shall be very surprised if other people don't think E's performance to be one of the best ever given by anybody at any time. She runs the entire gamut from high comedy to knockabout prat-falls to pathos and near tragedy with dazzling brilliance. The film itself too is very and intriguingly beautiful I think and at one or two moments I had most unusual (for me) lumps in my throat. Especially when E was lonely and frightened. The remarkable thing too is that E emerges very sympathetically despite her stop-at-nothing ruthlessness to keep her man at any price. The others are good too but E completely out-dazzles them. Now watch for the reaction and I just hope we're not disappointed. I have never got Staircase and Anger out of my system. E's film Gingerbread Lady is postponed for a time – don't know how long – and Donen has been signed and E said that I shouldn't object too much as Donen's only good work has been with musicals. All this came from Swifty Lazar par telephone talk tonight.310 I said if they could let me know in a week or so and if the music and script were ok I would try and fit it in next year. And so I will. It is a shame to do it with Donen who so thoroughly buggered up Staircase, no pun. And so to books.