The Richard Burton Diaries

by Richard Burton

  Tuesday 4th, Johannesburg Booze.

  Wednesday 5th Booze.

  Thursday 6th Booze.

  Friday 7th Started antabuse. Absolute torture. Read books all day long and tried to sleep fitfully. [...]

  Saturday 8th Big pull out from booze. Talked to Liza on phone. Very sweet. Doctors all over me taking blood tests, intravenous feeding etc. I look terrible and feel diabolical. Arranged for return of ring I bought E. Amicably arranged eventually.95 Really must now never drink again except possibly a glass of wine with dinner.

  Sunday 9th Feel better but curiously muted. Leave tonight for London. Started but for once will not finish a massive book by John O'Hara.96 How that man wrote and wrote and wrote and he might easily have stopped with Samarra and no one would have noticed.97

  Monday 10th, Johannesburg – London Lots of press. Usual fatuities. Long long journey. Found impossible to sleep. Thought I would sleep today for party tonight but out of question. Felt very nervous. Party well attended but felt remote from everything. Was glad to get away at 1.30? All sloshed. Still failed to sleep.

  Tuesday 11th, London Heaps of presents. Can't be bothered opening them. Lots of lovely books including five copies of one. E as nervous as I am. Tomorrow evening present awards for Evening News.98 Briefed by three gents about 5pm. All sounds simple. [...]

  Wednesday 12th Did TV. Went alright. E looking splendid. Presented award to Albert Finney – a chap I've ever [sic] seen – but called him ‘uniquely remarkable’.99 Touch of hyperbole but better than the truth. Rather shabby affair and very provincial. [...]

  Thursday 13th Had Antabuse and then tried one small vodka. Antabuse works! V. sick unto throws-up and the trots. Didn't feel right for hours. E went to have X-rays. Spots still there but inert as before. Thank God. She very ashamed of me with antabus and vodka. Quite right too. Saw A. Finney for first time in film Orient Express. Very amusing and obviously enjoyed by the cast. Tom very sick (75) and wife Hyral has terminal C.100 Harvey Orkin died.101 Loved that man. [...]

  Friday 14th Saw F. R. Hauser and Alex Cohen at 10.102 Stayed about one hour. Said I would read play Kean again down in the country.103 Frank seems much the same. [...] Am thinking of coming back here to live. Haven't told E this though! Must find out about tax. Decision made to fire Gavin. When? Quite impossible PR man and useless secretary. Gets into panics about everything. No sense of humour either. [...] Slept like top but have cold caught from baby Naomi.104 E's very bad. Had dinner at Scott's.105 [...]

  Saturday 15th E very bad cold. But went to Hackney anyway to open bazaar for youth club ‘Pedro’ one of Sheran's good works.106 Lots of people. Very depressing. I have forgotten the class from which I come. Except that mine is Welsh – no difference. Thought of four to a room. Must go back there on an ordinary night. Do they have ping-pong, billiards etc. If not must buy same. Started to learn German. Not easy. No help from Latin or very little so far. Did two of twenty-six lessons. [...] Saw Match of the Day.107 [...]

  Sunday 16th, Pusey108 [...] Still learning German. Liza here incl Lord Blandford (James) and Cliff Press Sarah Munster, Peggy Munster (Very young former Peggy – Simon's Aunt Peggy (70) no longer an invalid. (Manor House Bampton.)109 Played and beat Sheran at Scrabble. Not easy. Did some German. Very cold. Walked with Liza and her alley-dog Tramp. Mutual admiration. [...]

  Monday 17th Terrible weather. Stayed in all day. Francis Warner came in the morning stayed for lunch. Thinking of doing Timon of Athens. Found to my surprise that I'd never read it. Good sign. Had not read Coriolanus either. Oxford tomorrow. [...]

  Tuesday 18th, Pusey – Wales Oxford all day. Lunched at Bear, Woodstock.110 With David Masters (Finance) Elizabeth Sweeting, Francis Warner and Prof (bald) lady from St Anne's.111 Terrible weather. Very wet cold. Froze all day. Visited Taylor-Burton.112 Bought £17,500 piece of land for Buckminster Fuller Building.113 Cheap. Everything very shabby. Clothes cars etc. Students unattractive. Beer warm. Depressing. Glad to get to bed. [...]

  Wednesday 19th, Wales Drove to Neath Castle Hotel.114 Terrible. Moved to ‘Executive’ Hotel, Aberavon.115 Pretty bad too but had a bath to go with it. Tonight a suite. Meanwhile saw Tom in Cwmavon. Looks very ill. His wife in hospital with cancer. Weather wild and Welsh. Had beer and felt very ill. E nagged all day about Elisheba. Said I was ice cold. I'm not but hopeless to prove.116

  Thursday 20th Sober and well. Weather good! No rain! Talbot very dramatic at night with huge furnaces going. Overall feeling of grime however despite clarity of air. Saw Dill Dummer and daughter. Told me Charlie Hock is in hospital.117 Same age. ‘But age with his stealing steps.‘118 Went to hospital see Hyral. Cancer ward. Hyral must realize she has it. Too intelligent not to. Tom better. Suite nice. Feel comfy for first time. Going to see Michael tomorrow. 21/2 hours drive over Black Mountains.119 Wild horses. Faggots and peas lunch. Fish and chips dinner [...].

  Friday 21st Sober. Good Weather. [...] Drove to Michael's farm. Over Black Mountains. Wild Wales. Stopped for sust in Red Lion fifteenth century pub.120 Black Mountains beautiful. Sheep cows wild ponies. M's place surprisingly well kept.121 Huge fire. Ate there. Jo's cooking.122 Divine impertinent boy yclept Ben. Hell on wheels. Very bright. Am going to invest £3000 in farm. [...] Inexpressibly pleased by atmosphere at farm. M. very sweet.123 [...] Bad cold myself. Pontrhydyfen tomorrow.

  Saturday 22nd, Wales Went to Pontrhydyfen. Lunched (Bara Lawr124) with Hilda. Half of Pontrhydyfen must have visited the house. Saw house where I was born. They've tarted it up. E still very ill. Puzzling. Gareth the villain was there with utterly spoiled child (‘bratu') otherwise fine boy.125 [...] Must earn some ready cash. Trusts inadequate. Looking forward to Switzerland and books and peace. Must write a book. Means another visit to Wales. Autobiog should make some money. Good Yarn! [...]

  Sunday 23rd, Wales – London [...] Went to Tom's lunch. T. H. J. (Tom)126 very much better. Left for London 2pm. [...] Gavin must go and E must do the sending. Woe is me. Aaron going mad. Three films next year. Plus play. All TV. Very satisfactory. Lots of time off. Huge publicity re visit to Wales. Am feeling very fit and plan to ski over holidays. Can I now stop smoking? Can I diet? Liabilities £9000 car E. Loan £3000 Michael. Intake £150,000. Should manage. Money from writing too hope. German sporadic but coming along. Before long I will write though in that language. Wanna go home.

  Monday 24th, Dorchester [Hotel, London] [...] Unusual 24 hours in which I slept 18–20 on and off. [...] E unhappy about something. [...] Talks about sex a lot. Just like Sara (Mom) sometimes. She in a quandary about piece of writing anent our marriage for which L's H. Journal has offered $25000. She very sensitive to criticisms. Warned her. Think she might expand into a book. Good idea! She is also upset that people might think I wrote it. Furious. She must get work soon as L. Olivier has offered TV film. She must do it. Do something. Have to fire Gavin today. Ugh. Liza to have car. Chosen Austin Mini. Long to drive it myself. Also MG should be ready. [...]

  Tuesday 25th Cold, E in great form until about 8pm. Was then in terrible pain from neck and hands. Sent urgently for Tina Thatcher. Came within 1/2 hour. Manipulated neck. Greater pain. Tears. Unusual. Worried to death. Colds still bad. E very beautiful despite pain. Very sleepy (me) all day. Bought German cassettes. Hugo in 3 months. [...] Plucked up courage and fired Gavin verbally. Took it very well. Palliated pill with note asking him to work for us when we start independent TV. [...] Talked with Aaron. Sounded very coherent.

  DECEMBER 1975–JUNE 1980

  Richard Burton ceased keeping his 1975 diary at the end of November. With one exception, he did not resume his personal record until late June 1980.

  After spending some time in a London clinic in December, Richard, together with Elizabeth, flew to Gstaad for Christmas. But their second marriage was already failing, and Richard became enchanted with Susan Hunt, wife of Formula 1 world champion, James Hunt (1947–93). The Hunts’ marriage was itself in disarray. When Burton flew to New York early in 1976 to prepare for a return to the Broad
way stage in the part of Martin Dysart in the Peter Shaffer play Equus, he was joined by Susan. Elizabeth stayed in Gstaad, and had a fling with businessman Peter Darmanin.

  Burton first appeared in Equus, succeeding Anthony Perkins (1932–92) in the part, in late February 1976. By this time he had met Elizabeth at the Lombardy Hotel in New York to tell her that he wanted a divorce. James Hunt agreed that he and Susan would divorce also. By mid-August both divorces had been processed and Richard and Susan married in Arlington, Virginia, on 21 August 1976. In October Elizabeth became engaged to US Republican Senator John Warner (1927—) and they married that December.

  Following a successful, if brief, run in Equus, Richard filmed Exorcist II: The Heretic in Hollywood and then made a film version of Equus in Toronto in the autumn. He and Susan bought properties in Antigua and in Puerto Vallarta. Before the year was over he recorded Chronicle of an English Crown (Vivat Rex), a 26-episode series for BBC radio about the history of the English monarchy. On 8 March 1977, while aboard a jet flying from Antigua to Switzerland, Burton made what was the only surviving diary entry of that year. Although one cannot be certain that it was part of a longer sequence, the fact that Burton did not therein comment on either beginning or ending this new diary suggests it may well have been one of a number of such entries, the rest of which have not survived.

  MARCH [1977]

  Tuesday 8th, British Airways, Atlantic127 It's 4.45am. i.e. blackest night in an airplane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. We should be en-route to Geneva via London. Instead we are en-route to Geneva – yes – but via NY and London; possibly in the same plane with something replaced; probably in another. It is sufferable but only just. Susan was sad and almost tearful when she read news of a young racing driver – Tom Pryce – being killed outright in the SA Grand Prix. I was unmoved.128 What a vast difference there is between lamenting the death of someone you know and one you don't. The bell doesn't toll for me.129 A million people died of starvation yesterday and no one shed a tear. We are about two hours out of NY. What time we'll get to Geneva is anybody's guess. The best thing to do is not to. Guess, I mean. This too will pass.

  We've had a long day and it's obviously going to be longer. We shan't get to Geneva for 10–12 hours surely.

  We went in to St John's this morning (i.e. yesterday) heavy bag – books being the main weight – to be left behind in c/o architect Smith to be picked up by lawyer Fuller. Then went with former to see house of associate architect called Frazer. All very Edinburgh Scots with the innate neat smugness of those people. House nice enough but didn't fancy it myself. Small but lacked cosiness. The same applied to Mrs Frazer. I hope Susan's house will be grander and cosier. Don't know how one does that.

  Am trying to keep awake until after NY then sleep to England. Can't read! Am, have been, trying to read a detective story by C. Day Lewis (N. Blake).130 Won't hold my attention. Susan enclosed in blankets beside me – eyes closed but don't know if asleep. Every other berth in darkness. Stewardess ghost-like and the overhead light throws a shadow from my fist on to the paper so cannot literally read what I'm writing until several words are past. Not that it matters. Am drinking coffee and writing merely to pass the time.

  I am glad to be going back to Europe for a short change but not to do looping on a lousy film.131 Rome will be good to see again though I hope. News is that the paparazzi are a dying – if not dead breed. Hope so for Susan's sake. And mine. Ah what scenes I had with that lot. Endless maniacal chases down the Appia Antica and the Via Pignatelli(?).132 Madness on wheels and no fun in it. The paparazzi were so humourless. How I hate and hated them. I see their empty endlessly mindless faces now, vacant and talentless and dirty, with their little chattering scooters and baby-pram Fiats. Auugh!

  Somebody's holding back the dawn for surely it should be coming up now or am I going the wrong way? It's 5.35. Antiguan time. Still drinking coffee which I don't usually take in such quantities but I have to stay awake somehow. Smoking cigs. Stopping and staring out of the window over Susan's crouched and feline body. Can't be bothered to write more. Will smoke and doze.

  This plane should have been getting us to London in three or four hours.

  The summer of 1977 was spent filming The Medusa Touch at Pinewood Studios and then The Wild Geese at Pinewood and in the northern Transvaal, South Africa. Equus was released in October and earned Richard another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, although in due course Richard Dreyfuss (1947—) won for his performance in The Goodbye Girl.

  The years 1978 and 1979 passed relatively quietly. Burton narrated War of the Worlds, filmed Absolution (Shropshire, England), Breakthrough (Germany), Tristan and Isolt (Ireland) and Circle of Two (Toronto). Then in 1980 he returned to the stage again, this time reprising his role as King Arthur in Camelot, which opened its pre-Broadway run on 6 June at the O'Keefe Theatre Centre in Toronto. Then the company moved to New York, where Burton returned to his diary-keeping.

  1980

  JUNE

  Sunday 29th, New York Today, like a man dying of thirst I slaked and lapped and wallowed in the New York Sunday Times. I haven't read a newspaper since leaving Geneva to come here – i.e. for about two months! Neither has Susan. The only encroachment from the outside world, outside the world of Camelot the musical, and King Arthur in particular, has been the occasional late-late-night film. I only remember one of them, chiefly because of a remarkable piece of acting by Dickie Attenborough in Greene's Brighton Rock yclept in Canada Little Scarface.1 A rare picture of a shabby shop soiled, Roman-Catholic-haunted race-gang slasher. Very Graham Greene, very soul-stretched tight and grey with inarticulateness. For the rest of the time it seemed that I ate breathed dreamed and rode the nightmare of Camelot. We might be winning the race – I'm not sure – but, if the Toronto audience reaction is anything to go by, then we have a massive hit whatever the critics might say here in the Empire State. We open the previews in two days. [...] Susan went with Frank Dunlop to see a ‘rock’ show at Madison Square Garden.2 S. returned looking shell-shocked. She had, she told me, never heard such a monstrous cacophony. Just imagine, she said, 19,000 people screaming manically for three non-stop hours. [...] Am having enormous difficulty sleeping. I suppose that when the play is definitely on the move I will sleep properly again. The lack of sleep is not helped by a bothersome and, by now, boring bursitis in my right bursar. Am going to see ‘the daddy of all the "neck and shoulder"’ doctors in the Western world. We shall see if I've torn something. Tomorrow also will be critical time for new costumes. Tomorrow, indeed, taken for all in all, is not a day I'm looking forward to.

  JULY

  Thursday 3rd, New York It's 4.15 in the morning. Last night we had our first NY preview. In the last 48 hours I have suffered an agony of brand-new costumes. John Barber of the London Telegraph and old friend and wisest and most compassionate of men (dispassionate too) David Rowe-Beddoe had (the former, Barber, by Frank Dunlop and the latter Rowe-Beddoe by Susan) been invited to look with new eyes at the production – we could no longer see the wood for the undergrowth.3 Their observations were invaluable. And neither were sweeping generalizations but detailed analyses, scene by scene. Costumes worried them both. So they were changed. Why was I the only male member of the cast who didn't wear tights? asked Rowe-Beddoe. Had my legs suddenly, in middle-age become scrim-shanked. No, said I, spluttering at the very thought. I'll show you all by damn. And last night I did. All costumes had to be tightened up as I've lost 12–14lbs since we opened in Toronto. [...] Proper sleep – oh sleep it is a gentle thing beloved from Pole to Pole, To Mary Queen the praise be give she sent the gentle sleep from heaven that slid into my soul shall try again to sleep.4 It's now 5.30. Come sealing night.5

  AUGUST

  Tuesday 12th So much for a daily report. The show is a super smash hit. Particularly, apparently, for me which is gratifying but surprising as only now, six weeks after the opening am I beginning to get the piece safely under my belt. We broke records week after week. [...
] The show is still enjoyable. Long may it be so. I dread the time when I have exhausted its every possibility and go on automatic as ‘twere. Thus far I haven't given the same performance twice. It is always different. It's unplanned – something curious comes from the audience and I instinctively respond – always, of course, within the frame-work of the play [...]. There have been a great many distinguished or notorious audiences I'll get to them by and by. I had one cauchemar, an appalling catastrophe which hardly bears thinking about. That too I will try to explain.6 Politics are the talk of the times. Last night was the first night of the convention (Democratic) and Senator E. Kennedy is out!7 There is a line or two in Kafka's letters that haunts me.8 I read it years ago and was impressed by its perfection of style (even in translation) but only in the last four or five years has it meant anything to me – I mean only its horrifying and real meaning, personally applied, has it brutally come home to me after all these years in the smugness of the dark. [...] I am writing to please myself though there's a feeling in some place in my head [...] that this might be publishable. I haven't been writing for nothing. [...]

  Thursday 14th Two shows yesterday and was I tired. Lots of people to see after the second performance. [...] Henry Kissinger's son, David, and a friend, Arnold Weissburger and Milton Goldman, Lucy Kroll, and others.9 The dressing room is so small that I have to see them in the corridor outside. The newspapers – but nobody else I notice – agog with a ‘great’ speech by Edward Kennedy.10 I read it and it is the usual fustian and good for his political future perhaps in 4 or 8 years time. He's a mere stripling of 48. Despite the polls I have a feeling that Carter will be re-elected.11 Perhaps because I want him to be. Henry Kissinger who came to see the play with his wife Nancy a week or ten days ago said that the re-election of Carter would mean ‘a world catastrophe’ within a couple or three years.12 Why? Because he (Carter) was totally ignorant of foreign politics. He was a peanut farmer and a fool and a megalomaniac. So, he said, was everyone else. Anderson (he'd seen him the night before in Washington) had a funny crazed look in his eye.13 ‘Messianical?’ I asked. ‘Yes.’ Kissinger looked much the same as he did in Jerusalem in 1975 when we talked at the King David Hotel after one of his shuttle diplomacy days in the middle of the night.14 A little less rotund perhaps and as witty and intelligent as ever [...] We supped at the ‘21’.15 The Doctor had about 6 guards within shouting distance. I remembered the contrast. In Jerusalem I was told there were 750 guards. 250 Yanks, 250 Israelis, 250 Arabs – for one man. The conversation went on for hours (we closed the ‘21') although it was more a monologue by Kissinger. I was [...] the feed or stooge. ‘The presidency is now open for any unemployed megalomaniac,’ was one of his bon mots. He used the word megalomaniac many times. Anderson was, Carter was, everybody else was including, he said, for a short time, he himself. Nixon wasn't. Well-well.