Furious Love

by Sam Kashner

  The ceremony over, they piled into a waiting Range Rover and began their safari honeymoon. Elizabeth was ecstatic. She wrote a little note to Richard:

  Dearest Hubs—

  How about that! You really are my husband again, and I have news for thee, there bloody will be no more marriages—or divorces either.

  We are stuck like chicken feathers to tar—for lovely always.

  Do you realize we shall grow old together, and I know the best is yet to be!

  …Yours truly, Wife

  But the honeymoon was called off when Richard fell ill, diagnosed with malaria. A pharmacist named Chenina Samin (later shortened to Chen Sam), an extremely competent Egyptian woman in her early forties, was helicoptered in, and she nursed Richard back to health. Elizabeth was so impressed with her that she invited the striking, capable woman to join her entourage. She did so, becoming Elizabeth’s secretary, publicist, and indispensable friend for the next three decades, replacing—if possible—Dick Hanley’s loving but firm hand in Elizabeth’s life. And Richard was restored to good health—for a while.

  The press had a field day covering the wedding—Elizabeth’s sixth, Richard’s third. Ellen Goodman wrote in the Boston Globe, “Sturm has remarried Drang and all is right with the world…In an era of friendly divorces and meaningful relationships, they stand for a marriage that is an all-consuming affair, not a partnership. None of this respecting each other’s freedom, but instead, saying, ‘I can’t live without you.’ Wow.”

  On November 10, Elizabeth threw Richard a fiftieth birthday party in the Orchid Room of the Dorchester Hotel, back in London. Burton was still fighting for sobriety, and some felt that he did not look well—“like a man who wasn’t really there,” wrote one British writer who attended the party. Burton was the only one sipping mineral water among the 250 guests, but within weeks of their marriage, he would begin drinking again. He and Elizabeth went back to their old pattern of fighting and making up. One of their bodyguards, Brian Haynes, thought the marriage was doomed from the start. “But I could see that they seemed to need each other…. When he was away, she couldn’t bear to be without him. They were often at each other’s throats, and there was plenty of hard-core swearing on both sides.”

  When Elizabeth went back into the hospital for recurrent back and neck pain, she insisted that Burton stay with her. This time, he didn’t want to. He felt pressured and harangued, and, given his attempts to stay sober, the pressure was becoming unbearable. Smoking a cigarette, he wheeled her into the hospital, and when the inevitable photographer asked for the couple to kiss for the camera, Burton refused.

  In December, they returned to Elizabeth’s Chalet Ariel in Gstaad for the Christmas holidays. As in Goforth’s villa in Boom!, Elizabeth had an intercom system put in that connected her to her secretary’s room and to the kitchen—but not to Richard’s bedroom, located at the other end of the chalet. By now, Richard was back to drinking, prowling the house at night, chafing under Elizabeth’s possessiveness. He managed to slip away to the nearby ski slopes with the ever-present Brook Williams, for a rare outing.

  On the slopes, Richard happened to notice a tall, stunning woman who simply took his breath away. She was a green-eyed, twenty-seven-year-old former model named Suzy Hunt, in the process of divorcing the celebrated Formula One race-car driver, James Hunt. She was totally different from all the doe-eyed, raven-haired women he had been smitten with in the past—Susan Strasberg, Claire Bloom, Elizabeth Taylor.

  She struck him with all the force of a new beginning. Elizabeth didn’t know it yet, but Richard Burton had just met his future.

  16

  PRIVATE LIVES

  “Everyone bought tickets to watch…‘Liz and Dick.’

  And we gave them what they wanted.”

  —ELIZABETH TAYLOR

  “I’ve never found a part as good as playing the husband of Elizabeth Taylor.”

  —RICHARD BURTON

  January 1976 was a turning point for Richard. Not only did he begin spending time with Suzy Hunt, he took on new representation in New York, the Austrian theatrical agent Robert Lantz. Robbie Lantz got him the opportunity to replace Anthony Perkins for three months in the lead role in Equus, a new play by Peter Shaffer. He had been thought of because it had been a lackluster season on Broadway that year, and even a somewhat faded movie star could add the excitement needed to sell tickets.

  Alec McCowen had played the lead role of psychiatrist Dr. Martin Dysart in the original production at the Old Vic in London, and Burton’s fellow Welshman, Anthony Hopkins, had preceded Perkins in the role on Broadway. The controversial play—about a troubled youth who blinds six horses, and the disillusioned psychiatrist who treats him—had caused a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. The play included male nudity (the young man’s) and disturbing subject matter.

  Still living with Elizabeth in Gstaad, in separate bedrooms, Burton walked through the snow around the chalet, reading Shaffer’s play, mesmerized by his beautiful speeches. He had always responded to the power of words, but he hadn’t set foot on a stage since his triumphant Hamlet in 1963, when he had run the gamut of huge crowds and policemen on horses just to get into the theater, and his less than triumphant Doctor Faustus at the Oxford Playhouse in 1966.

  When Jackpot couldn’t attract the funding to complete filming, Burton must have felt that his movie career was virtually over. He continued to rail against the “unmanly” art of acting, but not only did he want and need the income, acting was still in his blood, still challenging, still the most satisfying thing he could do, apart from his deep reading and the hours he spent writing in his diaries. But he was sick to death of those European coproductions, those “Tower of Babel films,” as he called them, in which half the actors spoke different languages. And all the international travel that was required! He wasn’t lying when he told Elizabeth that he was a different man now, he was tired, he didn’t want to live in the old way anymore.

  But Burton was nervous about taking on another stage performance—especially because this time, he would be doing it entirely without alcohol.

  He left Gstaad and flew to New York to begin rehearsing for a twelve-week run, moving into a twentieth-floor suite at the Lombardy Hotel on 56th Street off Park Avenue. Unlike the Dorchester, the Lombardy was and is a small, European hotel, neither grand nor grandiose. Brook Williams, who remained a loyal friend and personal assistant, accompanied him.

  And so did Suzy Hunt. Burton had been struck by her beauty on the ski slopes of Gstaad, but his heart really went out to her when he next encountered the willowy blonde at a party. She was down on all fours, searching for a lost contact lens, and Burton had at first thought she was inebriated. He soon found out that Suzy, who had been educated at a convent, was quite straight when it came to any kind of intoxicant. The daughter of a brigadier solicitor, used to the huge crowds that had cheered her ex-husband, James Hunt, she was up to the challenge of taking on this world-famous man, removing him from Elizabeth’s influence, and making sure he would never again drink himself to the brink of death.

  Angered and humiliated by Burton’s departure, Taylor took up with a thirty-seven-year-old advertising executive from Malta named Peter Darmanin. She had met him in a discothèque in Gstaad called The Cave, where she had gone with Chen Sam. Before Richard left for New York to appear in Equus, she’d warned him, “You have the guts of a blind burglar—you know they’ll be gunning for you.” Twelve years ago, it was Taylor who had given Burton the courage to go back on stage. Now she reminded him that he was fair game for the critics. They would be waiting for him with sharpened knives.

  Perhaps as a retaliation for Richard’s defection, Elizabeth made plans to sell the beautiful 25-carat pink diamond ring that Richard had bought for over $1 million and had given to her to commemorate their remarriage. She’d planned to use the proceeds to set up a hospital in Botswana. But when she got word from Richard that he wanted to see her, would she please come to New York an
d meet him at the Lombardy, she was suddenly hopeful. “Please come. I need you,” he’d told her.

  “When?” she’d asked.

  “Now.”

  Perhaps, for a third time, they would patch things up.

  From Switzerland, Elizabeth called Alexander Cohen, the play’s producer (who had also produced Burton’s Hamlet thirteen years earlier). She had a wonderful idea. Why not give a party to celebrate Richard’s return to the stage, and combine it with her forty-fourth birthday on February 27, 1976? It would be an intimate gathering for thirty-six guests, held at Caffe da Alfredo in Greenwich Village. Cohen, who also produced the annual Tony Awards, knew how to put on a good show, so she left the details to him. There were even plans to have the Burtons cohost the Tony Awards that year.

  Nervous and fearful about taking on such a large and difficult role in front of a live audience, Burton decided to test his stamina by replacing Tony Perkins in a Saturday matinee, though he was still rehearsing the part. That afternoon, just before the curtain lifted, a sonorous voice announced, “At this performance, the part of Martin Dysart will not be played by Anthony Perkins.” The audience groaned their disapproval. The voice continued: “The part of Martin Dysart will be played by Richard Burton.” The audience rose to its feet and cheered, welcoming Burton back to the New York stage.

  Just before previews were to begin, Richard met Elizabeth at Kennedy Airport. She was bundled up in a fur coat and wearing dark sunglasses. They greeted each other with a big kiss, which was there for all to see the next morning in Liz Smith’s syndicated column. But when they arrived at the Lombardy, Elizabeth checked into a separate suite. Word got out that she was in town, which made the cast and crew of Equus apprehensive—it was well known by now that Burton had trouble staying sober around Elizabeth. The rehearsals had gone well—and his stand-in performance for Tony Perkins had been triumphant—but it had been a difficult transition for Richard. “It was the first time in my life I’d been onstage without a drink,” he later said. “I’ve never been so bloody scared.” The stakes were high: he risked public humiliation, and with his film career in eclipse, he risked his livelihood as an actor.

  When Elizabeth checked into the Lombardy for their anticipated reunion, she could tell right away that something was not quite right. He seemed distant and tentative. That’s when he told her that he wanted a divorce.

  “Immediately, everyone in every surrounding room started hearing incredible fights,” Liz Smith recounted, “because Richard had only invited her to New York to tell her that he had fallen in love with Suzy Hunt.”

  “Why the hell did you have me come all the way here to tell me that?” Elizabeth wailed.

  Elizabeth discovered that Suzy Hunt had been with Richard all along, that they had been seen around town, at 21, at Gallagher’s Steak House in the heart of Broadway, shopping at Bloomingdale’s, with Brook Williams acting as the beard. The more time Richard spent with Suzy, the more he felt that she was the right woman for him, at the right time.

  Reporters lay siege to the Plymouth Theatre during a Monday-evening preview performance of the play. Liz Smith and her right-hand man, Denis Ferrara, remembered that a big mob of fans waited for Elizabeth outside the Lombardy. “She came out,” Ferrara recalled, “and from a distance, she looked fantastic, and everyone goes, ‘ooh.’ But the closer she got, she looked like someone who had just been told that her entire family had been wiped out. Outside the Plymouth Theatre, even though it’s Burton’s return to Broadway, another mob was screaming, ‘Liz! Liz!’ It’s her they wanted.”

  At Sardi’s, after the performance, Burton stood up and embraced Suzy Hunt in front of Elizabeth. “That was the end,” Liz Smith recalled. “When they emerged from Sardi’s, Elizabeth was completely stoned and Richard was stone cold sober. He helped her get into the car, but she knew it was all over. She left New York the next day.”

  The marriage of the century was over. Instead of celebrating Elizabeth’s birthday, Burton met with Suzy Hunt and Brook Williams at Mont St. Michel restaurant, to celebrate his new life—with mineral water.

  When Burton’s Equus opened on February 23, it was Suzy Hunt and not Elizabeth sitting in the audience, for what many would describe as a theatrical triumph. The audience adored Burton and again gave him a standing ovation; long lines queued for tickets, and all his performances quickly sold out. The reviews were mostly (though not entirely) ecstatic: “…the actor’s performance in Equus seems to me the best work of his life,” wrote Walter Kerr for the New York Times. Clive Barnes called it “a star performance.” Suddenly, the sun was shining on Richard Burton again. Whenever he and Suzy entered a restaurant during the run of the play, they were applauded. Burton kept his promise to Alexander Cohen and appeared as a presenter at the Tony Awards, where he was given a special medallion with the inscription “Welcome Back to Broadway.”

  After Burton’s triumphant opening night, Suzy Hunt went back to Richard’s dressing room to congratulate him. What awaited her was a surprise: a message from Elizabeth. After the preview performance, Elizabeth had gone back to Richard’s dressing room to congratulate him on his splendid performance. When she found the room empty, she’d taken an eyebrow pencil out of her purse and, like Gloria Wandrous in BUtterfield 8, wrote on his mirror: “You were fantastic, love.” How long had that message from Elizabeth been there? And why hadn’t Burton wiped it off? For the first time, Suzy realized that Elizabeth would remain a force to be reckoned with and, in some way, would always be part of Richard’s life.

  After agreeing to a divorce, Elizabeth flew to Los Angeles and checked into a Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow—it was too painful to face any of the homes she had shared with Richard—leaving it to Cohen to cancel the party she had planned and to announce that she would not be cohosting the Tony Awards. Back in Los Angeles, Henry Wynberg was waiting for her.

  In the second, and final, divorce settlement, drawn up by Aaron Frosch, Elizabeth took everything: full possession of the Kalizma and Casa Kimberly, all the jewelry and the works of art. Richard kept the Everyman Library that Elizabeth had given him, and a small Picasso he had bought at auction in London just before he was fired from Laughter in the Dark. Richard kept his house in Céligny, which he had owned before the marriage, and he had the thousand volumes of his library moved there from the Gstaad chalet. Harder to untangle were their business interests and the corporations they’d founded together: Taybur Productions, Oxford Productions, their shares of Harlech Television, and the Vicky Tiel Boutique in Paris. Their legal representatives worked out the details.

  At the end of the twelve-week run, Richard and Suzy traveled to Haiti as the guests of “Papa Doc” Duvalier. It’s surprising that Burton would have accepted such an invitation, given how there had been death threats against him when he and Taylor had made The Comedians, an exposé of the brutal Duvalier regime. Perhaps Duvalier was just a movie fan all along, and Burton’s star power trumped the faux pas of appearing in a political exposé. Perhaps Burton felt there were few places left where he could escape from Elizabeth’s sphere of influence. He and Suzy bought a thirty-five-acre estate where they could hide from the world, and that was where Richard, on August 1, 1976, finalized his divorce from Elizabeth. He and Suzy married twenty days later, in a four-minute ceremony in Arlington, Virginia, just after she received her divorce from James Hunt. Between his divorce and his marriage to Suzy, Richard flew to Hollywood, where he filmed Exorcist II: The Heretic for John Boorman at Warner Bros. The reviews were so bad that his new wife told him, “You must never do anything like that again, not even to get a million dollars.” Thankfully, he would follow this film catastrophe with the movie adaptation of Equus, earning his seventh Academy Award nomination. Surely, after all those near-misses, he would win this one.

  The new Burtons settled into Richard’s home in Céligny, and Suzy went into a bustle of activity remodeling and redecorating the house, making it comfortable for Richard and, hopefully, removing lingering memorie
s of Ifor’s accident. She cleaned out an attic room that had become a roost for pigeons and transformed it into a spacious haven for Richard to read, study, and write, with a log fireplace, comfortable chairs, a desk with a typewriter, and special bookshelves she had made along the length of the room that held the thousand volumes of Burton’s treasured library. (“Was it not Francis Bacon who said books make the best furniture?” Burton was fond of saying.) That wasn’t the only big change: she made sure that Burton’s entourage—except for his friend Brook Williams—stayed away from him. She had decided that they were part of the reason Richard drank so much—they made it too easy for him. Kate Burton, years later, saw the good effect that Suzy’d had on her father’s life, helping him to stay sober: “I think Suzy Hunt provided a very important gift to him. She made him able to leave Elizabeth.”

  Back in Los Angeles, Elizabeth was miserable. While Burton was being acclaimed, and publicly praising his young wife for giving him his life back, Elizabeth was drinking to excess, hiding out in the Beverly Hills Hotel. She decided to get on with her life. She leased a house and was seen around town with Henry Wynberg, but the bloom was definitely off that rose, as the used-car salesman was under indictment for rolling back the odometers on some of the cars he had sold. Even worse, he was hit with a morals charge in connection with a photo shoot at his home involving four girls from a Beverly Hills high school. Wynberg was ultimately given a ninety-day jail sentence on a misdeamanor conviction of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

  But Elizabeth’s life was about to change. She met the Kissingers again, at a party in Palm Springs given by Kirk Douglas and his wife, which led to invitations to attend various charity balls in Washington, DC. It was the spring of 1976, the Bicentennial year, and Washington was alive with benefits and celebrations. There she met and had a brief but intense friendship with the Iranian Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi, jetting to Tehran for a fabulous party at the Zahedi palace (under the Shah of Iran’s regime, a few years before the Iranian Revolution). She drank champagne and vodka and dined on caviar. When she was invited to a reception at the British Embassy for Queen Elizabeth II, she agreed to go, but “the most beautiful woman in the world” did not have a date. She was provided with one: the chairman of the Bicentennial Committee, a wealthy Virginia Republican named John Warner Jr.