by Sam Kashner
That man alone, solitary, musing,
Who can he be?
I lift my eyes from the bitter pint.
I see that man in the mirror.
That man is me.
—RICHARD BURTON, NOVEMBER 5, 1965
ENDNOTES
PREFACE
“I am forever punished…”: Undated letter from Richard Burton, B-T Archive.
“Since I was a little girl…”: Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Takes Off (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1987), 83.
“the most vivid example…”: Authors’ interview with Liz Smith and Denis Ferrara.
“On the face of it…”: Ibid.
“My blind eyes are desperately…”: Undated letter from Burton, B-T Archive.
“Richard was magnificent…”: Private letter to authors from Elizabeth Taylor.
CHAPTER 1: LE SCANDALE
“I did not want to be another notch…”: Elizabeth Taylor with Richard Meryman, Elizabeth Taylor (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), original manuscript.
“How did I know the woman…”: Paul Ferris, Richard Burton (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1981), 153.
“swank house…. It had been a hell of a year…” Burton notebooks, Melvin Bragg, Rich, The Life of Richard Burton (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1988), 89.
“the most astonishingly self-contained…”: Graham Jenkins, Richard Burton, My Brother (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 5.
“I was so totally chaperoned…”: Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, 68.
“You and your studio…”: Ibid., 16.
“When I met Nicky…”: Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Taken Off (New York: Berkley Books, 1987), 64
“Hey, Mac, get out of the way…”: Lester David and Jhan Robbins, Richard & Elizabeth (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1977), 85.
“Todd’s living up to his legend…”: S. J. Perelman, Don’t Tread on Me (New York: Viking Penguin, Inc., 1987), 172.
“Go on, hit me…”: Donald Spoto, Elizabeth Taylor (London: Time Warner Book Group, 1995), 126.
“She’s as wistful…”: Oscar Levant, The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965), 282.
“She was a woman who loved…” Eddie Fisher, Been There, Done That (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 1999), 152.
“Blood Thirsty Widow…”: Elizabeth Taylor clipping file, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“Mike is dead and I’m alive!”: David and Robbins, 99.
“Anyone who is against me…”: Eddie Fisher, Eddie: My Life, My Loves (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), photo insert.
“If Todd said steak medium rare…”: David and Robbins, 98.
“I lost to a tracheotomy”: Spoto, 247
“Don’t do it.”: Hume Cronyn, interviewed on DVD release of Cleopatra.
“I can be an actress or a woman…” Joe Mankiewicz, All About Eve.
“Why couldn’t they let me…”: David and Robbins, 68.
“small expenses”: Ruth Waterbury, Richard Burton, His Intimate Story (New York: Pyramid Books, 1965), 107.
“tried homosexuality…”: Burton’s BBC Interview with Michael Parkinson, November 23, 1974, BFI Archive; Bragg, 258.
“rather full of himself,” “cold fish eye”: Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, 103.
“a movie star but a genuine…”: Ibid.
“a boxing poet”: Emlyn Williams, interviewed in Tony Palmer’s documentary, Richard Burton: In from the Cold.
“there was a lot of hemming…”: Ferris, Richard Burton, 151.
“Has anybody ever told you…”: Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, 102.
“couldn’t wait to go back…”: Ibid.
“You’re too fat”: Waterbury, Richard Burton, His Intimate Story (New York: Pyramid Books, 1965), 112.
“so bloody marvelous”: Ibid.
“He was kind of quivering…”: Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, 103.
“Joe, what’s going on here?” to “not doing anything”: Fisher, 205.
“who knows how much…”: Fisher, Been There, Done That, 202–03.
“At some point after…”: Fisher, Eddie: My Life, My Loves, 205.
“the busboy,” Kitty Kelley, Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star (New York: Dell Publishing, 1981), 199.
“I must don my armor once more…”: Bragg, 145.
“Print it…Would you two mind…”: Waterbury, 115.
“I am Isis…I am the Nile…”: Joseph Mankiewicz, Cleopatra.
“Mike Todd…”: Kelley, 201.
“From that first instant…”: Mankiewicz.
“To have waited so long…”: Ibid.
“Elizabeth was not used to…”: Jenkins, 123.
“Even if he hadn’t destroyed…”: Fisher, Been There, Done That, 205.
“I adore this man…”: Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, 104.
“I lust after your smell…”: Letter from Richard Burton, B-T Archive.
“Tell me the truth…”: Fisher, Been There, 207.
“Elizabeth, who do you love?” anecdote: Ibid., 210.
“Eddie broke the cardinal rule…”: Authors’ interview with John Heyman.
“Ever since Richard and I…”: Fisher, Eddie: My Life, My Loves, 211.
“What are you doing there?”: C. David Heymann, Liz: An Intimate Biography of Elizabeth Taylor (Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Stars, 1996), 249.
“Elizabeth and Burton are not just playing…”: Spoto, 264.
“incredibly patient and well informed…”: Walter Wanger and Joe Hyams, My Life with Cleopatra (New York: Bantam Books, 1963).
“It seemed like everybody who worked…”: Taylor and Meryman, Elizabeth Taylor, original manuscript, Private Collection.
“We’d spend weekends there…”: Ibid.
“I feel dreadful…” anecdote: Wanger, 128.
“We drank to the point of stupefaction”: Burton notebooks, Bragg, 365–66.
“I think Burton had finally…”: Wanger, 217.
“I was a very sick girl”: Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, original manuscript.
“Row Over Actor Ends Liz…”: Los Angeles Examiner, Taylor clipping file, Academy.
“I knew it before she did”: Fisher, Been There, 219.
“LIZ, EDDY DENY SPLIT”: Ibid., 212.
“I was lost”: Spoto, 272.
“Eddie Fisher Dumped”: Fisher, Been There, 223.
“that marvelous voice”: Ibid., 217.
“Don’t worry, Elizabeth…”: Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, original manuscript.
CHAPTER 2: VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE
“I was damned helpless…”: Sam Kashner, “A First-Class Affair,” Vanity Fair, July 2003, 148.
“Gstaad is a lonely place out of season”: Ladies’ Home Journal, November 1965, 151.
“Warren, do you think Elizabeth Taylor…”: Kashner.
“Tried again to get Elizabeth”: Wanger, 146.
“erotic vagrancy”: Kitty Kelley, Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star (New York: Dell Publishing, 1981), 217–18.
“Miss Taylor and Mr. Burton…”: Spoto, 273.
“sick of being chased”: Wanger, 143.
“It’s lunatic. Bessie Mae”: Patricia Bosworth, Montgomery Clift (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 370.
“In a few weeks”: Fisher, Been There, 217.
“Being pulled through that mob…”: Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, original manuscript.
“Leez, Leez! Baci, baci!”: Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, 112.
“After my last shot”: Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, original manuscript.
“We tried to stay away…”: Ladies’ Home Journal, October 1973.
“making too many people”: Authors’ conversation with Taylor.
“the most miserable day…”: Elizabeth Taylor, My Love Affair with Jewelry (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 111.
“I was dying inside…”: David, 35.
“Richard and I arrived…” anecdote: Ladies’ Home Journal, October 1973.
Sybil Burton’s attempted suicide and “s
everely retarded”: mentioned in several Taylor and Burton biographies, including Tyrone Steverson, Richard Burton, A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1992), 40.
“I loved Richard so much…”: Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, original manuscript.
“Let Sophia stay in Rome!”: Kashner, Vanity Fair.
“nice little shop” anecdote: Taylor, Jewelry, 56, 59, 63.
aware that Mankiewicz blamed…: Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, original manuscript.
“arrogant hair…Imagine having…”: Ibid.
“it left him with…”: Authors’ interview with Robert Hardy, August 23, 2007.
“She came from the valleys…”: Ibid.
“One just hoped…”: Ibid.
“show up for wardrobe fittings”: Kashner, Vanity Fair, 141.
“He was one haunted boy-o”: Ibid.
“The family wasn’t happy…married to both women.”: Ibid., 145.
“At her best, she was…”: Interview with Hardy.
“the boozing was prodigious…”: Bragg, 166.
“The drink was the problem”: Kashner, Vanity Fair, 145.
“I know nothing about…”: Bragg, 167.
“Everybody was extremely…after lunch—look out!”: Kashner, 149–150.
“Richard loses his temper”: Ladies’ Home Journal, November 1965.
“I think the effect Burton had”: Fisher, Eddie: My Life, 215.
“Mike [Todd] was a bit of a madman,” Taylor, Elizabeth Takes Off, 71.
“my little Jewish tart…it was foreplay to them”: Kashner, 150.
“You couldn’t have been…”: Ibid., 146.
“I was caught off-balance…”: Ibid., 148.
“Burton and Taylor in their public adultery…”: Bragg, 164.
“less an actress than a great…”: David and Robbins, 143.
“The mountain of notoriety…” and subsequent reviews: Cleopatra clipping file, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“She was the reverse…”: Spoto, 268.
“wisely tried to ride it…”: Bragg, 151.
“These were larger-than-life…”: Life, April 1963, 63.
“Has it been his name…” and subsequent dialogue: Mankiewicz screenplay, Cleopatra, DVD.
“who stood always in Caesar’s footsteps…”: Life, 63.
“a masculine façade…”: Ibid.
“who talks incessantly…”: Kenneth Tynan’s interview with Richard Burton, Playboy, September 1963.
“The ultimate desertion?…”: Mankiewicz, Cleopatra, DVD.
CHAPTER 3: A YEAR IN THE SUN
“My father would never say…”: Joseph Roddy, “Visit with Richard Burton,” LOOK, January 28, 1964.
“Ever since I’d been ten…”: Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor book excerpt, Ladies’ Home Journal, November 1965.
“The happiest days…”: Ibid., 15.
“National Velvet was really me”: Kelley, 21.
“I will grow…”: Ibid., 121.
“I worked harder…”: Ibid.
“Oh, Elizabeth, darling…”: Ibid., 23.
“I’m the son of a Welsh…”: Kenneth Tynan, “Playboy Interview: Richard Burton,” Playboy, September 1963.
“Which one?”: John Cottrell and Fergus Cashin, Richard Burton, Very Close Up (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 6.
“The seven boys born to Dic…”: Ibid.
“remarkable. Each and every one…”: Authors’ interview with Robert Hardy.
“To have Dadi Ni’s boys…”: David and Robbins, 26.
“I did it, even though…”: Ibid.
“bridge over the ford…”: Jenkins, 17.
“It was our parents…”: Jenkins, 18.
“by dribbling [two] eggs…”: Waterbury, Richard Burton, 16.
“Dic was a real sweet…”: Cottrell, 8.
“the drinking was tremendous…”: Ibid., 10.
Burned in a mine fire anecdote, Hilda Owen interviewed in Tony Palmer’s In from the Cold.
“no ordinary woman…”: Burton, A Christmas Story (London: Hoddard & Stoughton, 1964, 1989), 44.
“When my mother had died…”: Ibid., 47.
“He was never smacked…”: Jenkins, 21–22.
“quick to discover…”: Ibid., 23.
“The chapel was our…”: Ibid., 223.
“spoke the most perfect Welsh…”: Hardy.
“a wild, breathy, passionate…”: David, 27.
“The Welsh gift of language…”: Cottrell, 11.
“the boy had spots”: Jenkins, 31.
“Not having to act…”: Ibid., 38.
“he had the rough good looks…”: Ibid., 38.
“However often the advantages…”: Ibid., 41.
“Burton’s tragedy…”: Joseph Mankiewicz interviewed, Palmer’s In from the Cold.
“…a shrewd Welsh boy…”: Kenneth Tynan, Curtains (New York: Athereum, 1961), 11–12.
“Before I met her…”: Tynan interview, Playboy, and Hollis Alpert, Burton (New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1986), 122.
“third-rate chorus girl”: Kelley, 233.
“It’s hard to believe…”: Taylor, Elizabeth Takes Off, 74.
“like Never Never Land…”: quoted in Lee Server, Ava Gardner, Love Is Nothing (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006), 422.
“made equally unfit…”: Ibid., 420.
“She wanted to be…”: Jenkins, 142.
“You should be more careful…”: Ibid., 143.
“When she left the room…”: Ibid.
“In Mexico…”: Ibid., 143–44.
“Get this maniac off…”: Alpert, 133.
“there were more reporters…”: John Huston, An Open Book (New York: Ballantine, 1981), 346–47.
“the great day when…”: Ibid., 347.
“abandonment and cruel…”: Kelley, 227.
“embarrassing her publicly”: Ibid., 228.
“There is no more delectable…”: Burton, “Dauntless Travellers,” Vogue, October 15, 1971, 130.
“I used to spend all day”: Kelley, 239.
“Richard lives each…”: Axel Madsen, John Huston (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1978), 204.
“Everyone was drinking…”: Server, 421.
“She can outdrink…”: Kelley, 238.
“Richard, take a drink…”: Ibid.
“with a few bottles…”: Ibid., 239.
“sex, drinks, drugs, vice”: Madsen, 206.
“a French tart”: Kelley, 227.
“the street we live on…”: “Dauntless Travellers,” 130.
“the thrilling still music…” and anecdote, Ibid.
“We must have been…”: Ibid.
“My father would never say…” and anecdote: Roddy, LOOK, January 28, 1964.
“Boys, our troubles…”: Ibid.
“loved my shape…”: conversation with Taylor.
“Where I was wrong,” Jenkins, 143–44.
CHAPTER 4: NO MORE MARRIAGES
“You’re the one they’ve come to see…”: Ferris, 177.
“I say we will have no more…”: Alexander Walker, The Life of Elizabeth Taylor (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), 274.
“Mike and I hope to have…”: Spoto, 188, and Elizabeth Taylor by Elizabeth Taylor, original manuscript.
“He was simply splendid…”: quoted in Steverson, 58.
“I can never repay him…”: Burton’s televised interview with Michael Parkinson, November 23, 1974, BFI Archive.
“so the beauty of the language…”: Steverson, 94.
“isolated, apart, in a world…”: Burton’s interview with Kenneth Tynan, 1967; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold DVD special materials.
“I do feel that on the stage…”: Ibid.
losing a thumbnail: Authors’ interview with John Cullum, August 4, 2009.
“I bleed more than Laertes…”: New York Times, June 17, 1964.
“I’ve been a bleeder…”: Ibid.
> “the best seat at the restaurant…”: Parkinson interview, BFI.
“had a kind of private veil…”: Ibid.
“Drink not the wine…”: Alpert, 137.
“Ghastly crowds of morons…”: Sir John Gielgud, A Life in Letters (New York: Arcade Publishers, 2004), 305.
“Mostly, she stayed in…”: Authors’ interview with Richard L. Sterne, February 10, 2008.
“read with such enormous energy…”: Ibid.
“He had an amazing…”: Ibid.
“Is there such a thing…”: Burton’s interview with Parkinson, BFI Archive.
“It’s the deep, dark answer…”: Ibid.
“was very quiet…”: Interview with Sterne.
“We shall be sold out…”: Gielgud, 304–05.
“Richard adored Sir John…”: Sterne.
“directors are relatively…”: Tynan interview.
“an unmitigated disaster”: Toronto Daily Star, Richard Burton clipping file, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library.
“magnificent…”: Toronto Telegram, Academy Archive.
“The crew adore him”: Gielgud, 306.
“treated everybody…”: Sterne.
“There was one performance…”: Ibid.
“The first time I played it…”: Tynan interview.
“You never knew…”: Sterne.
“couldn’t keep their hands…”: quoted in Bragg, 187.
“everybody wanted to be…”: Cullum.
“Physically, Burton was magnetic…”: Sterne.
“Richard belonged to…”: Ibid.
“Richard is at his most agreeable…”: Gielgud, 306.
“Richard was so energetic…”: Sterne.
“There were six of us…”: Ibid.
“He didn’t like to be touched…”: Ibid.
“Elizabeth was always there…”: Ibid.
“She couldn’t have been…”: Ibid.
“Elizabeth Burton and I…”: Los Angeles Times, March 16, 1964.
“I say, we will have…”: Walker, 274.
“We thought there was going to be…”: Sterne.
“shouting, clawing admirers”: Herald Examiner, March 23, 1964.
“was being pulled…to this extent”: Ibid.
