Drunk, uncontrollable, infinitely generous, and larger than life – director Tony Palmer lays bare the life of legendary actor Richard Burton.
Richard Burton was a renowned Welsh actor known for his charismatic presence, deep voice, and commanding performances on stage and screen. Additionally, Burton’s highly publicized romance and marriages to Elizabeth Taylor added to his legend.
Director & Editor: Tony Palmer
00:00 Full Documentary (with subtitles)
04:11 Exploration of the life of a renowned actor from Wales, Richard Burton, including his humble beginnings and rise to fame.
12:19 The life and relationships of Richard Burton, including his upbringing, education, and legal guardianship.
19:23 Exploration of Richard Burton’s life, career, and influences through personal anecdotes and reflections.
28:22 Richard Burton’s early career and personal anecdotes from colleagues and friends.
36:49 Insight into the personal and professional life of Richard Burton through anecdotes and observations.
45:27 Richard Burton’s career in Hollywood and Old Vic, struggles with fame, and personal reflections.
55:16 The complex relationship between Michael and Richard during their acting career.
1:04:05 Exploration of the tumultuous relationship between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
1:14:17 Exploration of Richard Burton’s life, career, and impact on Shakespearean theatre.
1:21:31 Richard Burton’s personal struggles and achievements in the entertainment industry.
1:32:07 Exploration of Richard Burton’s career, relationships, and struggles with fame and isolation.
1:41:27 Insight into the life and personality of Richard Burton, a versatile and private individual.
1:49:24 Exploration of Richard Burton’s complex persona, relationships, and impact on others.
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It has puzzled me that I know at least, shall we say, over the years about 20 actors who are every bit as accomplished as I am. For the most part, I may say far better looking and the same size, weight, and shape. With all the accouterments of what one would think
A star, for lack of a better word, should have, good voice, good presence, good eyes. They haven’t made it, and I can never figure it out. I can only assume it’s some diabolical or even divine luck, but there are about 20 or 30 people like that in the world
And they don’t know, but they worry about it, because I know most of them very well. I never worry about it, but I do sometimes wonder about it. What we have to remember is the incredible journey this man took. He set off with hardly any acting lessons,
Became one of the greatest actors on the London stage, all his rivals and peers say that now, and said that then, as do Olivier and Gielgud. From nowhere, Gielgud kept saying he came, became number one box office in the cinema, and made some amazing films.
He outbid Onassis for diamonds, he dined every night with Kissinger. Bobby Kennedy, Brando, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were friends. He held all that in thrall and was a great Welsh hero. He never lost his Welshness. If he could have done one thing more than any other,
He would have wanted to be a Welsh international to play rugby. Again, he could have done. Allow me to introduce myself. Major Johann Schmidt. I don’t fancy talking and keeping my eyes on you at the same time. First of all, I went to see this beautiful baby, Richard.
I’m not saying it because I thought… he was handsome. I took him into the living room and I asked my brother Ifor, “Isn’t he lovely?” I said. “I don’t want to talk about babies, I’m on my breakfast,” he said. We were 11 and there were seven boys and four girls,
And Thomas Henry, the eldest boy, was named after the two grandfathers. Then, my sister Cecilia Jane came, named after my father’s sister, Jane, and then Ifor Glyn, and then William, and after William, David Arthur. After David Arthur, there came Verdun, and then I was the first girl to come after all those boys,
To have a sister for Cecilia. She named me Hilda. Then my sister Katherine came, Edith, and then Richard, of course, and the last one was Graham. To begin at the beginning, I was born on the 10th of November, 1925 in Pontrhydyfen, which is a little village in South Wales,
Which means something, it means “the bridge across the vale.” There’s a bridge that spans the valley from mountain to mountain, and at one time, we lived on one side of it. When I was born, we’d moved underneath it. Starless and Bible black. I was the last but one of 13 children,
Though I always think of them as 11, as two of them died before I was born. They died in infancy. I walked down to the slow black. There was a colliery nearby. My brothers Ifor and Will used to work there. Every one of the brothers but Richard and Graham, worked in the pit.
I was unfortunate I lost half my foot in the pit in a colliery accident and very nearly lost part of my hand as well. I’ve seen so much in the pit, people being killed. When I was working in the steelworks, I saw men being blown to smithereens
And just their leather belts hanging on and drilling. You must realize that underground is total darkness. There’s not a beam of light anywhere. Terrifying when the only thing you’d hear would be a rat scuttling underneath your feet. When I started at 14 and two days old,
I was the only one working in the family. It was in 1930 and during the depression, we worked about anywhere. The colliery had closed and the pit had closed. They were all closing, and I was earning seven and six a week, in the old money. Imagine what it was like.
When I was two years old, my mother gave birth to my younger brother, Graham, and five days after the birth, she died. In the morning, I think it was the 31st of October 1927, there was the doctor, the midwife, and the elder sister, Cis.
I well remember my father faltering me coming down the stairways, and I realized with mounting horror what he was saying to me. [Welsh spoken audio] Your mother has died. Since there were seven children in the house under the age of 14, and my eldest sister and my eldest brother were married,
It meant that there was nobody responsible enough to look after the very tiny ones. It was decided that I should go and live with my sister, who was married to a miner called Elfed James, who lived in a place called Taibach. Therefore, we left home.
Now as I was young, easy under the apple boughs about the lilting house and happy as the grass was green. The night above the dingle star. I thought it was such a shame. Youngsters and children under 14. I thought, I have to come out of this. I have to work it off.
There was plenty of work there, I can tell you. You went to the infants school and you said: “I don’t know what they’re talking about in that school, it’s right by our house.” This was the English school, you see. I don’t know what they’re talking about, in Welsh.
I said: “You’ll have to come and learn English as well.” You see, I said. I used to get up when the miners got up, very early in the morning because they had to walk to the bus and they had to start at six. They generally got up at half past four,
And I would get up more or less at the same time as they did. I used to go up to the top of the mountains and collect the sheep dung and the horse dung, and the cow dung in a sack and put it in the coal shed. We used to work like dogs.
On a Saturday, I would then sell the dung. Six pence a bucket, I remember I used to get. Most of the people would keep the newspapers for me. Then I would deliver the newspapers to a fish and chips shop, because in those days they wrapped fish and chips in newspaper,
And they would pay me for that. When I was 14 years old, I left school and went to work in a haberdashery, that’s one period of my life which I detested, because it was so “unmacho”. I’d preferred to have gone down the mines. I sold hats and vests hopelessly, I was quite inept.
[Welsh spoken audio] My father was a miner, of course. He was very short. He was very powerful, strong, and a great miner. I remember going home when he was a very old man by then. He was about 80, I think. I took him to the pub and he was sick, he had flu.
I took him to the Miners Arms in Pontrhydyfen. I said: “What would you like?” He said: “I don’t know.” He was streaming with cold and flu and everything. I said: “I’m going to have an American drink, a boilermaker.” He said: “What’s that?” I said: “In my case, it’s a double shot of scotch
With a pint of beer to chase it.” He said: “I’ll have that, make mine rum.” I said: “We will all have rum”. Five of us in a row, six of us with my father. We ordered six double rums and six pints of beer.
Before the fellow had served me, my father had finished his. I said: “Do you want mine?” He said okay, took mine and drank it. The other brothers were fascinated, they said: “Do you want mine?” He took those too. He drank the whole thing in a row. Absolutely extraordinary.
We went home and the next day the tempers had gone. “Best cure”, he said. The best cure for flu in the world, boilermakers. Very good of the Americans, clever race. He looked at us all and we’d all look at him and he’d sing: “Forgive and forget all the troubles we’ve met.
We’ll be friends with each other again.” In English, he would sing. Everybody said to put him to bed. You couldn’t resist it. Another father figure was a man called Meredith Jones, who taught me at the secondary school in the scholarship class.
He and the most powerful man on the Board of Governors at that time, Sir William Haycock, changed my life. The anxiety of Mr. Meredith Jones, and how eager he was to get back into the local grammar school. He felt note that he’d like to go in for teaching,
And his ambition was to go down to Carmarthen Training College. I went to the governor’s meeting that particular Monday evening, and despite the objection of the headmaster we let Richard Burton into the school. There came the next considerable influence on my life, he was an English master at the school
Called Philip Burton, Ph Burton, who was something of a writer for the BBC and an occasional producer of programs. He taught the last lesson and after everybody had been dismissed, I lagged behind and finally, I plucked up the courage to go and talk to him.
I said: “My goodness, you can’t be an actor and talk like that.” He said: “Change it.” That was the first thing. Then, he told me that he’d tried to leave home a few times, and no member of the family would take him in. I didn’t realize what I was saying.
I said: “There’s an empty bedroom in my house, you can take that.” Do you mean it? I said: “No, no.” He put on such a sad act, “nobody wants me.” I told him I didn’t think that his sister would allow him to come, he said: “Come and ask them.”
I did on a Sunday afternoon, I’d not been to the house before. Cis, the sister, didn’t say a word. Elfet did everything. Richard wasn’t there, he was waiting outside for the decision. Elfet said: “You take him, Mr. Burton, you take him.” I said: “Let me see Richard in a moment.”
He went out to get Richard, and that was my chance to ask Cis what she thought about it. She hadn’t said a word, and she said: “If you take him, it will be the answer to my prayer.” We didn’t know him. He had great respect in the community,
He was a highly thought of teacher, and he was held in great respect by almost everyone. However, we held him in awe. There was this man that came into our lives and was interested in one of us. He used to come and visit us often during all these negotiations,
And he always said: “What books are you reading?” We were terrified, absolutely terrified by this man, because he spoke such precise English. We’d never come across anyone like this. Excuse me, I have never spoke to you, I have never spoken to you, but I have seen you many a time.
On this very place, when you have took your walk. When you have taken your walk. Richard’s voice was rough with a strong Port Talbot accent. Excuse me. The years of drilling began. The years of discipline started there. Richard called it the Room of Terror. Hour after hour, from four o’clock after school
Until 10, 11 or midnight. It was very difficult to shout in a house because other people around and people next door would think you’ve gone mad and stuff like that. It sounds romantic and idiotic, but I used to go to the top of the mountain and scream
As loudly as I could, until my voice hurt. Then when it hurt, I waited for a bit and screamed again to fix it in some way, so that it didn’t hurt. It was a primitive way of doing it, but it worked. I know it’s an awkward time, but have you any glass?
I’m afraid I don’t speak Welsh. We have not got nothing in stock good enough to offer. Thank you. Then an advertisement appeared in the newspapers. It could only have happened in wartime, because there was a shortage of young men. All the young men were called up and I was 16.
Have not got nothing good enough. Not even grammar. There was an ad in the papers by Emlyn Williams, a well-known playwright and actor, who said that Emlyn Williams was looking for a young man of 22 who could speak Welsh and who could act.
I knew I could speak Welsh, I wasn’t sure if I could act. I did that play with Emlyn, for I should think about 7 or 8 months. Then I left and went to Oxford University, but the bug had bitten. It’s a very powerful drug. No, please, I don’t… Don’t you touch me!
Keep your paws clean for the undergraduates. Listen to your mother. You can’t cut it out whenever there’s enough blood in your mouth. We’re going on, I’ll have at you and it’ll make your performance look like an Easter pageant. I want you to get a bit alert, some life in you.
-Stop that! -Pull yourself together. I want you on your feet, because I’m going to knock you around and I want you up for it. All right, what do you want? An equal battle. -You’ll get it. -I want you mad. -I’m mad. -Get madder. Don’t worry about it.
Good girl, we played this one to the death. -Yours. -You’d be surprised. I was trying to get Richard to Oxford. The few places were given for six months to people who were joining the RAF, and it had to be recommended by the chief officer in Wales.
He told me there was a difficulty, this boy’s name is Richard Jenkins and your name is Philip Burton, and his father is living. It might be a bit suspicious about your relationship. He said: “Why don’t you adopt him? Give him your name, honestly.”
As soon as I put that to Richard, he said: “Great.” First of all, the city council had to approve, and they knew me pretty well, they immediately approved. Then, the lawyer started working and he discovered that I could not adopt him,
Because I was 20 days short of being 21 years older than he. He was on the 10th, I was on the 30th of November. If it’d been the other way around, he’d have been my son. Instead, I became his legal guardian and the name was changed by deed poll.
This document was drawn up and the father had to be found to sign it, which he did, and he became my legal guardian, Richard Burton. What Richard wanted was not available to him. He could no longer go back before Philip Burton. Philip Burton could not give him anything that was born in him.
Philip Burton could not give him his earliest impressions, could not give him his earliest longings. Philip Burton would give him the manners and the language, and the means whereby he could play anything, on stage and off. When Richard performed, that was the only real life, when he could be somebody else.
Who looks at Burton? Who looks at Burton by looking at what I’m playing? If they stripped me of what I’m playing, what am I? I’m a frightened little Welsh kid before Philip Burton. He has no real reference points that are his. I wish there was somebody in this life I could show.
One instinctive, absolutely unbiased person that I could take to Greece and stand in front of certain shrines and sacred streams and say: “Look, life is only comprehensible through a thousand local gods. Not just the old dead gods with names like Zeus, but living geniuses. A place in person.
Not just Greece, but modern England. Here the spirits of certain trees have certain curves of brick walls, of certain fish and chip shops, and slate roofs and frowns and people and slouches.” I’d say to them: “Worship all you can see and more will appear.” I pray we can
In Holy Father, I pray we can! I wore the crown. The crown was mine. I owned. Do you hear me, father? I’m drunk, like you. Here’s the madness in me too. Oh, God. Is it changing me to father? When he came to Oxford as an undergraduate in 1944, he had an astounding beauty,
A blend of classic Greek serenity and smoldering Celtic fires emanating from mystery and humor. Above all, the fires of enormous laughter. His laughs have always been as infectious as his rages can be terrifying. Behind all, there is an element of Welsh blend, magic, or mystery.
We met when we were both at RAF at Oxford, at a meeting of the Experimental Theatre Club, when Richard did one of his amazing eruptions into the proceedings, and I hadn’t even noticed him, the room was full of people was full of people who were interested in theatre
And all undergraduates were waffling on a good deal and suddenly, when it got extremely tiresome, upshot Richard by the piano, I can see it now, and said, in that extraordinary voice, with a very Oxford accent, with hardly a trace of Welsh, because he’d really brushed it up to come to Oxford:
“If you want, I’m the best director in the country. However, to do this, I can get him for you.” There were squeaks and groans and somebody said: “Really, who?” Richard said: “My father,” and sat down, meaning Philip. I was fairly ruthless when I arrived at Oxford,
Fresh from South Wales with a powerful Welsh accent and determined to play the leading part in whatever production was coming up. Now during the war, as you know, the odds didn’t exist, there was a substitute company called the Friends to the Arts, which was dominated and has been dominated for many years
By Professor Neville Cargill. I arrived and said I’m an actor. I said: “I’m an actor, and I want to play Angelo in your present production.” He said: “I’m afraid it’s already cast.” I said: “I’ll speak some poetry for you.” He said all right and I spoke To be a not to be.
At the end of it, he said: “You can’t play Angelo, but at least there is it all right if you understudy?” Eventually, the man playing Angelo became ill. Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with the Welsh and Wizardry. I played the whole thing and I was assured of future from It
By Hugh Beaumont of H.M. Tennant, who saw it at the time. I remember he was always correcting me with my homework, very ready to help, but if I didn’t get it the first time, for heaven’s sake, as many brothers. He was never cruel to us or never hit us. Never unkind.
Marlene and I used to fight, but Rich would never get involved with a fight. Impatient, but always correcting us. I remember when he said: “I’m going to Oxford” and I said: “Going to Oxford?” He said: “Oxford,” and I said: “I said Oxford.” He said: “You don’t say Ford, you say Ford.”
Stop ringing those bells! There’s somebody going mad in here! -I don’t want to hear! -Stop shouting! It was only my second time in England, it was at Oxford. What I discovered was that after time, though you got occasional people I found from lesser public schools I became a bit of a snob myself,
Who would invariably greet me with: “How are you today?” it used to drive me stark, stirring mad. The people from the better schools treated me as an equal. I had no problem. I blacked a few eyes in the first three weeks or something. What about mummy?
How does mummy spend her day of rest? We usually go… Thank you to the vicar for the nice, cozy sermon, and then she tramples off over dead men’s graves. Home to an orgy of curry. Mummy and daddy and brother Nigel, if he’s up from town.
-Do you know a brother Nigel? -You know I don’t. You’ve never heard many well-bred commonplaces come from beneath the same bowler hat. The platitude from outer space. That’s brother Nigel. Why don’t you dry up? There are militants, like a mummy and daddy, arrogant, and full of malice.
Or as they’re vague, like Nigel and her. Nigel and Alison. They sound sycophantic, phlegmatic, and pusillanimous. Big words. -Shall I tell you what they mean? -Not interested. Soupy, stodgy and dim. It’s almost like a musical act. Ladies and gentlemen, those old favorites, our friends, Soapy, Stodgy and Dim.
Bringing clips and strips for you. We may be guilty, darling, but we are both insane as well. Ladies and gentlemen, coming here I was passing the stage door, a man comes up and… -Have you seen nobody? -Who? -Have you seen nobody? -Of course, don’t waste my time. Ladies and gentlemen, a recitation entitled.
She was a grave digger’s daughter who loved lying under the sun. Are you sure you haven’t seen nobody? Of course, will you kindly go away? Can’t you see I’m trying to entertain this lady? The lady Pusillanimous. You did half your time as an undergraduate and half your time in uniform.
He was based up at Bircham Newton in Norfolk, where he and his followers, and he had a complete clan, There were some other pretty tough spirits up there, there was an international rugby player of a later time, also Welsh, there were other Welshmen, there was Mick Meisel, who later became Warren Mitchell,
And various others, of his court, of his empire. Of this group, the sergeants and corporals, warrant officers who should’ve been in charge, lived in daily fear. One got thrashed by suggesting that they were behaving out of turn and he got taken apart. They lived outside the law, both civil and military,
And they poached the pheasants of the local gentry and cooked them and ate them. Some of them, including Richard, were arrested and faced severe punishment. Then the authorities came down and said: “Now these boys are being sorely tried. They’re all thoroughbred Chinese, on whom a lot of money had been expended.
They’re rather good at playing rugby. Lay off, and they amazingly got away. They got away with not murder, but not far short, I think. I was in the area for three years. I was a sort of navigator. I say sort of because the war was over
Almost as soon as I entered, and I was made what is known as redundant. However, I was demobbed and routed home to Wales via London. I had four hours to wait between trains in London, and it did cross my mind that that very nice man, Mr. Hugh Beaumont,
Had told me to come and see him if I decided to become an actor, so I thought I’d have time between trains. I went to the Globe Theatre, went up in the lift, and waited for two and a half torturous hours.
Binkie Beaumont gave me a contract for ten pounds a week for a year, and immediately put me to work, in a successful play called Dark Summer. It was while I was on tour that Emlyn Williams asked me to make a screen test for a film, which he was about to do,
Called The Last Days of Dolwyn. I’m supposed to have discovered Richard Burton, but the discovery had already been done by Philip Burton and by Daphne Rye, the casting director for H.M. Tennent. I was first struck with the personality of a man with the rare gift of repose.
The startling looks, fearless eyes set widely, and a dramatic face. The face of a boxing poet. A face whose only lack was experience, clean, adolescent leaf waiting for life to write on it. My father used to make sure that Richard wasn’t exploited by people. A young actor, particularly from South Wales
Suddenly in the maelstrom of the West End in those days, could get into trouble. I remember once that he went to see Binkie Beaumont and finished up with Richard asking for more money. Very frightened, because Mr. Beaumont was a very powerful man. He said: “I think I should be paid more, sir.”
Binkie said: “How much more were you thinking of?” Richard said: “Another five pounds a week,” making it up to 25 pounds a week, I think an absolute fortune. Binkie said yes. Jubilant Richard goes back home to where we lived. As he gets back,
My father is coming out of the house and getting into a taxi. He said to Richard: “How did it go?” He said: “You won’t believe it, I got another five pounds”. My father said: “You go right back in my taxi
And go up and see Binkie and tell him you won’t do it for less than 30 pounds.” Richard said: “I can’t, he’s giving me an extra five. I can’t go right back and ask for another 5 pounds.” “You do exactly as I say,” says my father.
He gets to do the taxi shaking and it goes back up into the lift, into Binkie’s office He said: “I’ve reconsidered, Mr. Beaumont, I’m afraid I can’t do it unless I get another 5 pounds.” Binkie looked at him and said: “That old Welsh pit pony has been at you.” He got it.
She’d forgotten one thing. Money. Money can buy anything, my friend, and I’ve got it. Put that can down. Aren’t you the one that calls himself her son? The one who doesn’t know who his real father was? -If you say that again, you’ll be sorry. -You’re not fit to lick my boots.
Neither you nor her. Say one word about her, I kill you. I’m going to pay you both to clean my boots, because you’re the scum of the earth. Both of you! Scum, scum, scum! I’d heard in 1948 and 49 of a brilliant young Welsh actor who had been discovered by Emlyn Williams
And came from the same kind of working-class background that he had. When we were casting The Lady’s Not for Burning, which was rather a tricky business because it was a very new kind of play, the manager of H.M. Tennant, suggested Richard for the part of the boy,
And what annoyed me is he was greedy and always wanted his lunch. He was to yawn at quarter to one if I didn’t say we could break. I didn’t get to know him at all in that play. We ran about a year, then we played it in America for six months
And he had various love affairs with people connected with the play and I could see that he had enormous charm. He had the kind of effect on an audience that an actor called Henry Ainley, who was a great star of my youth, also had.
He turned his face to the audience and looked at them with his blue eyes, and they were seduced immediately. He had the most extraordinary appeal in just the way he looked at you. I could never repay him the debt that I owe him.
First of all, he cast me in The Lady’s Not for Burning, then in the course of the play in which I made something of a success, he took me out of the play and put me into another play, The Boy With A Cart, which he directed again himself,
And indeed made me into what is casually known as a leading man. As you know, this play is about this strange little saint Cuthman, who tried to build a church. The villagers and everybody who helps him, they can’t put up the key post in the church,
And he’s left alone on the stage, and the other people go off having despaired of building this church. They come back and it’s in place. Gradually, I was aware of someone in the doorway. I turned my eyes that way and saw, carved out of the sunlight, a man who stood, watching me.
So still, there was not other such stillness anywhere on the earth. So still, that the air seemed to leap at his side. He came towards me and the sun flooded its banks and flowed across the shadow. He asked me why I stood alone. His voice hovered in memory with open wings,
And drew itself up from a chine of silence, as though it had long time lay in in a vein of gold. Rich first met Sybil when he was doing his first film, The Last Days of Dolwyn, and Sybil was an extra. She was an actress, but she was moonlighting as an extra.
I remember one of her dodges was there were quite several extras playing Welsh peasant women with headscarves tied around their hair. At the end of the day, they had to line up and be paid. Sybil conceived this brilliant idea, arriving with a number of different headscarves.
Therefore, she’d line up and get her five pounds, whatever it was, and go back to the end of the queue and put on another one and receive another five. I thought it was most enterprising. She was a wonderful wife to Richard.
She put up with the late nights when you come back with the boys, and suddenly she had to cook scrambled eggs for five chaps, and she was expecting Richard to come home and all that, and she took it in her stride and adored it, and didn’t disapprove, no shadow of disapproval about it,
It was part of the life that she knew Richard enjoyed. I said goodbye, what do you want? Is it goodbye? Look into my eyes. Is there a hint of madness in them? You want to be tied to a drunkard and a libertine? To a man who believes he’s tainted with his father’s madness?
Do you know what it’s like not to know? Not to be able to believe my talent is not a curse as well? Do you want to be tied to that? I see no madness in your eyes, Edwin. You’re in the heart and soul of the man beyond them.
I know that with my whole being. How can you know? How can you know what I am? I know. I want to spend my life with you. For what? Sin. He adored her and he knew how valuable she was to him. She was the class act. Always.
She was a woman of tremendous integrity, values and standards. Absolutely straight and clear, no question. Richard’s values were not very good. His standards, I don’t think were either. She had a tremendously positive effect on him. Not enough, unfortunately, because the wicked side got wickeder as time went along.
For as long as they were together, she was the steady one. I said to Sybil: “Did you have a lovely Christmas?” She said she went home to Pontrhydyfen. I asked what she got for Christmas. She said: “I didn’t think I was going to get anything.”
She said on Christmas morning he put a red ribbon in my hand and he said: “Follow that.” She said: “I followed it downstairs through the parlor, got to the front door, and around the corner, and there was a red M.G.”
I first met him in 51 at Stratford when he played Hal in Henry V. It was his happiest time. It’s all going to happen for him and he knew it. I remembered that I was nearly fired because I tried to explain
That what I was trying to do was to be solitary, removed, cold, and certainly not the thigh-slapping, stamping, roaring with laughter Prince Hal that we’d all been accustomed to. Bogie didn’t notice too much, because, by that time, I think he’d had a couple of drinks, he said:
“Henry the fourth part 12 and the fifth part nine and ten.” Bogie knew about acting, he recognized an actor when he saw one. Richard immediately started to flirt with me. The fact that Bogie and Sybil were there did not bother him and insisted that he’d take me to Shakespeare’s grave,
He dragged me around. Bogie understood, knowing young actors and his young wife. What the hell, what’s he going to do? Sybil understood. He took me around and showed me the grave and was filled with this incredible sense of adventure. It was almost swashbuckling, you might say,
All that kind of whisking you away dramatically and kind of romantically, even though it wasn’t a romance, but the whole idea of it was rather fantasy, it didn’t have a lot to do with reality. You must know that the curtain of every theater
Has a hole for the actors to look at the audience and often on opening nights, I stared at this seat in the stalls and wished I was there. One of the problems an actor has is first-night nerves, each actor devises his method of combating it.
For instance, one is expected to turn up in the theater at least half an hour before the start. That is, unless you’re Rex Harrison. Now, he charges into the theater about five minutes before he’s due slap on his makeup, pull on his costume and go rushing onto the stage
Muttering to himself: “I don’t know why I do it.” Rex knows that if he doesn’t do it, he is probably too nervous to go on. Another friend of mine, a noble, distinguished actor from England, goes to the theater about two hours before he’s due to go on,
Puts on his makeup with meticulous care, dresses with even greater care, and finally goes down to the curtain, about four minutes before he’s due, stands with his mouth about two inches away from the curtain and in a silent scream of fury, insults the audience. You dotes, you numbskulls.
Not one of you will do what I’ll do tonight. Not one of you. Then the curtain rises and it’s now the winter of our discontent. Made glorious summer by this son of York. What do I do? I go to the theater trembling and shaking,
And Alec Guinness told me the only way to combat this was to transfer the external symptoms of my nervousness and put it where I couldn’t be seen. I transferred it to my feet, so now they continually do that. All the time, they’re doing it now.
This worked until one day I was playing a part called Coriolanus. Coriolanus is a Roman and he wears open-toed sandals. I can only tell you for the first half hour, the audience was dominated by my feet. Long a holiday center of stately interest, Edinburgh celebrates its great festival of music and drama.
At the Assembly Hall, Miss Faye Compton is one of a cast that is playing Hamlet In a new role, Richard Burton plays the young Prince of Denmark, while Claire Bloom adds to the production as Ophelia. She said to me: “Billy will look after me once, because of that dreadful man.
She took offense, because when they were in Lady’s Not For Burning, Rich was on the Guinness, it was a pretty powerful odor, I suppose. She thought that any man who drank Guinness was gone to hell, and there was a pub opposite called the Olive Branch. One day he said:
“Are you with Claire?” I said: “Good God, Richard, no.” Good God, no. He said: “Are you sure?” I said: “No, don’t be silly.” Nobody will ever. No, nobody. He said: “I will”, I said: “What?” He said: “I will.” I said: “I bet you won’t.” He said: “What do you bet me?”
I said that a pint. Now this is disgraceful. I love you. Perhaps you don’t. Perhaps it means something to have a general lie back in your arms. Even though he’s heartily sick of the whole campaign. Tired and hungry and dry. -Don’t let anything go wrong. -I don’t.
-You’re either with me or against me. -I’ve always wanted you. I got in on a Monday night to play another Hamlet, I’ve been playing it by this time for, I suppose, six months or so. It’s a very exhausting part, even at that age. I’d been on a slight binge over the weekend.
I wasn’t my usual self, and I was in my dressing room and the manager of the Old Vic said: “Do be good tonight because the old man’s in front.” Now, the old man means only one person in England. There he was, sitting in the front row,
And the front row of the Old Vic was literally within arm’s length. I heard this dull, thunderous kind of rumbling in the stalls, and I wondered what it might be. It was Churchill, who spoke every line with me. Now, this was disconcerting, I tried to shake him off
And I went fast, slow, backwards, edgeways, but the old man caught up with me all the time. One of the things in those days was whether you could keep Churchill after the first act. I looked through the spy hole at the end of the first act, and he was leaving,
And I thought we had lost him. I went back to my dressing room and suddenly the door opened and standing there was Churchill. He vowed to me very courteously, because he’s a great Elizabethan courtier. He said: “My Lord, Hamlet, may I use your bathroom?” You sometimes have the look of a dedicated man
Not to that particular cause. Me, dedicated? What do you believe in? Don’t laugh, tell me. I believe the number 11 bus will get me to Hammersmith. I do not believe it will be driven by Father Christmas. That’s not a cause. What would you like me to believe in, Peter Pan or God?
No, I don’t believe in God either. No? What do you believe in? Me, history, partly, and freedom, partly. On that, it’s the innocents who get slaughtered. Compassion isn’t enough, nobody wants that. It’s got to be organized, disciplined to be of any use. -You’re too proud for that, aren’t you? -No.
Let’s not argue, Alec, this evening was meant to please you. We didn’t. It did. I have to go early, tomorrow morning. I could tell. I’ll be back. Nunnally Johnson, who was a very close friend, was producing a film called My Cousin Rachel for 20th Century Fox.
There was a role for a young man in it, and he wanted somebody new. Both Bogie and I told him about Richard, and so they sent for him to take a test. At that time, we just had a son who Richard just called Bogiebach.
It’s all very Welsh, and he had a great time with him. Steve, our son, did not pronounce all of his words brilliantly, he called Richard, Wretched. Little did he know how wretched he was going to become. Going to a place like Hollywood for Richard must have been an incredible shock to his system.
He wasn’t going to show them that he was impressed at all, he was going to be in charge, but he always, from the beginning, would fall into the Dylan Thomas syndrome, where he would imitate. I think he used it with women, promising something, just with his attitude.
God knows. I don’t know what women fell and didn’t fall. I was not one of them. To my distant but very dear cousin. To mine, with a heart full of love and gratitude. Now, before the others arrive. Merry Christmas, dear Rachel.
I remember when he told me that he was going to move to Switzerland. I said: “Why?” Taxes. Something clicked and I thought: “Why is he thinking about that already?” Richard was interested in a lot of superficial stuff that didn’t have to do with human beings.
It had to do with things, possessions, and position. It’s all convenient and nice and no one’s knocking having money or what money can bring, but to sell yourself for that, which is finally what I think he did. My father went to see Richard’s films and he only looked at Richard.
He wasn’t a filmgoer at all, but he was looking at him. When we went to see, My Cousin Rachel, I said: “Did you enjoy it?” “I didn’t like all that kissing,” he said. It’s only acting. “It looked real, I don’t think Sybil would like that,” he said.
When he went to Hollywood with Sybil the first time, they went like a couple of Welsh pirates on a raid. They didn’t think they would go again. Hollywood was magic, it was an amazing place. They thought: “All this money, even with the taxes, we’ll go and get hold of it,
Bring it back, give it back to our pals and families and skin them alive if we can. It’s only that… The myth then grew that he’d sold out, that he’d given in to Hollywood. It was a myth, but it became a very strong myth. It repeated itself in apocryphal stories,
Like Olivier was to send him a telegram saying: “You have to decide whether you’re going to be a household name or a great actor. However, Burton, like Olivier, became both. Jordan, what do you want me to do, to remain here? Poor monk, in simplicity of spirit.
Is it a path to bring me nearer to you? Or is it too easy or perhaps even a luxury? The path to holiness in this monastery is too effortless. I think it would be too easy to buy you like this. Bargain price. I should take up the miter again, and the golden cope,
And the great silver cross. I shall go back and fight with the weapons it is pleased you to give me. All the rest. Thy will be done. My career with 20th Century Fox was somewhat checkered. I did some films that I enjoyed and wanted to do,
And a lot of films that I didn’t want to do. There was no way of persuading anybody that I wasn’t right for them, or that the scripts weren’t good and not the most interesting period of my life from the artistic point of view. I have no self-criticism at all.
I firmly believe that if people will pay money to see me in the theater or the films, that’s their responsibility, not mine, because it’s virtually every man for himself. I don’t think anybody wants to help you, particularly. When I go out there, I’m battling the world.
I have to beat the world and be the best. I do it because I like being famous. I rather like being given the best seat on the plane, the best seat in the restaurant. After all, the fundamental basis of being an actor is to make money.
He thought he was the interlude between real acting, which in those days to him was the Old Vic. He did walk out of his contract and went back to the Old Vic and the head of the studio with 20th Century Fox
Is supposed, when he heard that Richard was not going to do the film he’d been contracted to do and was returning to the Old Vic, this man said: “Who’s Old Vic, what’s he paying? I’ll pay him double.” Production chief Darryl Zanuck sets a Hollywood precedent
As he awards three of the principal players in The Robe gold medals for their performances in the picture. I discovered that he had many brothers and that they were all in the pits, and it became quite obvious to me that he was somewhat obsessed anyway,
To get them all out of the pits, which he did. That was the course he set himself. He wanted to make money to get them all out of that situation and he did it. When Richard told him the figure he earned for a certain film,
My father couldn’t believe it, he said: “What for?” Richard admitted, to this day he couldn’t tell him. It was an extraordinary time, but when we came out of the stage door, the whole of Waterloo Road was blocked. With this giant crowd of two teams of Bobby socks,
One with Richard’s name knitted into their scarves and one with my name. Of course, the media took that up and christened us. We had these nicknames, the Welsh Wizard and the Wilson Wonder. I was playing Iago and Richard Othello and my boss for me one night and said: “What about alternating the role?”
I said: “No, I can’t do that.” I said: “Iago is an enormous part to learn and it’s very difficult. He said: “It’s a challenge, Richard has agreed to do it.” The next morning I went in and said: “Thanks a lot, that was terrific. Fancy being fool enough to agree to do that.”
He said: “Michael told me you’d agreed to do it.” We were tricked into it. Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this son of York. I don’t know if I want to be a magnificent Olivier-type actor. He’s a stupendous actor.
The demands on a stage actor, especially in a repertory where you do five or six plays at the same time, are enormous, and also enormously difficult to make any real money at it. I drank very heavily, and for about ten years I went through a sort,
Some sort of male menopause, and I didn’t care what I did. Nothing else brought him more fame or affection than his portrayal of King Arthur in Camelot. There have been few theatrical moments, more moving, more cherished by more people than the words that became so much a part of Richard Burton.
Each evening from December to December, before you drift to sleep upon your cot, think back on all the tales that you remember of Camelot. Ask every person if they have heard the story and say it loud and clear if he is not. Once there was a fleeting wisp of glory called Camelot. Proposition.
If I could choose, from every woman who breathes on this earth, the face I would most love, the smile, the touch, the voice, the heart, the laugh, the soul itself, every detail and feature to the smallest strand of hair. Proposition. I’m a king of a man and a civilized king.
Could it be civilized to destroy what I love? Could it be civilized to love myself above all? Did they ask for this calamity? Can fashion be selective? Is there any doubt of their devotion to me or to our table? By God, Excalibur! We shall see a king!
This is the time of King Arthur and we reach for the stars! This is the time of King Arthur and violence this is not strength and compassion is not weakness. We are civilized, resolved! We shall live through this together Excalibur, they you and I. God have mercy on us all.
They’re waiting for us at the table. Let’s not delay the celebrations. Three days I’ve waited for an audience with you alone. What is the purpose of it? Get out. I wish to see Your Majesty privately. -You stand before the throne of Egypt. -I know where I am. You will state your purpose.
Matters I won’t discuss publicly. I do not grant private audiences to unidentified persons. I am Marcus Antonius. I know who you are. What are you, at the moment? Envoy Rome. Proconsul of all the Roman Empire, to the east of Italy. An impressive title. Worthy, perhaps, of a private audience.
Without a treaty of alliance with Egypt, you could not hold the territories under your command. -True? -Possibly. Then, Lord Antony, you come before me as a suppliant. -If you choose to regard me as such. -I do. You will therefore assume the position of a suppliant before this throne. You will kneel.
I will what? On your knees. Do you dare ask the proconsul of the Roman Empire? I asked it of Julius Caesar. I demand it of you. We paid 50,000 dollars to get Richard out of Camelot. I think he got a nominal fee for Cleopatra, maybe 75,
When Elizabeth made a million dollars a film. She was maybe one of two people in the world who did that. You say: “Why did Burton go after the leading lady?” We say: “Why did the cat go after the mouse?” Name the leading lady because he did not go after her.
No, Burton said he got very drunk. I’ll be this in the street. He’d give voice to that. I use the phrase I use. She’s going to make me millions. She did. Did you come all this way for just this night? All this way to make a fool of me?
Perhaps you’d feel less of a fool if you stayed the night with me. Is that it? I’ve told you before. With you, words do not come easily to me. There is too much unsaid within me that I cannot say. Then I cannot know.
I know one of the things that astonished him about Elizabeth was that when they did their first scenes together, he was appalled because he said she was doing nothing. He went to the director and said she was doing nothing. I cannot act with this, it’s a plank.
I can’t hear what she’s saying, I can’t hear my cues. This is a farce. Mankiewicz said: “Come and see the rushes tomorrow. See? That scene you’ve just done.” Richard reluctantly went and he couldn’t believe it. This magic personality came off the screen. Everything I shall ever want to hold or look upon,
Or have or be is here now with you. Don’t be sorry for myself. Queens are sometimes no better at that than kings or even princes. It doesn’t seem fair. What I feel I should have felt long ago when I was very young
When I could say to myself that this was how love was. Till about the cost of about 40 million dollars in those days. I imagine nowadays would cost 150 million. Elizabeth had to make an entrance into Rome. They built the forum a half again, as big as the original forum.
I shall never know why. There were black panthers, and there were elephants, and 80 Nubian slaves weren’t black enough, so they were painted blacker than they were. There were 40 dwarfs painted as zebras, sitting on 40 donkeys also painted as zebras,
So they had to start at two o’clock in the morning making up these people. The dance had been rehearsing for months. Joe Mankiewicz, said: “Okay, rolling.” We had something like, five cameras. The whole thing starts, the music, and the tambourines go and boom and all come to the dancers.
Then the panthers and the elephants and Elizabeth on top of the thing, these thousands of extras. Suddenly Joe said: “Cut, goddammit!” He said: “Get that guy out.” There was a chap selling ice cream in the crowd. In a part of Cleopatra, Elizabeth gives Rich quite a slap across the face,
And she is mad. She said: “Give her one back, Rich, don’t you take that from her.” The people were shushing, because they didn’t like it. “It’s all right, I know him, he’s from Pontrhydyfen. “I know his mother well.” They were shushing. “Give her one back, Rich.” As the film was going on,
Rich had a part where he slapped her. “Good boy, Rich, that’s the way to do it.” I would say: “What is going on here?” “It’s nothing, we’re just good friends.” I was getting visits from Richard at three or four in the morning. It was going to be the cuckolded lover
Or the complete lover. Elizabeth belonged to that generation of American film actresses who were raised as if they were nunneries in the major studios. In other words, they learned about dressing from the wardrobe lady, and they learned their morals the same way. Most of it was drummed into her
That you do not have illicit love affairs. If you love a man and he loves you, no matter what the encumbrance, you stand hand in hand and you face the world. “We love each other,” which she did once or twice, and probably had her face kicked in a backstreet affair.
Out, and she believed that. Without you, Anthony, This is not a world I want to live in, much less conquer, because for me, there would be no love anywhere. Do you want me to die with you? I will. Do you want me to live with you? Whatever you choose.
He shook himself very dreadfully in doing what he did, and in some way never quite recovered from that, having dealt so destructive a blow to affect the marriage and to another person. Sybil, I think from then on, had an element of I don’t care what is destroyed, including myself.
All my laddies, as a member of the division, which is… -Go away. -You impertinent little phony, messing in people’s lives, you don’t know what it’s about. You don’t ever do that again. I have no public school scruples about hitting girls. Should you slap my face, I lay you out.
-You were the other type. -You bet I’m the type. -The type that detests physical violence. -Come out of here. One of these days I might write a book about us. It’s all here. It will be written in flames a mile high. It won’t be recollected in tranquility, picking daffodils with Aunty Wordsworth.
It will be written in fire and blood. My blood. When my parents broke up, which was when I was four or five, my mother never spoke to my father again. She spoke to him once on the telephone and that was it. That’s my mother, that part of her life was over
And she felt that there was no point in being friends or trying to maintain a civil friendliness. I’ve never been so happy. Is that right? That’s wonderful, Liz. Everybody’s glad to hear that. It’ll last then. You know it. -How do you feel, Rich? -What about?
Liz says she’s never been happier in her life than with you. Yes, I feel the same way, it will last a while. -A while? Watch it. -Yes. Hearing thy mildness praised in every touch. By virtue spoken of and thy beauty sounded. He had not so deeply as thou dost deserve.
Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife. Moved? In good time. Let him that moved you hither remove you hence! I knew you at the first. You were a moveable. Why? What’s a moveable? A stool like this. Then sit on me! Our asses are made to bear and so are you.
Women are made to bear and so are you. Not such a load as yours. The conduct of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton is a public outrage, and highly detrimental to the public morals of the youth of our nation. Our subcommittee is going to pursue this matter until we have a final determination
By both Justice and the Department of State. I can see no difference, no significant difference between the infamous Christine Keeler and Randy Davies cases and the case of Richard Burton. I had known him off and on for about nine years, and my attitude was resentful
And I was not going to be another notch in his gun bill. A lot of that was going on. The first day on the set, he was hungover and very vulnerable, his hands were shaking. He asked me to hold a coffee cup up to his lips and I was gone.
He was so sweet. Here was the most famous actress of that time. Beautiful beyond words, very beguiling, and also very different from anything Dada had come across. Her manner was an American real, almost coarse in some ways. It probably just knocked his socks off. Tell me you were rough, coy, and sullen.
Now I find the reporter a liar. What a pleasant game. Someone passing courteously. At the outset, I don’t think he knew what exactly was going to happen with Elizabeth. I don’t think he thought it through. Maybe that was part of the whole experience.
I won’t say he didn’t know what he got into and it’s not his fault. It does take two to tango and he made some decisions along the way. You are mean to warm me, in my bed. It was bigger than anything he had ever imagined. He had never imagined himself
Falling in love or falling in a crazed sort of obsession with someone like this. Not only that, but also the ramifications of what it did to him in terms of publicity. They were hounded. Mr. Burton, your ex-wife has remarried a rock and roll singer. How did that news strike you?
No, I was delighted. I’m sure that she did very well. She forfeited a million dollars in alimony, as we’ve heard. She’s very rich in her own right. I don’t think we have to worry about our financial standing, she’ll manage. Occasionally, I borrow from her.
Miss Taylor, does a film star ever get used to being asked personal questions every place she goes? -Does what? -A film star ever get used to being asked very personal questions? No. Would you? Do you resent them? Sometimes, if they’re too personal. I’ve rounded up an affront on my privacy.
What about this news conference, how would you characterize it? I think you’ve had enough. Our subcommittee held executive hearings this morning to examine the administration of the immigration and nationality laws. Both the State Department and Justice Department representatives stated that they would reexamine their position
With reference to the growing clamor to keep out persons of the same caliber. He craves no other tribute at thy hands but love, fair looks and true obedience. Too little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as the subject owes the prince. Even such a woman oweth to her husband.
My hand is ready. May it do him ease. Why, there’s a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate. Now we know what you’re doing. Lady diamonds are the girl’s best friend. I couldn’t have been more. Can you say that? What are you holding? Camera, up the camera, that’s it. Hell! My fingernails.
Move forward from your face towards me. Flex me over there. People got so frightened about it because it’s so remarkable. Gem, have you seen it? -Just now. -It’s a work of art, an amazing piece. Dad always needed to have someone, a woman, usually. It was hard for him to be alone.
It would be one thing to have a woman who would take care of him and look after him in a kind, pleasant, calm relationship with him. Elizabeth was used to the same thing as well. What worries me about it is that the lady for whom it was bought was called Vera Krupp.
She left her husband after six months of marriage, with the ring. If Elizabeth leaves me in six months, I’m joining the ring. She was used to having a guy there who would take care of her and who would be there and I think they both
Wanted these things from each other, but couldn’t provide them for each other. As brutal as that, I shrank my own life, no one can do it for you. I settled for being pallid and provincial, out of my own eternal timidity. The old story of bluster, and do bugger-all.
I didn’t even dare to have children, I didn’t dare to bring children into a house and marriage as cold as mine. I tell everyone I’m the pagan, some pagan. Such wild returns I make to the womb of civilization. Three weeks a year in the Mediterranean.
Every bed booked in advance, every meal paid for with vouchers, cautious jaunts in hired cars, suitcase crammed with Kao-Pectate. What a fantastic surrender to the primitive. As a result of my marriage to Elizabeth, I became a far more important actor than I was before as a result of that stupid and stupendous publicity.
It did mean that we could choose absolutely what we did. There were some things that we chose badly, but for the most part, we chose well. She is, of course, the best film actress in the world. She taught me economy, the spareness of voice, movement, and gesture.
It seems to me when your face, as she explains to me, is going to be 38ft high and 30ft wide, then you have to be very careful how massively you register any emotion, of laughter, idiocy, delight, tragedy or whatever it is. The basic Richard would have been as happy telling funny stories
Or reciting poetry in a pub, but when he got surrounded by the glamour of Hollywood and by Elizabeth Taylor’s fame and showy personality, it infected him and he learned to do it as well as she did, if not better. I remember when we were doing the Hamlet in America,
And he came in and he threw his coat, the sort of terrifically grand way just threw it off his shoulders. Then we sat down, had lunch and I asked for the bill and Richard said: “No.” We got up and walked towards the door and he said: “They’ll pay.”
There was all the entourage sitting at neighboring tables who were left to pay the bill and clean up after us. Broadway opening is the most terrifying in the world, and I’ve played in Denmark, Paris, London, and everywhere everywhere you can think of in Western Europe. Unquestionably the Broadway opening is the most frenetic,
The most disturbing, exciting and if you hit the jackpot, the most rewarding. He suddenly wrote and asked if I would direct him in Hamlet. I said: “I would love to, but how do you want to do it?”
I had seen him in it at the Vic, and I made one of my celebrated bricks when we came afterward, and he’d arranged to have supper with me, and the dressing room was full of people. I went to the door and said: “See you and you’re better, I mean ready.”
Elizabeth, she’s helped me a lot with Hamlet, by, for instance, reading the stage directions, which I never had. She said: “At this point, he prays.” I said: “Don’t be silly.” She said: “Yes, he prays.” I prayed, and it worked. What they said at the time about Burton’s achievement with Shakespeare was quite straightforward,
But he made it sexy. He brought that passionate realism back to the lines to have an impact now, on people watching it, which is always the great difficulty. He did it with enormous ferocity and effect. Then this Hamlet, he took to New York at great risk. He hadn’t been on stage for years.
He was always taking risks, pulling everything out of himself. He ran in New York for longer than any Shakespeare had ever run before. One hundred and thirty six performances, eight performances a week. He got the most astounding reviews, one of the longest parts in Shakespeare,
And he was carrying it night after night after night. Typical of Burton, once he’d learned it and achieved it, he got bored. He would do some of the speeches in German. He would do some of them as if he were Gielgud. He’d pretend to be Olivier, see if they noticed.
He’d drink a bottle of vodka and ask if it was different. “No, you were a bit better.” To be or not to be. That is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Or to take arms against a sea of troubles by opposing
End. To die. To sleep, no more. By a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. It’s a consummation devoutly to be wished to die. Sleep. The perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil. Must give us pause. There’s a respect that makes calamity of so long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time? The oppressor is wrong. The proud man’s contumely, the pangs of despised love. The law’s delay, the insolence of office.
The spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes. When he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? See, Burton never left the stage, again and again he came back to it. For instance, he came back to do Equus on Broadway.
He was supposed to be wrecked, dissipated, and too drunk to be bankable. He came back to audition for the film. The undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.
Massive speech, he had a memory like a clamp. He could remember the whole plays of Shakespeare, and recite some sonnets backwards. He beat Bobby Kennedy in a bet once about reciting Shakespeare’s sonnets by reciting sonnet number 15 backwards, when they were both drunk, and he won quite some money.
However, he went back to do Equus, terrified, shaking before he went on the stage. Mind you, that might have something to do with the fact that we now know there was an epilepsy running through his life. A mild, increasing epilepsy. He also had a terrible battered back,
Which afflicted him during his life increasingly. He could hardly raise his arms at certain times. He was a wounded man. First time I’ve been out. He sent his wife rolls to my house. When I got there, these 14 Portuguese sailors were looking after them and terrible tourists passing by on boats,
One of them shouting out: “On our left, Captain Cook’s graveyard on our right, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Burton’s yacht.” Richard was shouting rude words, and Elizabeth saying: “No, blow them a kiss”. As I arrived, they were having a terrible row. He was on the deck with about 18 income tax people,
People to do with his money, and she was locked in the cabin after he’d had a row with somebody else. When lunchtime arrived, who should arrive but Ringo Starr and his wife Maureen? I don’t think they’d heard of me, I’d only just heard of them, that didn’t make the conversation much easier.
-George? -Yes, love? Why didn’t you kiss me? If I kissed you, I’d get all excited. I’d get beside myself, and then I’d have to take you by force right here on the living room rug. Our little guest would walk in and what would your father say about that? You pig. Oink, oink.
Fix me another drink, lover. My God, you can sweat it down, can’t you? I’m thirsty. Jesus. Sweetheart, I can drink you under any table you want, don’t worry about me. I gave you the prize years ago Martha. There isn’t an abomination award going that you haven’t won.
It was one thing when they were both sober. Elizabeth had a drinking problem as well, and pills. Dad had never done the pills to that extent, although I know with painkillers, I think that he did get quite used to having those all the time when his back was awful for all those years.
One of the things that used to make me very angry was this little coterie of people would not try to help him. As I got older and wised up, I remember having a big argument with one of them and they said I was tough on my father.
I said: “I’m the only one who seems to be helping him.” The chaos, the many hangers-on in those days, this terrific entourage, which I was sometimes a part of, hairdressers, chauffeurs, photographers, and all sorts of things, make up people, and it was a circus when it hit town.
I remember traveling once with Richard and Elizabeth a short distance from London to Geneva, and she had 37 pieces of luggage and eight animals. My baby I did it all for you. I thought you’d like it, sweetheart. It’s to your taste, blood, carnage, and all. I thought you’d get excited,
Heave and pant and come running at me. Your melon is bobbly. You have screwed up, George. Come on. You have. You can sit around with a gin running out of your mouth, humiliate me and tear me to pieces, that’s okay. You can stand it. I cannot stand it.
You can stand it, you married me for it. I find anyone that lives like that is, first of all, not living. It’s all a big joke. It’s all right to have a joke once, but to have a continue for that long. I found it obscene. People starving all over the world
And who lives like that and buys all that? I think it’s revolting. In the meantime, some people are breathing and in need of other things. I don’t think Richard was capable of giving other things. I feel that finally was the problem. I don’t think he understood what friendship was about, or love, or
Care was about. When he left Sybil, he gave her everything. Every single penny, everything. He did that with all the wives, he was princely about that. It came, it went, and with his generosity at one stage, I calculated he was supporting 42 people. This wasn’t the odd thing.
This was your annual checks plus top-up checks at Christmas. An extra came onto a film with him once, went up, and he heard that she couldn’t pay off a mortgage debt of over 26,000 pounds, which was crippling her children. Quietly, he paid it off. That happened time and again.
He had this great eruptive talent. When he was a kid, he erupted in boils, he also erupted in gifts. This devil was thrashing him around. What was he to do with himself? What was it for? To be or not to be meant something vital to Richard Burton.
I tried with you, baby, I tried. Come off it, Martha. I tried. You’re a monster, you are. I’m loud and vulgar, I wear the pants in the house because somebody’s got to, but I am not a monster. I’m not! You’re a spoiled, self-indulgent, willful, dirty-minded liquor… There was a second back there.
A second when I could’ve gotten through to you. When maybe we could have cut through all this crap. As things began to slip for him, in him the members of the group became, in his mind, interchangeable. That he needed to be with people,
But that who it was mattered to him less and less. I think that there are great dangers in acting and that perhaps he, to some extent, fell into one of them, which was that he began to confuse seeming and being and that he prided himself enormously.
It was that Welsh pride in being able to do a whole performance of a play completely sloshed. Once he took the leap into movie magazine immortality with Elizabeth. Then I think that he had left behind any core of being that he was surrounded by, seemingly. I think that left him very lonely.
It’s not what I wanted. At least you were on to yourself. I wanted myself. No, no, no, you’re sick. Should you want sick, I’ll show you sick! Stop it! Stop it! Oh, boy, you are having a field day, aren’t you? I’m going to finish you before I’m through with you.
Stand up there, in the pulpit. You say: “I will teach you infinities.” I will say to you: “The greatest poem in the English language is the present tense of the verb to be.” One asks: “What is the present tense of the verb to be?” Now I speak for you, right?
It was like this. It’s predictive of the verb to be. I am. Thou art. She is. He is. We are. You are. They are. Why do you not see most of your films? I don’t think I’m that good. What do you mean? I hate my voice, my looks,
I hate my hair, my body, I hate everything. I don’t like myself. I’m afraid I’m an actor, I don’t want to be an actor. However, I am. I don’t know, if you ask anybody why they do something, why they do this or that, whatever it is,
They don’t know no more than I know. It’s an odd profession for a man, because you are vulnerable at the beginning, and once you become a big star, then maybe that’s different. Then you’re less vulnerable and you’re more in a position of power.
The thing with Dad, too, is that he always gave across this kind of bravado and the bravura attitude towards life. There was a lot of insecurity, an enormous amount about himself, certainly with the thing about Oxford, as an intellectual or quasi-intellectual, also as a man.
I’ve heard what your courtiers say, and I’ve seen what you are. You’re spoiled and vengeful and bloody. Your poetry is sour and your music is worse. You make love as you eat with a good deal of noise and no subtlety. This is not safe.
Yes, I’ve been told it’s not safe for any of us to say no to our King. That put on kindly hail, fellow well-met of yours. There is no better way to make an end than to raise anger in me. I thank you for that.
You made a fool of me and I’m well out of it. Isn’t that what everyone likes is the voice? Yes, they all talk about the voice and the hell it is. That’s where he gets it from. It is unquestionably a strange idiocy. You walk on the stage or you walk on the screen
Or whatever it is, you feel a strange power. I think I’m a sort of animal, because if you act perfectly, godly, it is honesty. I’m mad for you, dream of you at night, long for you by day and you dare to tell me I have the power?
I’m no good with any other woman. I think of nothing but you. Of you and me playing dog and bitch, horse and mare, of you and me in every way. I want to fill you up night after night with sons. Bastards.
I was into my third bottle a day, and a friend of mine told me being into my third bottle, I wasn’t aware that I was into it. He told me and I was somewhat surprised. The same friend, who is here, said: “Would you have a blood test?”
He took a blood test and of course, I was x. I was anonymous in the blood test and they said this person, if he kept on as he was going, because they’d written an account of what my behavior was,
If he went on as he was, he would have around two weeks to live. The essential thing that I must do is quietly rue myself into the grave. Sleep, and sleep. Sleep is fundamental. How would you turn the world upside down? What rules are you playing? There’s only one rule, expediency.
What do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring what they do against the Word of God or Karl Marx. They’re not. They’re a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me. Little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives.
Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, so the great moronic masses you admire can sleep soundly in their flea-bitten beds again? For the safety of ordinary people like you and me. You killed Fiddler. How big does a course have to be before you kill your friends?
Like many great actors, he hated acting. He was very ashamed of being an actor. Richard seemed to be a prisoner of a fantasy of having sold his soul to the devil, and he was always very aware of what the other guys were doing, that he wasn’t doing.
The plays Olivier and Scofield were doing, what he felt he should be doing and what he feared he was doing instead. You must at some time have faced the question of whether you should have continued as an imposing and even in the view of many people, great stage actor
Or moved into the world of films, which is more commercially rewarding, but perhaps not so rewarding artistically. Do you ever regret having moved into the commercial cinema? Excuse me, Richard, that makes me angry because he has not left the stage. That’s bloody rubbish.
Last year he got through doing a thing here for Oxford on the stage, the year before that, what was he doing on Broadway? That was the stage. How can you say he’s left it? That is not a continuous stage career in the sense that, for example, Paul Scofield or Laurence Olivier.
He’s not continuous either on the stage. He does film appearances for money, and so does Paul Scofield. Scofield has made one film in 10 or 14 years. I’m not young, I’m not true, I’m bitter, envious, dangerous and malicious. I think I’m reasonably intelligent, clever, good, kind, sweet, nasty, gifted. No, I’m not gifted.
Dad was very lonely. It was like he got to the point where he was incapable of figuring out how to, how to solve that. Dad became increasingly isolated. He lost touch with a lot of people because of his insecurities. Why wasn’t he secure enough? First, he was repeatedly taken out of his environment,
His home if you like, and Pygmalion, made into this great young British actor. He was repeatedly thrust into situations which maybe he wasn’t able to deal with. Susan Hunt provided a very important gift to him. Then she managed to help him leave Elizabeth. I don’t think she anticipated what it would be like,
Because by that time it was hard for data to converse. He would tell stories. It would be stories and stories but in terms of chatting. However, that came from nervousness and insecurity. It’s like: “Oh, God, I need to have a conversation with this person, I’ll tell these three stories, they’re funny. [indistinct]
I went home, I went to the house, I asked where he was, I knew where he was, and he was in the pub. I went over and I gave him a fiver. My brother said: “Don’t give him so much money, he’ll drink it.” He sure as hell drank it.
The police came to the door. There was a thunderous knocking. I woke up and I went down. He said my father was seriously ill. He had fallen off the Bont Fawr at Pontrhydyfen, Then when we went with the nephew to this hospital and we went to the emergency waiting room.
There were two English. We call them English because they don’t speak Welsh. They were Welsh, I think. There was a lady doctor and a man doctor, and they came out and they asked if anybody spoke Welsh. My nephew, brother, and myself said we did.
They said they had a man in there who couldn’t speak English. They thought he was in shock. They asked if we’d translate, we went in to see my father. He was lying there and he had a bruise on his stomach the size of a rugby football. He’s lying there singing, perfectly happy.
I said it was my father, his uncle, and his grandfather. They said: “Would you as him if he knows who you are?” I said: “Do you know me?” Then in perfect English, he said: “Only too bloody well.” Let me tell you what I know. He went on and on.
It’s a very modest house, he liked that, he could live very simply here. He would get up very early in the morning, go and make his tea, and be himself and know that there weren’t countless members of an entourage about to interrupt him. He would very often cook his breakfast.
Then perhaps he’d go up to the library, reading a book. We might go out to lunch, to a local restaurant, or we would go on a boat trip, one of the ferry boats. We’d go to the supermarket together. That surprised tourists, because they wouldn’t expect
To see Richard Burton in the supermarket with a trolley, but he liked that. He was without malice, and frequently surprised me that he would always find something good to say about people. Polite and straight. Quite a puritan, at times. He could be embarrassed by things. It was a surprise on meeting him.
To find how gentle he was because of the voice one expected an overbearing character. However, he was an absolute pussycat. He sees the fusion of music and drama dimly, as I see it. Very dimly. Greek, vast amphitheaters. Life and worship in their art. Sensual performances understood by everyone,
Slaves and masters, all equal in intellect, equal in sensitivity, same tongue, same myths, instantly accessible through shared desires. Experience, food even, the same simple attic food. Milk, wine, and olives. The same women enjoyed by master and slave alike in the same open manner. Music is feminine. It lies waiting to be fertilized.
The dramatic seed thrust into it. Words are taken up and carried further by the music. However, poetry poetry is the reason for music and drama is the reason for both. In here all Richard’s books, he had this made because it was a loft before.
It was not supposed to be a library at all. It was full of pigeons, in fact, but the floor had to be strengthened in order to contain all his books. He had these shelves made that come into the room like that,
So he could get the books out and then put them back in again. On the floor here is his book bag, which he always used to call his book bag, which used to travel with him all the time. It has paper bags, lightweight books, and reference books.
He had always a complete work of Shakespeare, his copy of the Bible a common prayer book, and the Koran. I gave him this, I remember, which is slightly moth-eaten, as you’d expect, it’s the complete works of William Shakespeare. It was chewed by his dog, I think, and also he always carried with him
The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. He’d look up rude words, and he’d put them, when he arrived at the hotel, by his bedside, so that he could refer to them when he wanted to. It was known as the Book Bag. It was like, when we were traveling, rather like the American president
Has a man who carries what they call the football with him, which contains all the codes in case there’s a nuclear war. Richard would carry this. On the walls are his nominations for his Oscar, which he never won, incidentally. He was nominated seven times, I think
As many times as anybody who’s been nominated and never actually won. He never cared much about winning. He went once, I remember, because I went with him and he sat in like the fifth row on the aisle, as all the nominees do, and he had in his hand a piece of paper,
And he was making notes. Every now and then, the cameras went on to Richard. He was writing things down. They assumed that best-animated costume for a Walt Disney musical. He wrote down the name. They thought he was interested, Richard Burton, He’s fascinated by it all. He was learning Spanish irregular verbs,
Because the next day we were going back to Mexico. Where were you at? When I was about eight, he took me under his wing, because my father was only interested in the theater and writing and everything, but Richard could do all the things that a small boy worships
Because there’s nothing he couldn’t do. What he couldn’t do, he pretended he could. He pretended to be a great tennis player with his ace cannonball serve, which nobody could get back, which was partly true. After the cannonball was served, the game fell apart completely. It looks so much like Wales.
-Is it? -Yes, definitely. My impression of Selenia when I first came here was that it was the next place to Wales. It’s delightful, I thought it was so similar. He wasn’t a social animal. He hated going to parties and things like that. He probably went to three cocktail parties in his life.
His idea of a good time would be to start at the local with extras or the small-part actors in the plays and sit around until closing time telling stories. He never paid much attention to luxuries of any sort at all,
As long as he had a shower that worked, a light that he could read a book by, and a comfortable chair to sit in to read the book. That’s all he cared about. When we were on location sometimes, and in strange hotels and strange rented houses, the showers often didn’t work properly,
Because nobody had attended to them we used to unscrew them. I used to carry with me a special wrench to unscrew the shower head, and we used to pick the hole and clean the hole. The last few years he was in a lot of pain a lot of the time,
Because he had a very severe operation on his neck, which wasted away a lot of the muscles of his shoulders. He had a very good aversion to pills and painkillers of any kind. He hated pills. We used to say that two aspirin had the same effect on him
As two sleeping pills on other people, and that deeply depressed him. He was very brave about it. You’d never know. I think he suffered from guilt about several things. I think he felt guilty that he left Sybil and by inference, his children.
Probably any man who leaves his wife for another woman feels guilty, if there are two children involved. What made matters worse was that Richard’s second child, Jessica, Kate’s younger sister, was mentally retarded. I remember when Jessica was a little girl, very little toddler. She seemed to be okay and then it became obvious
And the discovery that she wasn’t quite normal was made. It was always a cloud, the fact that Jess was not normal. Remember the mink coat? That was a thread. He saw this mink coat in the window and he said: “Let’s go in.” “Yes, come on, trade off to Sally.”
She tried it on, it fitted up lovely. Then there was a hat to go with it. Then he brought a little, what do you call it? A headband. To go with it, “Have that as well.” Then after settling all this, he said: “How much?”
I said that was the first thing I’d ask before I think about it. “How much?” I wouldn’t tell you, but Sally got it. Since he was a little boy and always… A naughty little boy sometimes. I think one of the things that he possibly regretted is that he never had a son.
He loved children, but he particularly liked boys. He liked to be an uncle. That’s why in some ways, I did become his son. I became the son he never had and couldn’t have, eventually. Winston, You were thinking that my face is old and tired. While I talk of power,
I’m unable to prevent the decay of my own body. The past is forbidden. Why? When we can cut a man from his past, then we can cut him from his family, his children, and other men. Reality is in the human mind, not in the individual mind, which makes mistakes and soon perishes,
But in the mind of the party, which is collective and immortal. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction. An effort of the will. See where God stretches out his arms and bends his ireful brows.
Mountains and hills come and fall on me and hide me from the heavy wrath of God. No. No. I will headlong run into the earth. Earth! Gape! No, it will not harbor me. You stars that reigned at my nativity, whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist into the entrails of your laboring clouds. That when you vomit forth into the air my limbs may issue from your smoky mouths so that my soul may but ascend to heaven. God, if thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,
Yet for Christ’s sake whose blood hath ransomed me, imposed some end to my incessant pain. Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, a hundred thousand, and at last be saved! Cursed be the parents that engendered me. No, Faustus. Curse thyself, curse Lucifer. That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.
He complained of a headache. It was more than that. I knew that there was something desperately wrong. However, one doesn’t want to believe it. I got him into the hospital and I was told to come home, because there were phone calls to make, because he was supposed to start a film.
I needed to let them know that he wasn’t too well, and I did know how ill he was, because I knew, driving home I can remember thinking to myself: “You’re a good wife, but I’m not sure you’ll be a good widow.”
When Richard died, I got a lot of letters, quite a lot from young actors and older actors who barely knew him, worked with him one day or maybe half a day, whose names some of which I remember and some I don’t, as it was so long ago.
They wrote to say how sorry they were, and didn’t know who else to write. He passed through their lives, and they took the trouble to write, to say how much they appreciated what he’d done for them one day. In some ways, if Richard passed through your life,
He lit something in you and I don’t think it ever goes out. What then? He’d feel himself acceptable. What then? Do you think feelings like his can be simply reattached, like plasters stuck on other objects we select? Look at him.
My desire might be to make of this boy an ardent husband, a caring citizen, a worshipper of abstract and unifying God. My achievement, however, is more likely to make a ghost. I’ll heal the rash on his body. I’ll erase the welts cut into his mind.
When that’s done, I’ll put him on a metal scooter and send him puttering off into the concrete world. I doubt, however, with much passion. The passion you see can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created. You will, however, be without pain. Almost completely without pain. Now, for me, it never stops.
Why me? Why me? First, account for me.
36 Comments
Excellent biography. Thank you. I never could bring myself to watch any film with him and Elizabeth Taylor…none. I think she cheapened him.
I have never seen a more beautiful man…
Adoro a Elizabeth y Richard. ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ cuanta belleza y talento.
Despite them being married ! and even when she got that Hope Diamond 🔹on her finger ! she refused to be addressed as Elizabeth Burton ! Incidentally his real name was Richard Jenkins Jr ! r.i.p. 😢❤🙏
Smart, witty, great voice and sadly gone. Diolch, Richard.
Really enjoyed this intelligent and truthful and non bias bio.
I normally hate great actors biography`s because they never criticize or over criticize and never show the true person. Because actor`s are just people like all of us and like all of us are both good and bad.
Massacre in rome 1973
Portrayed ss chief herbert kappler which was different
From plummers in the scarlet
And the black! 1983
Incredible film about an incredible actor and an incredible man. RIP.
Interesting in that he openly admitted he was very fortunate yet he took it all for granted by self abuse. There have been countless celebrities who were blessed with what he had who burned the candle at both ends, e.g…. Oliver Reed, Alex Higgins, Richard Harris and many more, it’s as if they had a great zest for life but were prone to addictions of a kind, full steam ahead too hot to handle so to speak. A waste of great talent.
Thank you for uploading this documentary in higher resolution. A fan and an admirer from Pakistan.
This guy was astounding. It's a sin he's not mentioned more despite the passage of time.
Amazing documentary about an incredible man. I wish I had a chance to meet him.
God only created a few Greats….it is designed that way. Richard Burton was one of them and that shimmering voice…..ahhhhh sooo memorable, soooo Shaksperian ❤❤
Brilliant man beautiful voice troubled soul
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
寒い国から帰って来たスパイ😮
My #1 favourite actor of all time 🎬🎥🎞
He was a fluke of his trade. Or what others call has x-factor. Also a fashionable. dr_ _ k.
Richar barton q hombre maravilloso pura hombria lo adorooooo😊
Ya no hay hombres asi q te miran y te desmayas
❤❤❤ q vida ruda pero q actor enorme
Q actor marabilloso lo amooo
Ay q recordarlo como el gran actor q fue
Excellent documentary.
Uno de los más grande actor
There's a new book/bio about Burton and Taylor, Erotic Vagrancy. For people who know a lot about them already it won't tell you anything new.
What about her!?. Was she jealous !?. Or just stupid jealous!!. I wonder. He was a super great actor. A troubled soul, I guess. Yet, one of the best British actors.
all actors are so self centered. they will do absolutely anything as long as people will look at them. so pathetic
What a glorious tribute.
Love old Burton. The diaries are priceless.
The way Lauren Bacall expresses her self about Richard Burton is just so 🤔
I wonder perhaps if Richard Burton was bipolar, as so many stars are. It would certainly explain a lot of his behaviour. Bipolar is genetic and inherited, and Melvyn Bragg said that Burton told him his father was a "twelve-pints-a-day man" who sometimes went off on drinking and gambling sprees for weeks, and that "he looked very much like me".
Broadsword calling Danny Boy, Broadsword calling Danny Boy
👽Boring …. 🤣😂🤣😂🤣
I am 60 and have watched every movie I could get my hands on with Richard Burton in it, it blows my mind this incredible actor never won an Oscar..He was better then Taylor if you ask me.
He is one of the most BRILLIANT actors ever. Nominated 7 times for an Oscar, never winning. Performances given that not only should have been nominated, but should have won for. Caught up in the publicity of "Cleopatra" and Elizabeth Taylor, his career became a paparazzi's delight. They became more popular than their acting. He became a legend as an actor, and THEY became LEGEND because of their love for each other. Never again will there be such a star….