The Richard Burton Diaries (192 page)

The halcyon days for almost all actors except for the very very big stars or somebody who's had a recent big smash hit are over. I am being paid 5 thousand more in
expenses
for this film
Trotsky
than Rex Harrison is being paid in
salary
with no expenses and no percentage. This latter is an enormous drop from Rex's high time which was as recent as
Staircase
for which he was paid
³
/
₄
of a million and 10 against the gross. Rex is by no means alone. Anybody who is not in the ‘superstar’ category is getting the same kind of money or even less than the norm in the middle fifties – 150 to 250 thousand and no percentage.

The most important thing of all from our point of view is of course that we try to do, at least, rewarding films in terms of the films themselves and not their financial returns. We are both rich enough for ever even despite an economic world-catastrophe. I would much prefer, for instance, that E and I won Oscars than that a film should gross like
Eagles
and have no importance at all. The fact is though that Oscars also, almost inevitably, go hand in hand with good box-office. Of all the films we've done since we were free of contracts, only two can I remember that we knew before starting were not serious.
Sandpiper
for both of us and
Raid on Rommel
for me. All the rest have been honest attempts at good movies including the flops au cinema like
Boom!, Staircase, Comedians
and
Only Game. Sandpiper
we did because we were afraid that we were going to be out of work and we wanted to work together, while
Raid on Rommel
was a joke. A joke that paid though. So did the other joke
Sandpiper
.

So enough of films. This was prompted by my excitement about
XYZ
[that it] will be a ‘big one’ for E. By talk of distinction and by talk of Oscars. I know she is brilliant in the film and I know the film is good but I thought almost as highly of
Boom!
and that went BOOM. [...]

Reading the
Times
this morning I came across a, to me, strange use of the word utter. In effect ‘to utter’ is to pass counterfeit coins. He uttered a lie now takes on more meaning.

[...] Yesterday's work was very strange as again – I thought I'd left all that kind of thing in Jugoslavia – for the second time this week I played a scene with two people who couldn't speak a word of English and who were found to be incapable of learning, even like parrots, the few lines they had to say. It was an all day agony of frayed nerves for everybody, including Joe, though we all kept our tempers and were very patient. But why did Joe cast them in the first place. Usually he is so keen on even the extras being accurate. Very odd indeed. I don't know whether Joe is ill or regards this piece as a failure before it starts or has simply run out of gas, but he is passing performances in this film which an amateur director of the annual church pageant would turn down with a shudder. With judicious cutting I don't suppose it will matter but it would be so much more professional not to have to depend on that. It is bad enough with Valentina Cortese who is a good enough actress but acts in clichés and because of her discomfort with the language makes the quoted banalities she is forced to utter even more banal. A line like the following when the Rosmers lament the fall of France becomes yawning chasm of boresville as a result of her infinitely slow and yet uncertain reading. ‘Neither Weep Nor Laugh But Understand.‘
²⁴⁸
I am beginning to wonder if the stuff they shot in Mexico with Delon and Schneider is equally bad. And that Joe has sort of given up. Because
of its very nature the piece is rife with communist catch-phrases and the actors’ job is to make them sound fresh and desperately intense. You can't do this unless your command of English is complete. I hope to God I'm being unduly pessimistic.

There was one very funny incident. Joe came in to me while I was being made up and said that the English of the two French actors was so bad that we might have to do it all in French or partly in French. A soon as he'd gone I translated my lines very quickly into French and with Gaston's help got the idioms and grammar right. When, about an hour later, Joe called me to shoot after rehearsing I told him that I knew it in French now. OK. So I started off in that language, going at a mile a minute, which is the way apparently Trotsky talked and was astounded to find that the French people were as bad in French as in English. Finally we stuck to English completely which they failed to get right. It is not even good enough to dub. They will have to [be] off-camera for almost every line they speak and on presumably when I speak. Shit and unnecessary shit and Joe Losey's mother. Anyway, it's a gorgeous day and we are off to lunch on the Via Appia Antica at L'escargot where they have a very good starter dish called Bouchee Caruso which is not too good for diets but undeniably this is a day off and I can watch waists tomorrow. Anyway I am back down to 165 and a bit. I might have a couple of glasses of Mouton or Lafitte or something.

Monday 25th, Rome
I talked to Princess Margaret last night at about 7.25 – she had said 7.15 but not too bad for royalty, and amazingly for the Italian Telephone Service which gave us a very good line. She asked me whether [the]Lew Grade thing was acceptable and I told her that in principle the idea was fine though we thought the plays were not very good and we had two far better ones by John Osborne (I hope we have) and that we would do them in March next year and that the £100,000 would come anyway only simply from a different source. What did I mean? she asked. Well, I said, we had already contracted to do the two Osborne plays for Harlech TV and therefore Harlech had a prior call on our services and the plays were being, had already been financed by USA TV and that the 100,000 would come from us and not Lew Grade. Do you mean from Harlech, she asked? No, I said, from Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Good Heavens, M said, how very generous of you. I am absolutely staggered. Not at all, I said feebly. Pleasure I assure you. Delighted I'm sure and other fatuities. Then we went on to talk banalities about Tito and we must simply spend some time together when we were all back in England swap family albums and stories about Tito and Jugoslavia. She told me she had lost her voice and I thought that it was rather a good idea as she sounded so gentle and long-suffering. That's how I feel, she said. She
sent her love to Elizabeth and I sent E's and mine back and to Tony as well I said. I shall give it to him when he comes back from America she said. Well goodbye I still can't get over your extraordinary generosity. Not at all. Goodbye. It was nice talking to you. Nice talking to you too. Goodbye then. Goodbye your Highness.
²⁴⁹

I read a review in the
Paris Tribune
of a marvellous new-old book. Someone has published the entire
Oxford Dictionary
– all 17 volumes or whatever it is – in two microscopic volumes with a pull-out magnifier so that one can read the minute print.
²⁵⁰
E is buying me three sets for my birthday. One for Mexico, one for the yacht and one for Gstaad. I am genuinely excited. What a superb idea. The review goes on to say that the page titles can be seen with the naked eye and it's only the definitions that need magnification. What an even better idea if someone could do the
Britannica
as well. One would need nothing else on a desert island. I am waiting to see the
OED
with all the anticipatory pleasure of a small boy waiting for that engine-and-rails or this pair of ball-bearing roller-skates.

Suddenly bethought me that a few days ago the papers all carried front-page announcements that the royals were to get increases in salary and that Maggie's was to go up to £100,000. So we nonchalantly give away without so much as a wrinkled brow the equivalent of her annual income. I wonder if that crossed her mind and whether there might be a little pique that two commoners could be that rich.

Another superb day and Joe (Lucky) Losey should be happy. After my jeremiad the other day I had a letter from him Sat morn in which he said how marvellous it all looked – even the scene he wasn't sure about was splendid and he was herewith enclosing extra speeches about the theory of Art and the State which he had promised to find for me. I haven't looked at them yet but will.

Tuesday 26th, Rome
A good day yesterday in which I did a long long speech while circumnavigating the lawn outside the house. Joe had made a sort of circular railway out of the tracks and the camera did a full 360 degrees. What one might call a typical Losey shot. To my delight Joe said that it was my only shot of the day, and it was. The shot demanded a nice series of movements on my and the camera's part but we got it correctly after a couple of false starts. Choreography in films. This took place in the morning and E was coming to lunch with Heyman and the new prospect as agent – a young man called Michael Linnit – nephew of Linnit (& Dunfee) who is the impresario.
²⁵¹
He seems nice enough and we've decided to try him for 6 months or so. Bob called E for me and told her to wait for me at the Grand as I was finishing and I would take her out to the Flavia or whatever place she fancied. We went to
the Rallye restaurant which is inside the hotel and probably has one of the best cuisines in Rome. I'd forgotten how good it was. Again I had two glasses of wine. It was fine but I fear the thin edge of the wedge. No more except for special occasions. Apart from anything else, it seems such a waste of good wine – and I only have the best – to have merely two glasses. The young potential agent pretended to a savoir faire at first which was somewhat and vaguely irritating but after a time the veneer disappeared and he became more himself. This was after E had sat beside him in the restaurant and applied her totally un-self-conscious charm. After that he didn't try to compete with the ambient worldliness but settled for it. I don't think he's very gifted – not in the same league as Heyman for instance – and will doubtless remain an agent all his life, probably not even having his own agency.

After finishing my film work for yesterday I did 15 minutes for the BBC
Tonight
programme or maybe it was
24 hours
. I talked at a mile a minute the usual guff about Tit and Trot. Then I shouted and bawled into a mike lots of speeches of Trotsky's for the background ‘music’ of some of the scenes. Joe still seems remarkably distrait. [...]

I started reading
Steppenwolf
which is very hard going.
²⁵²
I suppose it is more interesting in the original but in translation it seems so clichéd and juvenile and pseudo. He talks, for instance, of the importance of humour and how its possession is a potent weapon in the battle against the bourgeoisie and the smugly satisfied middle-class all the while demonstrating that he has none. Not a glimmer. Not a giggle. [...]

Wednesday 27th, Rome
[...] Message from E came to say that Michael Beth and baby Leyla were coming to Rome [...]. Michael's philosophy is a complete balls-up at the moment. He doesn't want our money he says, but he lives in our house rent free. Again he wants to live the ‘free life’ without our money but with presumably Robin's.
²⁵³
So he is prepared to use us as suckers – his and his friends’ use of the word – in taking the house. Then finding us not adequate he then uses his friend Robin as a ‘sucker’. He is so exactly like his father that one cannot really blame him. It's bred in the bone. Whose money does he think he is using to fly to Rome? Whose money flew his wife to London? What a funny feller! Let's hope that there is enough of E's pride in him to adopt a more practical approach to life when he is older. Nobody expects him any more to do anything. We don't expect anything of him at all and will keep him in fags and pot forever if necessary as long as he doesn't hurt himself or others,
particularly the baby
. Now Chris is going to spend a week with him in London. Chris should hold his own I think and hope – a much more intelligent and stronger character altogether, but one can never tell.

Yesterday, we worked well. [...] I worked with Romy Schneider for the first time. She is very arch. She displayed none of the ‘temperament’ which apparently manifests itself in screaming at the hairdresser, make-up man etc. and was, on the contrary the soul of modesty. [...]

Wednesday 27th, Rome
Michael Beth and baby Leyla duly arrived having had a goodish journey I understand though an hour late. The baby doesn't like planes very much unlike Kate I remember at the same age who adored them – especially a rough ride. Gurgles galore while the adults tightened their sphincters. I did two scenes today one with Schneider and one with Delon. Delon is surprisingly small. From a distance he looks six feet but close to he is only about 5’ 8". I finished with a close-up around 4.30 and was home before M and B and Leyla had arrived from the airport. They both, as usual with modern hippy clothes look unkempt and dirty but that's par for the course. The baby is a beauty and very well behaved and a mess of toothless grins and waving tight fists. She is very brown, and not from the sun. Some dark blood from one side of the family or other. [...]

Thursday 28th, Rome
²⁵⁴
What an enchanting evening yesterday's was. It was as if we'd turned the calendar back five years and Michael was himself again. He was loving with the baby, fun to talk to
and to listen to
. Elizabeth was as happy as only a grandmother can be. Beth was in good form. Even I was pleasant and though I longed to I daren't touch the baby as my cold [...] might have been given to her. She is the kind of baby that everyone should have. It kicks little legs and makes minute fists and blows spit-bubbles and smiles a lot but hardly ever cries. Everybody hates a crying baby – in fact distraught mothers, generally from the working classes have been known to kill them – and everybody loves a charmer as Leyla unquestionably is.

Elizabeth stopped her drinking dead in its tracks – or practically, as she did have one beer but that was not out of crying despair for alcohol but because it fitted with her food. You can't, after all, have orange juice or Pepsi Cola with pizza. I am marking the diary headings in red for every day she refrains from the demon drink. I am delighted. I've always wanted her to stop drinking occasionally as it must be good for the health and the mental well-being. The latter because it's good to know that one can stop, that one hasn't become an alcoholic, that one does not live by for and through booze. Usually, I take several days of cutting down before I stop altogether but E seems to be able to do it in one.