The Richard Burton Diaries (204 page)

Edie Goetz came with Mr and Mrs Arthur Hornblow to visit us last night at about 7.15.
¹⁰
The Hornblows left after half an hour [...] Edie stayed on. She looked alive and very well kept though she had on a pair of frightful eyelashes. [...] She, surprisingly to E and I both, boasted about the cost of her sable coat. It's Crown Sable she said and added $10,000 to the bill. After she left we both said how much we liked her whereupon Rex Kennamer, soberer now than he had been, began to attack her. It was all-embracing in its viciousness. He wouldn't allow her a single virtue. He said she thought of nothing but money and herself. That neither she nor Bill had ever given a penny to charity and that he had seen them stand up at fund-raising dinners and pledge money and then dishonour the pledge. That she has a daughter who has been desperately ill for two years and to whom she has given nothing except porcelain vases with potted plants inside, and that the girl is married to a not very successful agent and she needs money for hospital bills here are astronomical and don't we know that, and that she has fought for years to be LA's top hostess but has been out-ranked, flanked and buggered-up by a Mrs May (of May Company) who gives copiously to hospitals and was the force behind the building of the huge new cultural centre, and that she is obsessed by Frank Sinatra who, said Rex, pointing to his temples, is a sick man and if Frank ever drops her she will kill herself and that her obsession with Sinatra had made the last few years of her husband's life a torment as Frank had done a film for Goetz called
Capture of Queen
or something and that Frank had behaved so atrociously that he quadrupled the cost of the picture which was a majestic flop and he would normally never have had anything to do with Sinatra ever again but Edie ignored him and became Frank's slave despite Bill's protestations and so on and on and on.
¹¹
[...] I said rather feebly [...] that she had always seemed very
nice to me. If I'd had a few argumentative drinks I would have challenged Rex all along the line but I decided he was drunk and therefore not a compos opponent. I shall ask him again when he is more measured in judgement. It was all fascinating – particularly the social aspect and it all seems so second class compared with Parisian society. Christ I'm a snob! How about, as they say, that?

Monday 31st
8am and we've all been up since 7 to see off Howard and Mara who have a pleasant 5 hour journey to Hawaii while we have an unpleasant 5 hours to NY on Wednesday and an equally unpleasant 7–8–9 hours to Rome the following day. [...] We went to see a James Bond film yesterday afternoon [...] called
Diamonds are Forever
which was good fun but surprisingly ill-acted and amateurish.
¹²
There are some good sequences – notably a car chase – but the plot, which as far as I can remember has nothing to do with the original, is very silly indeed.
¹³
It makes
Eagles
[...] look realistic by comparison. Sean has got potty and now really looks like a miner going to seed.
¹⁴
Which he is. [...] His Scots accent was more pronounced than ever – perhaps deliberately – perhaps indicating Home Rule for Scotland. He has become a devout nationalist. Anyway it was all good clean fun.

[...] I cannot make up my mind about Mara. One thing I'm certain of and that is that I couldn't live with her for more than two days. If one could only gag her it would be alright. E tells me how her father told her that he had long ago tuned off whenever her mother talked. Howard goes at it the other way. When
Mara
talks
he
talks, but louder, and the shriller she gets the more thunderous he becomes. I'm beginning to doubt whether they've had a proper conversation together for twenty years. In fact I can't imagine them having an ordinary chat as we have. The point about Mara is: is she stupid or not? Don't know. Is she silly or nasty or not? Don't know. If it were not for Howard I am pretty certain that E and I would make bloody certain that we were never in the same place as that most uncomfortable woman ever again. And it is not that I dislike her, it is simply that her manner and the content of her observations on life are so tremendously BORING. To the point of screaming. If only she could acquire the virtue of silence or force herself to listen when somebody anybody else is talking, she might be tolerable. There have been times when I longed to say ‘shut your bloody trap for just 15 minutes, only 15 little minutes, while Howard talks or Elizabeth finishes that story’. She also has the most unfortunate accent and intonation. Sometimes I have – in the past week – asked her a direct question and listened to the answer and have realized after 10 minutes that I haven't known what she's been saying for
the past five. My mind has wandered off. Some teachers and lecturers and most pulpit preachers were like that. That's the criminal thing about having children – they keep incompatible people together. I believe that I heard vaguely that Howard took off once with another woman maybe, or just took off. I bet that he would never have gone back were it not for the children. The same with Francis too, I guess. There must have been a time, before he got too old, when he wanted out. It's funny that both father and son married two non-stop talkers. You'd think that Howard would have chosen a quiet woman for a partner after a lifetime of Sara's endless gabble but he chose a lady who could if anything out-talk Sara. [...]

I've had a bellyful of the USA already and am ripe to go back to Europe though I will doubtless regret that after a few days behind the curtain and be lusting for the States again. Phoenix was a tremendous disappointment. I had a totally different picture of it in my mind. And I had no idea that it was such a huge city. I thought in terms of a 150,000 and not a million population as it is. When we left it we could see its great sprawl and there was the unmistakable smog. I had visions of Norman Rockwell far west with local drugstores and shops on the corner and the Town Hall with a church and a square and a drugstore and all that Andy Hardy stuff.

I talked to Kate last night. She sounded flip and cocky and I soon found out that the reason for that was that there was a girlfriend there so a little showing-off was going on. We will probably see her on Wednesday [...].

FEBRUARY

Tuesday 1st, Los Angeles
A nice day yesterday. Howard and Mara arrived safely and I read and wrote practically all day long. The only cessation was in the afternoon when I talked with McWhorter and later with Alex Lucas. The first about the Canterbury Tales and the second about
Hammersmith
.
¹⁵
The former says he has three millions to do the former and the latter wants to get some control of
Hammersmith
. Good luck to both.

I popped up for about 15 minutes to see Sara with Elizabeth. The lady is still bonkers without any question. The entire bungalow apart from Sara's bedroom and sitting room [...] is stacked to the ceilings with bric a brac in boxes. And what rubbish! E found a packing case that appeared to contain nothing but tin-foil TV dinner plates [...]. Staggering idiocy. When E remonstrated with her about this she burst into large and, if E knows her, crocodile tears. [...] I told E last night that we must regard her as if she were a child of 10 years old and a very spoiled one. She must do what we – her parents say – and not what she whimsically feels like doing. [...] Val says that Robbie is
weaving a web – his own words – around Sara to get her back to Phoenix. Well, in the immortal words of Zee, Scarlett, I couldn't give a sheeit.
¹⁶
[...]

Wednesday 2nd, Beverly Hills Hotel
[...] We leave at 11 for NY and tomorrow night we leave NY for Rome in the evening. So we haul our indifferent bodies from yet one more continent to another. In a few days we shall be in Budapest and I am agog with curiosity. What will Hungary be like? It is impossible to find any literature on modern Hungary. Only a Fodor travel book which is hopeless and stops at ‘56. Will try again in NY. I can't believe that there is so little stuff about a famous modern state. Lack of interest must be the answer. Books on the impenetrable Red Chinese are all over the stalls, two of which I bought yesterday together with $150 worth of other books, mostly paperbacks with at least half being whodunits for the long stay in Budapest. The Cadogan diaries, the closing circle, the something foxes – highly recommended tome on international espionage – ecological books.
¹⁷
Barbara Tuchman's
Stilwell and the American experience in China
or some such title and a mass of Simenons and Creaseys and Helen Macguiness and A. A. Fairs and godknows what other readable rubbish.
¹⁸
But I guess that if there's so little about Hungary outside the country there'll be little about the West inside Hungary and without books of some kind E and I pine.

The one possible pleasure of the journey is that we may get a few hours of Kate in NY if Aaron can spring her from school for tomorrow. [...]

I am getting nearer and nearer to an attempt to give up cigarettes, not out of fear of cancer but simply because a) it's a filthy habit and b) I want to try and prove to myself that – as with booze – I am Henley and the master of my fate etc.
¹⁹
As for the fear of cancer I am one of those who believes they will either have found a cure by the time I get it or that, like my heavily smoking father, I won't get it at all but die like him at 83 of a stroke. I am determined to do it and will decide, after a suitable time period not yet decided precisely whether the effort is worth it. With alcohol it unquestionably is. [...]

Both of us are very glad to be on our way out of the States. Phoenix was the final straw that broke our camel's back. We had thought the American malaise to be possibly confined to big industrial centres, business centres, NY, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles etc. But it's everywhere. [...]

Thursday 3rd, New York Airport
We are at something called the International Hotel five minutes from the airport [...]. We are surrounded by a mass of Aaron's Praetorian guards, Tom Horan, Steve, Dug senior and junior and Rosemary, taking all the rooms around us and making sure that no wicked ones from the terrible city of NY will attack the Burtons. With justice too. The last time we were here we were very lucky to get safely away with our baubles intact. The gang – still at large and still operating – have pulled several jobs since they missed on us.

The journey was smooth [...]. There was a film called
Kotch
on which I could only watch for a time though E watched it all the way and said afterwards that it was beautifully done. After ten minutes however I could see the whole course of the movie and found reading more congenial.
²⁰
[...] There were hordes of snappers when we came off the ship and they backed and clicked and attracted crowds so that the journey to the car went on and on for about what seems a good
¹
/
₂
mile but was probably only a
¹
/
₄
. I would have become angry in the old days were I drunk but I merely looked blank instead.

Tonight we're off again to Rome. [...] Have just read some more notices for
XYZ
which are all highly praised stuff for E but not so much for the film. The film is good so don't understand the carping at the film.

Have just been sent the script of a horrifying book of police corruption which I was sent to read three or four months ago. Will read it and decide. Rather like playing cockney thugs even though this one is supposed to be a policeman.

Friday 4th, Rome
Late afternoon in a raining Rome. We flew from NY last night into the teeth of a howling 90mph gale. [...] The film we saw was called
The French Connection
which was done in a very mystifying fashion.
²¹
Elizabeth, who hadn't like me read the book, confessed herself utterly lost in the plot from time to time and because of the looseness of the direction wasn't sure sometimes who were cops and who were the baddies. Also the director having obviously decided that the original story was too quiet and tame, quite arbitrarily put in two episodes – a hair raising car versus electric train race with a mad killer aboard the latter, which had nothing to do with the film, and the final showdown was the olde classical gun-fight while in the original documented book, as I remember, there was no gunfight at all. Not one single shot fired as far as I can remember. Still, it was fast moving and interesting enough.

[...] I feel better already since coming back. I really am a little old European. We leave on Monday for Budapest. [...] I also have to ice skate, a little exercise I haven't done for years, and the return to that mildish form of exercise and balance is going to be very interesting.

Damnedest thing about E's chimerical looks. She looked, in the USA the worst I've ever seen her. Tending to bloat, uncertain complexion, bags under the eyes – particularly the left, probably as a result of the cyst operation which is developing an internal keloid, and now suddenly this morning, in the plane she was back to being ravishing again when after two days of nightmarish travel she should have looked her all time worst. Funny woman. Actually I think that, at last, E now shows the effects of heavy drinking whereas Howard – apart from slightly bloodshot eyes in the first waking – still looks as if he's just come back from a health farm. Mara and I still look – as we always have – like the end of the earth. [...]

Saturday 5th
[...] The top ten box office things have just come out in the States where I am not No 1 as in Europe but number 6 or 7.
²²
E is ahead of me there so there must have been releases of some of her previous pictures. Any way the old firm is still way up there. My phraseology is becoming more and more transatlantic. That's what comes from being married to an American and being in America for ten days and reading American books.

I read a script in NY – the book of which I have already read – called
Sir, you bastard
and which is very and horribly compelling (about police corruption) but suffers from the same weakness as
Villain
.
²³
It will not be understood by the yanks. And one can't make pictures nowadays for London only. [...]