The Richard Burton Diaries (274 page)

79
The Investiture came at a time when minority elements within the Welsh nationalist movement were active in planting bombs and threatening violence. Two members of Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru (the Movement for the Defence of Wales) were killed when a bomb they were planting outside government offices in Abergele went off prematurely. Burton acted as narrator for Independent Television's coverage of the Investiture ceremony.

80
Charles Darwin (1809–82),
The Origin of Species
(1859).

81
Neither enclosed. Mira L. Waters (1945—), actor, singer and songwriter.

82
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch: a village on Anglesey in Wales.

83
Richard's primary school in Taibach.

84
Peter Maas (1929–2001),
The Valachi Papers
(1968).

85
Alfred Drake (1914–92) played Claudius, King of Denmark, in the 1964 production of
Hamlet
.

86
See diary entry for 20 October 1967.

87
Ezra Pound (1885–1972), poet.

88
Cunard Cottages, Cwmafan.

89
Michael Hordern was playing Thomas Boleyn in
Anne of the Thousand Days
and John Colicos (1928–2000) was playing Thomas Cromwell. Colicos would also act alongside Burton in
Raid on Rommel
.

90
The Governor of Jalisco was Francisco Medina Ascencio.

91
Evelyn Waugh (1903–66),
Put Out More Flags
(1942).

92
Evelyn Waugh,
Decline and Fall
(1928). The actual line (from p. 23 of the Penguin edition of 1937 is ‘"That,” said Dr Fagan [the headmaster of Llanabba Castle] with some disgust, “is my daughter.”’

93
This is probably a reference to the line ‘The Lieutenant-Colonel looked at Basil with detestation, from
Put Out More Flags
, p. 64.

94
Cwlffyn
is Welsh for ‘hunk’ or ‘lump’.

95
Evelyn Waugh.
Scoop
(1938);
A Little Learning
(1964);
Officers and Gentlemen
(1955);
Men at Arms
(1952).

96
Harry Karl (1914–82), businessman, running Karl's Shoe Stores retail chain, married (1960–73) to Debbie Reynolds (1932—), actor, singer, former wife of Eddie Fisher. A reference is also made to Queen Mary (Mary of Teck) (1867–1953), who had become Queen Dowager on the death of her husband, King George V (1865–1936), and to the ocean liner the RMS
Queen Mary
, in service 1936–67. Burton and Taylor had travelled on the
Queen Elizabeth
(not the
Queen Mary
) across the Atlantic in October 1964: Karl and Reynolds had been on the same voyage.

97
A reference to
Julius Caesar
, Act II, scene ii, where Caesar says ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths, / The valiant never taste of death but once.’

98
Aida
, opera by Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901).
Trumpet Voluntary
by Henry Purcell (1659–95).

99
Burton may mean Charles Warwick Evans (1885–1974), cellist, who founded the London String Quartet, in 1908.

100
Adolph ‘Sailor’ Malan (1910–63), RAF fighter pilot in the Second World War. Group-Captain Leonard Cheshire (1917–92), RAF bomber pilot and recipient of the Victoria Cross, also from the Second World War. American Second World War hero Audie Murphy (1925–71). Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967), First World War poet and recipient of the Military Cross.

101
Dick Hanley and John Lee.

102
Anthony Quayle (1913–89) was playing Cardinal Wolsey in
Anne of the Thousand Days
. He had produced and directed Burton at Stratford in a production of
Henry IV (Part I)
, had played alongside him in that production and in
Henry IV (Part 2)
, and had produced and directed him in
Henry V
.

103
Mary Ure (1933–75), had played alongside Burton in
Look Back in Anger
and
Where Eagles Dare
.

104
Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr (1921–2007) had played alongside Burton in
The Night of the Iguana
. Olivia de Havilland (1916—) had co-starred with him in
My Cousin Rachel
. Edith Evans (1888–1976) had had a part in
Look Back in Anger
. Fay Compton (1894–1978) had appeared on stage with Burton in
Hamlet, King John, Coriolanus
and
The Tempest
in 1953–4. Jean Simmons (1929–2010) co-starred with Burton in
The Robe
. Dorothy McGuire (1916–2001) had co-starred with Burton in
Legend of Lovers
. Helen Hayes (1900–93) had played opposite Burton in
Time Remembered
. Zena Walker (1934–2003) had appeared in a number of productions at the Old Vic, including
Henry V
in 1955–6.

105
Elisabeth Rachel Felix, known as Rachel (1821–58), Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923), Eleanora Duse (1858–1924), actors.

106
Henry Mancini (1924–94), composer and conductor.

107
Eric Morecambe (1926–84) and Ernie Wise (1925–99), popular comedians who appeared in the
Morecambe and Wise Show
on British television.

108
A phrase from T. S. Eliot's
The Waste Land
(1922).

109
Margaret Furse (1911–74), costume designer for
Anne of the Thousand Days
. She was to receive an Oscar for her work on this film. She had been costume designer on
Becket
.

110
Hans Holbein the Younger (1498–1543), artist, who was King's Painter to Henry VIII.

111
Gore Vidal wrote three novels between 1952 and 1954 under the pseudonym Edgar Box. Morpheus: the Greek God of sleep and dreams.

112
Burton had played Heathcliff in a television production of
Wuthering Heights
for NBC in 1958

113
Siân Owen, daughter of Richard's sister Hilda.

114
Wynford Vaughan Thomas (1908–87), broadcaster, at this time Director of Programmes for HTV. Mike Towers was the co-ordinating director for ITV.

115
Shepperton Studios, Middlesex. The ‘old house’ is Littleton Park Manor, a seventeenth-century manor house.

116
Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire. The road distance between Shepperton and Aston Clinton is about 48 miles. Ivor was a patient at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, location of the national spinal injuries centre. The hospital is about four miles from Aston Clinton.

117
Hal Wallis (1898–1986), the producer. Charles Jarrott (1927—), the director.

118
This is a reference to the poems ‘Pied Beauty’ and ‘Felix Randal’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). ‘Pied Beauty’ includes the line ‘All things counter, original, spare, strange’ and ends with the line ‘Praise him’. Felix Randal's last line is ‘Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!’

119
'The baby’ is a reference to Elizabeth.

120
Patricia, Joseph Losey's third wife.

121
Terence Hanbury White (1906–64), known as ‘T. H.’ or ‘Tim’, novelist, author of
The Once and Future King
sequence of four novels (1938–58), on which was based the musical
Camelot
.

122
In
Verses
(privately printed, 1962). ‘Vodka Poem To Richard Burton’ is the last in the volume (p. 43).

123
Jason Robards (1922–2000), actor.

124
Denis Quilley (1927–2003) played the part of Weston. Burton presumably means T. P. McKenna not O'Connor. McKenna (1929–2011) was playing the part of Norris. He would act alongside Burton again in
Villain
. However, Joseph O'Connor (1910–2001, sometimes O'Conor) was playing the part of Bishop Fisher in
Anne of the Thousand Days
. Cusack presumably refers to Cyril Cusack.

125
Gary Bond (1940–95) played the part of Smeaton. He had appeared in
Zulu
. The unnamed actor might be Peter Jeffrey (1929–99), who played the part of Norfolk in
Anne of the Thousand Days
, and with whom Burton had worked on
Becket
.

126
Tina Louise (1934—), actor, most famous for her role in the television series
Gilligan's Island
.

127
Sir Henry Morgan (1635–88), Welsh buccaneer.

128
A César Award for Best Actress.

129
Margaret Hinxman, journalist, film critic, novelist.

130
From Thomas Carlyle's (1795–1881)
Signs of the Times
(1829): ‘The poorest Day that passes over us is the conflux of two Eternities.’

131
Elia ‘Gadge’ Kazan (1909–2003), director, producer, playwright, novelist, and co-founder of the Actors’ Studio.

132
John Neville (1925–2011), who had acted with Burton in the Old Vic productions of
Hamlet, King John, Twelfth Night, Coriolanus, The Tempest, Henry V
and
Othello
in the mid 1950s.

133
Fergus Cashin (1925–2004), then working for the
Daily Sketch
, who would become one of Burton's biographers.

134
The interview appeared as ‘Richard Burton with Kenneth Tynan’, in Hal Burton (ed.),
Acting in the Sixties
(1970).

135
All Nazi concentration camps.

136
Sidney Poitier (1927—).

137
Lox cured salmon fillet, typically served in a bagel.

138
The Guinea Grill, Mayfair.

139
A more modest (though still well-appointed) motor vehicle.

140
Burton's friend the actor Robert Hardy.

141
Buck's Club, a gentlemen's club established in 1919 and situated at 18 Clifford Street, London.

142
Possibly Richard's nephew, Gareth Owen.

143
Burton provided the narrative for the 1969 son et lumière at Blenheim Palace.

144
The
Kalizma
was berthed at Prince's Stairs, Rotherhithe.

145
Institut Montesano, Gstaad, a girls’ boarding school. Simmy: Simoleke Taylor.

146
Neil Balfour.

147
Burton is here referring to William Wordsworth's poem, ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’ (1802), which includes the lines ‘The beauty of the morning: silent, bare’, and ‘Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; / And all that mighty heart is lying still!’.

148
William Wordsworth, ‘Michael: A Pastoral Poem’ (1800).

149
A reference to the lines from Wordsworth's ‘Tintern Abbey’ (1798): ‘And I have felt / A presence that disturbs me with the joy / Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused, / Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, / And the round ocean and the living air, / And the blue sky, and in the mind of man’.

150
A reference to lines from the poem ‘Lost in France’ by Ernest Rhys (1859–1946): ‘He had the ploughman's strength / in the grasp of his hand; / he could see a crow / three miles away’.

151
William Somerset Maugham. (1874–1965), novelist, short story writer.

152
Albert Camus (1913–60), novelist.

153
Praxiteles, sculptor of Classical Greece, probably alive in the fourth century
BC
.

154
Wendy and Derek Jenkins, the daughter-in-law and son of Gwyneth Jenkins, lived in East Molesey, Surrey.

155
The Leicester Arms Hotel, Penshurst, Tonbridge, Kent.

156
Hever Castle was the childhood home of Anne Boleyn. In 1969 it was owned by the Astor family, William Astor (1951—) being the 4th Viscount Astor. Penshurst Castle is usually known as Penshurst Place and is owned by the Sidney family. In 1969 the head of the family was William Sidney, 1st Viscount De L'Isle (1909–91).

157
Robert Shaw (1927–78) had played the role in
A Man For All Seasons
.

158
Usually written Shitsu or Shih-tzu.

159
Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), explorer.

160
La Guaira, Venezuela.

161
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519), Renaissance man. Albert Einstein (1879–1955), physicist. Charles Darwin (1809–82), naturalist and scientist. Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), philosopher and theologian. Ivan Turgenev (1818–83), novelist. William Shakespeare (1564–1616), playwright. Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), playwright, novelist, poet. Aristotle (384–322
BC
), philosopher. Pythagoras (
c.
570–
c.
495
BC
), mathematician and philosopher. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), theorist of psychoanalysis. August Strindberg (1849–1912), novelist, essayist, playwright. ‘Fleurs du Mal’ is a reference to the poetry of Charles Baudelaire (1821–67). Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–98), poet. Socrates (469–399
BC
), philosopher. ‘The Huxleys’ is a reference to the multi-talented Huxley family, including Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95), biologist, and his grandsons Julian Huxley (1887–1975), zoologist, biologist and humanitarian; Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), novelist and essayist; and Andrew Huxley (1917–2012), winner (together with two colleagues) of the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for research into the central nervous system.

162
Liz Williams, Brook's wife, had a daughter from her previous marriage who suffered from cerebral palsy.

163
Jessica had been diagnosed (in the mid-1960s) as suffering from severe autions and schizophrenia.

164
Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin (1930—) and Neil Armstrong (1930—) were members of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission and the first men to set foot on the surface of the moon, on 20 July 1969.

165
Edward ‘Teddy’ Kennedy (1932–2009), younger brother of John F. and Robert F. Kennedy, US Senator. In the early hours of 19 July 1969 he and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne (1940–69), had been involved in a car accident on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. Kopechne died and controversy surrounded Kennedy's actions in the immediate aftermath of the accident.

166
Pierre Salinger (1925–2004), Press Secretary to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, briefly US Senator, campaign manager for Robert F. Kennedy's campaign in 1968. B. H. being Beverly Hills.