The Richard Burton Diaries (33 page)

10 Thursday
Called R. Hanley this morn to have him send some money from Antibes where he is staying at the Hotel du Cap.
⁸⁷
Told us that Sybil is getting married on Sunday next to a member of a ‘Pop’ group called ‘The Wild Ones!’ We don't know his name yet but we do know that he's only 24. This makes him 11 years younger than Syb I think.
⁸⁸
I hope to God he's a tidy bloke and will be good for Kate as well as Syb.
⁸⁹
Maybe I'll see K a bit more often now. How I love that child. Tubby old thing as she thinks she is. What sort of a telegram should we send? Witty, serious. (Lots of puns available on ‘Wild Ones’.)

11 Friday
Returned home today to La Reine Jeanne. We shall be leaving on Monday for Hotel du Cap at Antibes then away on Wednesday to USA. Sybil's boyfriend disapproved of by all who know her and of the marriage. She has known him apparently only three months and they have been serious, as ‘twere, only three weeks. I hope she knows what she's doing. Burt points out that she knows quite a few people who have happily remained married to men years and years younger than themselves. Let us pray. Weather continually brilliant though everyone native complains of the mistral.
⁹⁰
Not us!

12 Saturday
Old Burt ill with tooth trouble and aching bones. Fussed over her a bit and she had food upstairs for a change – at least lunch. We dined downstairs [...] chicken and tomato salad. No drink at all today. Talk of drink – Michel Jazy has just broken the mile world's record and, according to
Figaro
, drinks a quart of red wine a day!!?
⁹¹
No way of finding out anymore about Sybil's feller. The Press (English) have been hounding us a bit –
Mirror
and
Express
– probably about Sybil. Talked to nobody. ‘Phoning here is impossible a sort of Olympian shouting match.

13 Sunday
Talked to Aaron today who was dourly opposed to Sybil's marriage.
⁹²
The chap's name is Zaroff. Greek American from Ohio. ‘Is 24 looks 18’ says Aaron. Penniless. Syb retains $200,000. Rest goes into trust for Children. Roddy furious.
⁹³
Helen Greenford refuses to go to Wedding.
⁹⁴
Ivor delighted! Phil not caring.
⁹⁵
I talked to Kate for a moment. She sounded awfully Yankee.

14 Monday
Left for Antibes. Much farewelling [...] at the local (called the Paillotte).
⁹⁶
Lunched in Leï Mouscadins at St Tropez.
⁹⁷
Stopped for a drink at Carlton in Cannes.
⁹⁸
Went for a walk. Met editor of
Sunday Mirror
.
⁹⁹
Got sloshed.

15 Tuesday
Woke late (around 11.00) and lunched on hors d'oeuvres at Eden Roc which is of course the restaurant for the Hotel.
¹⁰⁰
We then went to Nice airport to pick up kids flying from Geneva with Bea.
¹⁰¹
Later I took the kids swimming on the rock and gave Michael and Christopher two key-ring compasses which they adore. For early dinner we all went to Juan les Pins to eat pizza.
¹⁰²
We watched with fascination how many people were fascinated by the old Rolls-R. I don't recollect any car getting such attention – particularly in France. Rather a savage game of Yahtsee which I lost.

16 Wednesday
E had fittings for her clothes from Dior today.
¹⁰³
They look very good. I packed for myself and Dick and Bea packed for Burt.
¹⁰⁴
We went to catch the tender for the
Michelangelo
and sat for over an hour on the open deck (no place to hide) while the whole South of France took photographs.
¹⁰⁵
The boat, compared with the Cunard Lines, is surprisingly utilitarian and appallingly decorated.
¹⁰⁶
Everything looks very cheap and chromy. Photographer scrambling to snap us as we boarded from the Tender hit Maria in the face with a shoulder hanging camera. I slashed him across the neck and back. Impertinent sod.

24 Thursday
In fury one night I tore out the preceding page of diary. Silly of course but there you are. Tomorrow we arrive in NY. J. Springer will meet the boat [...]. We shan't see him or his press friends until much much later. I will leave the rest of this day's journal until tomorrow's over.!

Arrived NY. Usual Press. Usual idiotic questions usual idiotic answers. Tomorrow have arranged to go out into the country to place called Quogue to see Kate, Ivor and Gwen.
¹⁰⁷
E. very nervous but as much as I.

28 Monday
Left NY for LA today.

29 Tuesday
Had lunch with Kup in the pump room of the Ambassador.
¹⁰⁸

30 Wednesday
Met Hermes Pan on train and also he was on the boat!
¹⁰⁹

JULY

1 Thursday
Arrived LA from Chicago and NY. Lovely journey on the train. Read biography of Dylan by Fitzgibbon which I am enjoying if an account of so desperate a life can be described as enjoyable.
¹¹⁰

We disembarked at Pomona in the hope that it would beat the Press but they were there.
¹¹¹
Drove back home with J. Springer. [...] The house is alright. Lots of things don't work but the grounds are beautiful and there are two
swimming pools. The kids love it of course. Went to see Francis. He moves badly but his brain's OK.

2 Friday
Swam in the pool all morning and searched for Shanni who has got herself lost or stolen.
¹¹²
She is so minute that she might be stuck in the undergrowth for all I know. Had lunch with Francis and Sara at Scandia
¹¹³
[...] Saw Mike Nichols and girl called Rosemary Forsythe.
¹¹⁴
Mike loves fairly dumb girls. Taught E. to play billiards. Did some good shots.

3 Saturday
Spent day in and around pool. Stiff with sun and playing football with Thomas à Becket.
¹¹⁵
Dick and John showed us delicious new car from Italy – a Fiat about the size of a Mini Cooper with chains, four doors and a canopied top.
¹¹⁶
Took E for drive around Holmby Hills.
¹¹⁷

4 Sunday
Had Francis and Sara for barbecue lunch [...] Two boys went down the beach with their father and Maggie.
¹¹⁸
Mike Snr more incoherent than ever. Rex came over
¹¹⁹
[...] and taught me new word game. We taught him Yahtsee. Nice guy.

5 Monday
Poolside again. E read
V. Woolf
for first time – at least new script. Val came over for lunch and dinner.
¹²⁰
We visited her place and tried pool chair with turbulent water. Seems splendid but we shall know tomorrow if it makes us stiff. Waiting anxiously for reply from Syb re. Kate. I hope she'll be alright about letting her come out to stay with us. What will I do if she doesn't comply amiably? Have written letters to Kate, Graham, Gwyneth, Ivor, Syb. Whew!

Richard stopped keeping his 1965 diary in July, and did not start making entries for 1966 until mid-March. From July to August 1965 he and Elizabeth lived on Carolwood Drive, in the Holmby Hills in Bel Air, while rehearsing and filming
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
In late August they moved from Los Angeles to Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, for location filming. In the meantime their film
The Sandpiper
was released. In late September they returned to Hollywood, where Richard celebrated his fortieth birthday on 10 November 1965. On this occasion
Woolf
’s producer and screenwriter Ernest Lehman (1915–2005) presented Richard with an original edition of the essays of Francis Bacon. Elizabeth gave him an Oldsmobile Toronado. Filming on
Woolf
ended on 13 December 1965, after which Richard and Elizabeth visited Elizabeth's brother Howard and his family in Del Mar, San Diego, before spending Christmas in Los Angeles. January saw both embroiled in legal proceedings with Twentieth Century-Fox. In February 1966 Richard and Elizabeth journeyed to Oxford, staying at the Randolph Hotel, to fulfil a promise they had made in 1963 to Richard's former tutor, Nevill Coghill. After ten days of rehearsals they appeared in an Oxford University Dramatic Society production of Christopher Marlowe's
Dr Faustus
, staged at the Oxford Playhouse. The production, which met with a mixed critical response, ran for just one week. Accounts vary of how much money it made – the lowest estimate is £3,000, the highest £17,000. The intention had been that monies raised from the performance (and from the film version that followed) would be put towards a fund-raising initiative (the University Theatre Appeal Fund) designed to provide the university with a new theatre and arts centre. Although these grander designs were not realized, in part because the film itself made a loss, in 1976 the Burton Taylor Studio was added to the Playhouse building.

Following
Faustus
, Burton and Taylor moved on to Rome, where they would begin filming
The Taming of the Shrew
under the direction of Franco Zeffirelli. They stayed in a villa on the Via Appia Antica.

MARCH

Friday 18th, Rome
¹
Lunched at home with Franco Zeffirelli, Alexandre de Paris, Irene Sharaff and Dick McWhorter.
²
Irene is a funny contradiction. And enormously concerned with her own dignity.

After lunch [...] we had a press conference. The usual stupid answers to the inevitable stupid questions. What a bore they are.

Dinner at home alone and fried chicken. Must read script and original version of
Shrew
again before Monday.
³
De Sica coming to lunch tomorrow we think.
⁴
We are to dine with Edward Albee on Sat (tomorrow) night.
⁵
I hope he's more articulate than the last time I met him in NY.

Saturday 19th
We dawdled about all day until dinner in Rome at Ranieres (near Spanish Square) with Zeffirelli, Albee and his friend.
⁶

Albee was very flattering, especially to E!, about
V. Woolf
and, for him, was very talkative. They were doing a swift tour of Europe – a day here, a day there. He says that he is
²
/
₃
through a new play which should be going on Broadway in the Autumn.
⁷
It contains 4 men and 2 women. He said that it was ‘a very curious play, a very curious play indeed.’ After
Tiny Alice
and
V. Woolf
how curious can you, as they say, get.
⁸
He told us that he thinks about a play for six months approx and then writes it in about three. There is no second draft. It is as it is, and so remains.

We had a hair raising drive to Rome pursued by paparazzi all the way.
⁹
I think Mario the driver takes too much notice of these butterflies of the gutter. They risk their lives too. Why don't they go where there's real risk. Like a war. Like Viet Nam. Like anywhere.

I finished reading Ugo Betti's play
The Queen and the Rebels
.
¹⁰
It is quite good and very actable but weakens quickly at the end. Perhaps they could do something about it. Also some of the dialogue is lamentably old fashioned but all that could be cured.

Sunday 20th
So far we had lunch with Vittorio De Sica and his wife and two children (boys).

One boy played the guitar – what a horrible instrument, worse than a mouth-accordion, an accordion, a Jew's harp or a paper-and-comb. Worse than beating on nothing with a nought. But, however, fond parents love the idea of a noise – however absurd – made by their dearest and nearest. De Sica really looked on his son with admiration. He had, I mean the son (and the father too when he, the son, was playing) the face of a demented and somewhat stupefied fish. The Beatles have a lot to pay for. Even my own. Boys I mean.
How dull I am
.

So. They came to lunch and next Monday we dine with them and we shall also watch
Umberto D
.
¹¹
I must, somehow, get out of that.

And so the day wore inevitably on to another regret in the lost and in future to be recalled days.

What shall we do now. Why not if it's so intolerably wearying. Why not go to bye-byes?

Bugger it then. Let's row.

Tuesday 22nd
On Monday, the missing day in this diary, we went to the studios at 6pm to have chat and drinks with crew and cast. We took Liza, Maria and Karen (their nurse) with us. Everybody seemed reasonably pleased and felt that it was a fairly good first day – especially as it was Franco Z's first film.

I had been earlier in the morning, though I was not called, to wish good luck and see how things were. There was a long initial hold-up lasting about 1
¹
/
₂
hours waiting for a change of horse. [...] Later that morning I went over to the back-lot [...] to see the first of the glass shots.
¹²
That looks good too.

I had lunch with Mr Haggiag.
¹³
I had been warned that he was a ‘wheeler and dealer.’ He is, I think, but appears to respond easily to flattery which is always a great weakness in negotiation and a strength if the other gent (for the other gent) can use it.

I took Liza and Maria to school this morning and then went to the bookshop on the Via Veneto and bought some 20 or 30 paperbacks.
^14
1
/
₂
dozen detective stories. Ludovic Kennedy's
Trial of Stephen Ward
a genuine establishment horror story.
¹⁵
And a palpably unjust trial – nightmarishly so. Harry S. Truman's
Memoirs
.
¹⁶
Ingenuous to the point of admiration, and also wonder
that a man of such common (but tough) intellect could ever have become the President.
And
done so well. Perhaps office really can make the man.