The Richard Burton Diaries (48 page)

On Thursday I had lunch with Joseph Levine, monstrously fat and foul-mouthed but oddly likeable and, I think, trustworthy.
¹¹¹
(I may live to eat those words.) He agreed to supply us with $1,000,000 for
Faustus
and $350,000 to OUDS.
¹¹²
Seems alright to me.

After he'd gone Aaron arrived from NY [...] tired and plane drunk. Everybody shouted a lot because H. French, who shall be hopeless, had arranged a deal without his, Aaron's, knowledge. Aaron arranged to see Levine that night and again in the morning.

Yesterday, Saturday, I worked until 1pm. Just two shots with M. Hordern and cronies.

Aaron came down and talked business and said rather sadly that he was sorry he bored me, but if he didn't he wouldn't be doing his job as a lawyer. I said he didn't bore me at all but business did.

J. Levine arrived again and there was more amiable obscenity. Anyway we've got the money which is all I care about.

I went home and had brunch at 2.0 with Glorious and swam a few lengths of the pool with Liza. It was cold but refreshing.

We then slept for a couple of hours and set out for the Airport to pick up Chris and Mike who were coming from Switzerland.

We took the two girls with us and stopped at a Trattoria en route. It was pleasant enough. The boys looked lovely in their blazers. And so to bed last night. [...]

Continuing the day. We donned bathing costumes about 9.30 and lay in the sun. The servants had all gone to Mass and so I boiled myself a couple of eggs. Later in the morning I swam with Liza, Michael and Chris in the pool – it was cold but exhilarating. The two last had to wear my underpants to swim and sunbathe – they have no swimming costumes if you please and have to borrow them at school! The sun became wilful at about 11.30 and disappeared in an ominous looking cloud about 12 and stayed there ‘till 1.30. We lunched on pork chops and chips and hominy grits. I sunbathed for another hour or so and went up to bed. E, already there, was nodding off. After a time we both napped, woke about 5.00 and walked [...]

We dined at 7.00 on Southern Fried Chicken. It's been an all-American day for food.

After dinner we walked again with Maria who is too slow to keep up with the others. The others wishing to come with us, having deserted Maria, were
told they couldn't. So they followed us anyway, hiding behind hedges etc. but both the boys had bright red jackets on and were easily detectable.

I rubbed, with Slowtake's assistance, vinegar on my sunburn and smelt like a fried fish and chip shop. Later I took a long slow warm oil bath (a sprinkling in the water of a stuff called ‘Sardo’) and went to bed. The lights were out at 10.30.

Both Eliz and I agreed solemnly that we never want to work again but simply loll our lives away in a sort of eternal Sunday. Quites right too. We are both bone-lazy. And enjoy it.

Monday 30th
One of my awful unaccountable days of savage ill-humour. The day started pleasantly enough. [...] Went down stairs about 8.00 and had some orange juice, returned and wrote some entries in this journal. Went through my lines remaining in the film [...] and took the boys off to the beach. For the rest of the day I snarled at everyone, everything and every idea.

Eliz joined us at lunch. She was gay and sweet but nothing could drag me out of my tantrum. Michael irritated the bejasus out of me. The beach was too sandy, he didn't know how to ask for Coca-Cola, didn't know how to get on the roof to get back his aeroplane, thought the bathing costumes were not ‘bitchen’ which is the new and horrible word for ‘up-to-date’, ‘modern’, ‘cool’, ‘unsquare’, ‘with it’ etc. The latest ‘bitchen’ bathing costume is apparently made of canvas and comes down to the knees! I'm walking backwards for progress.

Still, little Mike is at an awkward stage, 13, and is a most loveable little feller, and normally I would have joked about it but yesterday.....

I swam quite a bit and talked interminable business with Aaron.

We saw rushes at 4.00 back at the Studio and went to L'Escargot for dinner with Aaron, the two boys, R. Hanley [...] J. Lee, R. and S. Wilson. I started, probably under the benevolent influence of wine, to mellow a little but not much. It is now 3.30am. I have been asleep.

Tuesday 31st
My second day off. Eliz left about 8.30 for the studio though we had been up since 4.00am. At 5am we made soup!

I worked on the words a bit first, had some breakfast – two boiled eggs – and did the
Telegraph
crossword in the sun. The boys went into town with Mario and the girls (the girls were going to school) and bought some comics. They are unobtainable in Rolle apparently.
¹¹³
Karen prevented them from buying bathing costumes because they were ‘improperly dressed’ to go shopping.

Went to pick up Eliz for lunch and we went to the ‘Barn’ to eat with the boys and Joe Roddy (
Look
magazine).
¹¹⁴
It was very pleasant.

Back at the studio I saw the cut film, said goodbye to Frosch – off to Geneva, Paris and NY – and found that Eliz had acquired a bunny rabbit for Liza.

JUNE

Wednesday 1st
Work, as usual – The wedding reception. Drank only beer most of the day. Said goodbye to Russ Braddon of the
Sunday Times
(England). Dined at the Trattoria of the Divino Amore. Lost to E at baci (boule). Put out the lights at 11.30 – woke at 1.30 – stayed awake for hours scratching my sunburn. E sprayed me with ‘Mediquick’. Killed two mosquitoes. Smoked many cigarettes and listened to trains go by. Went back to sleep at 5.00(?). MacWhorter wrote over zealous letter to Franco Z yesterday. Maybe, however, will do him some good.

Thursday 2nd
That hideous costume of Zeff's on again – the one that makes me look as if I have a very nasty and monstrous growth on my right thigh. Apart from its unimaginative ugliness it is also hell to put on and torture to wear. I did my longest speech in the film and took forever to do it. Eliz was very good in her bit. In fact she's very good altogether.

We lunched alone on spaghetti [...] and drank a little wine. Joe Roddy there again. Read a long article in
McCall's
about
V. Woolf
.
¹¹⁵
[...]

Zeffirelli wrote a reply to McWhorter which was fairly annihilating but McWhorter, impervious to insult, merely said to Eliz. ‘Nevertheless he was here at 8.20 this morning.’ That's all he cares about.

We are invited to the British Embassy for the Queen's birthday. How posh we are getting. And respectable. We've got to stop that image. [...]

There was a national holiday and we stopped at our Trattoria for a glass of wine. Hundreds of people and children there so we didn't stay long. We really need those police around sometimes if only to avoid embarrassment. [...]

I am eating a lot.

Friday 3rd
I had only one shot to do this morning but, malheureusement, Eliz had three, then of course she had to wash her hair for the weekend so we got away from the studio at 1.30.
¹¹⁶
Down to Corsetti's for lunch – a delicious sole from the Adriatic and Eliz a sea-bass, all with french fries and washed
down by two bottles of Fontana Candida – a nice white cold wine from Frascati.
¹¹⁷
[...]

I was asleep by 9.00 pm. Made myself some cabbage soup at 2.00 am and was joined by Bon Apetito.
¹¹⁸
We eat from the same bowls like two pups.

Saturday 4th
We got up early slightly nervous about Maria's school sports. What would she be like? I made Bloody Marys for Karen Eliz and self to steady our nerves.
¹¹⁹
It was a very warm day. We arrived about 5 minutes before the start. Maria, with [...] style and grace, and much interest in the other competitors, came last in the 25yd dash. They had sack races, bean-bag throwing, obstacle races. The colours were truly international. From the pinko-grey of N. Europe to Chinese yellow via black-as-nights. I entered the fathers’ race which due to the devious machinations of a black Somali, an ambassador, and three Bloody Marys, I lost. We had to pick up a balloon in one corner of the ground, a flag in another, a coca cola bottle at the gate, a chiffon scarf en route and a paper flower elsewhere. I quickly arranged with this black bloody Iago, this coloured Judas, to pick up two balloons, two paper flowers, while he picked up two bottles and two flags which, I rapidly explained, would cut the race in half as we would exchange with each other. But race-memory, atavism, took over inside his boiling black head and I had a double journey for the bottles. His side of the bargain ceased to exist after he'd given me
one
flag and I had given him one balloon
and
one paper flower. Such cheating is soul destroying. How can they rule themselves if they are such cheats. No wonder Africa is going to the dogs. Result; the black diplomat nineteenth and me twentieth. From now on I only cheat with Welshmen. I'm starting to train now for next year's race.

We went to the Chianti for lunch. Went home and swam a great deal in the pool. Listened to the BBC and went, worn out, to bed.

Sunday 5th
Today is a record equaller. Today is the 7,601st day since the war ended. That number is the exact equal of days between November 11th 1918 and September 3rd 1939. Every day from now on, says the
Sunday Times
cheerfully, should be counted as a bonus.

We spent the 7601st day of uneasy peace peacefully. We sunbathed in the garden, swam in the pool, went for walks across the shorn fields, the hay standing in neat bundles, had an early lunch of Southern Fried Chicken, napped in the afternoon, did our exercises. Dined at 7.00 on pork chops and chips and salad. I played ‘boxes’ with Liza who is phenomenally quick at
picking up games, read a couple of chapters of Agatha Christie and slept until
¹
/
₂
hour ago.
¹²⁰

We had soup for breakfast, out of tin on our private hot plates and soup again for high tea. We are soup mad.

Monday 6th
On the way home (it was, surprisingly, raining) we took the Wilsons and the Flanagans and Joe Roddy to our ‘Trat’. There were six sergeants Italian there, one from Sicily one from Naples. The last gave bread wine and sausage all made by his mother. I bet Roddy they knew the purple passage from Dante.
¹²¹
[...] The boys gave me a book of dirty verses. Some of it very funny.

AUGUST

Tuesday 23rd
Yesterday we began shooting
Faustus
. Many things have happened in the missing days in this diary. [...] I will try to recapture some of the events. My sister Edith's death and within a few days thereafter Monty Clift's death.
¹²²

With pre-planning we shot so quickly [...] yesterday that we did seven set-ups in the morning and early afternoon. Now to wait for the results!

After shooting E and I attended a press conference with Nevill and the rest of the Oxford lot. Usual inane questions, usual bland answers.

Later we went alone for a quiet dinner at a motel on the Raccordo Anulare.
¹²³
Omelette and sauté potatoes and coffee and wine. And so to house and home.

SEPTEMBER

Wednesday 21st
Yesterday we began the Garden of Delights – the Seven Deadly Sins – of Faustus. Nevill has gone off to England and then to the USA. So with chubby Nick Young I am alone alone on a wide wide film.
¹²⁴
I have varying feelings about this project – vague fears that it and I are bad or that it's all going to work.

Roddy Mann of the
Sunday Express
came to interview.
¹²⁵
He seems lonely and olding. His middle-age is beginning to show – he is 44 and wifeless and childless and of late (two weeks or so ago) motherless. He also writes indifferently.

H. French was there too. Like all potential bullies he is basically vulnerable. He is so anxious to be a big agent, which I suppose technically he is, and for everyone to know it. Every film script I mention he adds ‘Yes I told you about that last Feb’ or ‘As a matter of fact I suggested that to Brando before he called you.’ or ‘I know I'm a pompous old ass Rich and Eliz hates me but I have made the biggest deals ever for both of you. I am good, I really am good, at making the big deal.’

We adjourned after work to the Trattoria across the Pontina and had wine. We pontificated on the transience of all human affairs and how actors were peculiarly subject to fate [...].

Talked to D. F. Zanuck at lunchtime about settling $55,000,000 (or is it $75m) out of court.
¹²⁶
We shall see.

Thursday 22nd
We continued with the ‘Sins’. After the first shot (at 9.15) I went to see rushes. They seemed good. Then back to the stage for the second shot, about 10.30, then back to the theatre to see the first
¹
/
₂
of
Shrew
. It's beginning to look like a good ‘un.