The Richard Burton Diaries (72 page)

Election Day today in America, and Guy Fawkes.
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I hope it's not an omen.

Wednesday 6th
Quarter past nine in the morning. Just called Dick Hanley to find out who'd won the Election. Nixon is ahead but they're waiting for the results of the Texas and California voting before they're sure.
¹¹²

Yesterday I worked on and off all day, Rex going mad with his lines again. Maria Callas arrived and since I was in a reading mood she was not welcome. She seems pathetic to me despite her great reputation as an opera singer-actress. She said how she was meeting some Italian in ten days time who wanted her to do
Medea
as a film, but the operatic version, whereas she insists on doing it as in the original, i.e. without singing.
¹¹³
[...] I summoned up as much good nature with Callas however as I could and took her on the set a couple of times to watch a couple of snippets that Rex and I were doing. She averred as to how fascinating she found it all, and after a time, much to my relief went to Elizabeth's studio which she'd already visited once. E told me later that she too found her rather sad. She was there when E and Caroline were playing Gin-Rummy and sat and watched like a child. At one moment E was beaten easily by a quick Gin by Caroline and said ‘shit’. At this Callas shot up and said in great agitation ‘Oh no I've never heard such words, Oh no, no, no, never heard such things.’ All this time pacing up and down in great ado. E and Caroline were astonished. Now what was that all about? Next time she comes to see me I'm going to try ‘Merde’ on her and see what happens. She is not beautiful but her face has a black-eyed animation which can sometimes be very attractive. She has massive legs and what seems a slender body from the
waist up. She has bags under her eyes and wears dark glasses most of the time. Perhaps she cries a lot. She is obviously very lonely after the Onassis marriage. Now she obviously wants to do something that will stagger the artistic world and make him jealous and prove to him that all he's gained is a pretty socialite, while in her he's lost a genius. Quite right too I suppose but without knowing her, and if I had the choice, I'm afraid I'd elect for Jackie Kennedy. She sounds more fun. And in snaps anyway looks prettier.

[...] I've had a bad sore throat for the last three days and a blister on my tongue, but this morning both seem better. [...] I cut down my smoking yesterday and didn't drink a drop all day.

Thursday 7th
The hacking cough that has kept me awake for nights was killed last night by a pill. [...] My sore throat is gone. I haven't coughed once since I awoke. I have a bottle of Perrier straight from the fridge at my right hand, cigarettes at my left, the Avenue Montaigne below and in front of me, it's ten to nine in the morning and apart from the fact that Nixon has won the Yankee Election, all's right with the world
¹¹⁴
. Of course a child dies of starvation every minute somewhere in the world, Biafrans are being slaughtered in ambush, napalm is burning babies in Vietnam, and what shall we do about it? ‘Good Works’ as those hideous upper-class Victorians revelled in. A cauldron of soup and a loaf for Mrs Lewis in the village. She's not too well. Read
Pilgrim's Progress
to dying Mr Jones, illiterate Mr Jones, and go home afterwards to a 7 course dinner, swollen with sanctity.
¹¹⁵
A great house, fifty servants, sweeping lawns, follies and vistas and oak drives and no drainage in the village.

Hullo, and what's the matter with me?

We had a charming and very excited letter from Liza yesterday [...]. I have developed a love for that child that is in danger of becoming obsessive. She is so honest about what she wants but generous also. She can of course, as far as I'm concerned, have anything she wants. I have promised her a pony if she gets to Millfield or wherever. I must find out if the school or schools will permit it. I wrote to her yesterday and shall write again shortly.

Yesterday was a miserable working day. [...] I am at that stage, which I reach in every film, where everything seems boring and silly. The same thing happens in the theatre with me too. After a month of a run in a play I become suicidally bored, even with parts of infinite variety like Hamlet. And yet I keep on doing it. I'm a rich man. Why don't I pack it in and do some ‘Good Works’ afore-mentioned? Grow two blades of grass where one grew before and all that. I couldn't grow grass in a window-box or hammer a nail in a wall without hammering a finger in with it. I'd better just continue to give money to charity.

I am reading two books at once: A political biography of de Gaulle and another of Pierre Laval.
¹¹⁶
So far there seems little to choose between them, except height. Scheming, conniving, disloyal monomaniacal monsters, both protesting their love of la belle France. Of the two de Gaulle seems to be the bigger liar. But in politics all men are liars. The squalor of the latest Election campaign in the States has to be read to be disbelieved.

Friday 8th
[...] After completing yesterday's entry with milady fast asleep in bed as I thought, I was looking through some scenes in the script when suddenly the bedroom door opened and standing there in a near diaphanous nightgown with one shoulder slipped on to her arm was E. So I went back to bed for ten minutes. I was unquestionably seduced and I teased her about it for the rest of the day when we talked on the telephone. She was very beautiful. It is a fact that after all these years the girl can still blush. I lost that latter capacity a long long time ago.

I am reading
My Life
by Sir Oswald Mosley between shots at the Studio, but I fear that I shan't get much done today in that direction as I have John Morgan of the
Sunday Times
, John Sullivan, Elliott Kastner [...] all self-invited, coming to visit me at the dressing room.
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Are they on business, are they on pleasure? I wish they'd all go away.

Yesterday was a hard day physically. Rex and I did innumerable shots fighting on the floor of the living room. Now film fighting is relatively easy because one can cheat on angles etc. but when you have to remember to fight like a queer it complicates things. In addition I had to keep in mind that I must keep my head covered at all costs. It follows that since we rolled around on the floor for most of the day that I am a little grazed and a little sore this morning. Not unpleasantly so. I hope it turns out to be as funny as it seemed to the crew.

[...] I have compromised on smoking to the extent that, when I remember, which is most of the time, I don't inhale and only smoke about a
¹
/
₄
inch of the cigarette and throw it away. Costly, but I feel much better for it already. Occasionally, of course, I cannot resist a deep sensual drag right down to my ankles.

So after this day is over we have three delicious days off. We plan to hide in the hotel and not go out at all, except perhaps for an occasional meal. I shall read and read and read.

Saturday 9th
Another rough day physically. I had to pick up a supine paralysed Cathleen Nesbitt saying to a disgusted Rex Harrison: ‘She's seized up
tonight. I'll lift and you pull.’ Meaning of course that I would lift her from the sheet while he removed it. Well indeed to God, either Rex or the camera or I, buggered it up every time, so that I had to do it twenty times. I shall have arms like Marlon Brando on my birthday. Which is tomorrow. I'll be forty-three years old. [...]

Anyway, John Morgan came to ask me to do an interview for Thames TV. I said I would. With him was a sort of slip of a girl called Foot. Dingle, I said, Michael and Ebbw Vale.
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[...] Give my love, I said to her as she left, give my love, though he will never remember me. We met, I said archly, a thousand years ago in a miners’ meeting during the wars of the roses. He'll remember you, she said. Who could forget you? Anyway give my love to Ebbw Vale. She was as mini-skirted as a Californian Palm tree. The hem was only slightly below the neck. [...]

Then, in order, I had Shirley MacLaine and a friend, who purports to be a Swede and a Sexologist.
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That is to say she is a sort of psychologist, so Rex tells me, he knows her, and they show you filthy pornographic photographs and sort of register the mental size of your tink. [...]

Then there was Elliott Kastner and somebody called Bick Something, and Bettina for lunch, and John Sullivan. The latter is in a desperate state. He is shrewdly lumpish and his wife is equally so. He cannot match her, except for physical beauty (they are both as handsome as hell) and she has the stamp of failed inordinate ambition written all over her like a Dead Sea scroll. So what does one do. I have given them $100,000 [...] about two years ago. So what does one do? Hide.

Sunday 10th
I am now 43. It's nine in the morning. The sky is grey but it has a look of turning into sunshine later on. Yesterday was wholly delightful. We drank vodka screwdrivers, but not too many. We taught Caroline to play ‘Yahtsee’ [...]. I'd forgotten how much fun it is. Later we, just E and I, played Gin Rummy for $1,000 a point! I won $648,000! I refused to accept a cheque. It has to be paid in kind, I said.

I received some nice presents. From Gaston, which he can ill afford, a huge tome called
Gloire de la France
. From Ron, an oldish
Oeuvres de Molières
in eight exquisite little volumes.
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From Bob Wilson a twenty dollar bill when the Americans were still on the Gold Standard. From Jim Benton an old but beautifully preserved sword-stick. From Elliott Kastner an overcoat made out of some kind of leather. [...] From Claudye and Gianni a tweed pair of
trousers which they had copied from a pair they had given me about a year ago. I shall get more today. I mean more presents, not trousers. [...]

Two more delicious days off, the French take tomorrow, Armistice Day, as a national holiday. We don't I think. All I seem to remember is two minutes’ silence in school and selling penny poppies made out of wire and paper. They were made by blind people, I believe. How quickly the world forgets or doesn't even know. A group of children were recently asked what was the Battle of Britain.
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They not only didn't know, they didn't know with what weapons it was fought.

Both E and I have had congratulatory telegrams from Richard Zanuck for our ‘great’ ‘brilliant’ ‘superb etc.’ performances in our respective films. Donen and Rex too. It's a long howl to that day in New York, it was actually Shakespeare's birthday, when just about to play
Hamlet
at the Lunt-Fontanne, I was served at the stage door with a writ suing us for $55 million.
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Settle out of court, of course, after three ghastly years and innumerable depositions.

Monday 11th
Armistice Day and cold and grey. We shall probably go out to lunch for the first time for ages, I mean in a restaurant. If open we'll go to Coq Hardy and have some chicken pie.
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E gave me a mink coat and I shall wear it. A mink coat! It's very dark brown and the nap is close and short and it gleams and catches light as only a mink can. It comes to half way down my thighs. I hope I don't look like a fool of a money-lender! E says not. Any way, short of being robbed, I shall keep it forever. Other presents were three books from Don Waugh, my stand-in, who gave me
Castles of Europe
and
Palaces of Europe
and
A Pictorial History of the Silent Screen
.
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Dick Hanley and John Lee gave me a thin zip-around briefcase from Hermes. Beautiful to the touch. Nella, E's maid, gave me a silver frame to keep the children's photographs in, and she worried if it was too small. Caroline and Jane clubbed together to give me a jacket, very with it, which zipped up into a roll-top collar. [...] Sara and Francis sent me a lovely thick cashmere sweater with a matching scarf. I really could start a boutique with the number of cardigans jumpers and sweaters I have, and yet I never stop giving them away.

We stayed in all day and read. [...] I read all the political comment in the ‘quality’ papers about Nixon as President,
Sunday Times, Observer
and
Sunday Telegraph
. I then read in succession my two presents:
Castles of Europe
and
Palaces
of the same. Fascinating little pocket histories but mostly photographs and drawings and reproductions of tapestries like the Bayeux. A [...] book
called
The Double Helix
by a scientist-physicist yclept James D. Watson.
¹²⁵
It is an account of the search for and discovery of DNA at Cambridge. According to the book DNA is a molecule of heredity and to ‘know its structure and method of reproduction enables science to know how the forms of life are ordered from one generation to the next.’ On the jacket is a quote from Lord Snow: ‘It opens a new world for the general non-scientific reader.’ I now append a quotation from the book.
¹²⁶
It is on p. 190. ‘Happily he let out that for years organic chemistry had been arbitrarily favouring particular tautomeric forms over their alternatives on only the flimsiest of grounds. In fact, organic-chemistry textbooks were littered with pictures of highly improbable tautomeric forms. The guanine picture I was thrusting towards him was almost certainly bogus. All his chemical intuition told him it would occur in the keto form. He was just as sure that thymine was also wrongly assigned an enol configuration. Again he strongly favoured the Keto alternative.’ Really milord! Still I stayed up until 2.30 reading it. [...]

Tuesday 12th
[...] We did indeed go to lunch at the Coq d'Or and have chicken pie. And wine, which was my undoing. I came home and slept for about five hours so my mate tells me. Disgraceful. Hence my being able to sit up half the night, writing. In addition, I was in a pub-crawling mood and insisted that we stop and have one. E was very good and complied. [...]

I wore my mink coat to everyone's satisfaction, including my own. It really is a splendid fur. [...] I shall wear my mink to work and show off and try and make Rex jealous.