The Richard Burton Diaries (82 page)

And that's not all. I mean that chap Herbert was indeed a box where sweets compacted lay. I am as thrilled by the English language as I am by a lovely woman or dreams, green as dreams and deep as death.
⁹⁶
Christ I'm off and running and will lecture them until iambic pentameter comes out of their nostrils. Little do they know how privileged they are to speak and read and think in the greatest language invented by man. I'll learn them.

We went to see a houseboat last night, after finishing work, with Simmy. It was the houseboat ‘with the Yellow Roof’ as Elizabeth describes it. As usual, her instinct is uncanny. It turned out to be a beauty. We might buy it, if it's for sale. We dined with Paul-Emile and his wife, sister-in-law and niece on board
his
houseboat. I became rather sloshed but not offensively so, I hope. I told him about the film offer in re Nobile and Amundsen.
⁹⁷
[...]

I have been offered, is that spelled right?, a million dollars for
one month
of this diary. Somebody is mad. And I is not it. But I wonder if it would be interesting. I would, after all, like to read the diary of an office-worker. Might people be interested in reading a month in the life of an actor, especially one married to such an exotic wife as mine?

Wednesday 30th
It's 6 o'clock in the morning and I have been awake since 4.30 approximately. [...] I am going to have a bowl of soup in about ten minutes, the kind one makes oneself out of a packet, as it were. We have a couple of hot-plates.

I feel roughly one thousand years old, and have the old familiar arthritis ‘old Arthur’ back. But not in my shoulders or neck or arms but for a change in my left hip. When I get these little bursts, I realize the stoicism of people like Kathleen Nesbitt and little Gwen, who live with it for years without a complaint. Mine, compared with theirs, is nothing but a kind of mild, dull toothache. [...]

[...] The piece I wrote,
at his request
, about Roddy Mann's book called, I think,
The Headliner
, is quoted in the
Evening Standard
against me.
⁹⁸
‘Burton Lashes Out,’ it says in the headlines. They also say, insultingly, that I mix a metaphor. It is quite deliberate. Idiots, but it is extraordinary how sensitive the insensitive press is when it is attacked. But I have to think that like most men Roddy Mann is venal, and will do anything for a mention in the newspapers, and sad it is because he fairly bristles with insignificance. I could write better with my left foot. But what the devil or the dickens or the hell, we have to make a living or die and there are worse things than writing for the popular press,
like dying of malnutrition in Biafra.
⁹⁹
I shall now have my soup and nutrite myself for another day. God save us all and Oscar Wilde.
¹⁰⁰

[...] Simmy came to work with me yesterday and nearly ruined a ‘take’ by laughing in the middle of it. Fortunately her snort was not picked up on the sound-track. She's not the only one. A lot of people apparently find Rex and myself very difficult to watch without laughing. Sometimes indeed we laugh at each other. I hope the paying audience feel the same way.

[...] We have a little holiday this weekend. Tomorrow, I mean Friday is a French national holiday. I must find out what for.
¹⁰¹
A letter from Phil yesterday in which he goes into ecstasies over E's performance in
Secret Ceremony
.
¹⁰²
[...]

Thursday 31st
An early start today as we have to stop for lunch at 12.15 for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. They are visiting E's studios and then ours, if the old man is not too tired and are taking lunch there. So this day we have to be ready to start shooting at ten instead of 12 noon. Tonight we fly to Nice in a chartered Mystere. I wonder what she's like. I have become so used to the De Havilland by now. We shall come back by train on the famous Train Bleu.
¹⁰³
[...]

I spent most of yesterday in a bath with a lot of body make-up on, which meant when I came home that Elizabeth had to wash my back. I was back to the mines again, and the wives washing their husbands’ backs clean of the grime of the colliery.

[...] Must leave for work, it is going on for 9.30 and I mustn't be late or it upsets my whole day. E's still asleep.

NOVEMBER

Friday 1st, Cannes
¹⁰⁴
Well here we are on the
Kalizma
in Cannes, and it was silly to make this journey because the weather here is terrible while in Paris it is beautiful and even in England. And in the
Nice-Matin
, to accentuate my terror, there is a headline which says: ‘Ramon Novarro, le grand suducteur du [
sic
] cinema muet, ASSASSINE A HOLLYWOOD.‘
¹⁰⁵
Poor bastard. There but for the grace of God...

[...] Everybody on board was charming and gracious except for Norma's boy-friend, who is suffering from a bad attack, which may be permanent, of refusing to be impressed. I feel sorry for him poor bastard. He was one of those pop-singers who didn't survive his first success. He went to Westminster, so he says, which surprised me as he doesn't have a public school accent. He was fired, he says with some pride. His name is Gordon something and I kept on calling him Neil.
¹⁰⁶
That didn't help. He is not worthy of Norma.

The boys [...] were lovely and Mike is now only an inch away from being my height. Chris is shooting up too. The latter asks such naive and sweet questions that it makes me breathless.

We flew back, instead of taking a train, because we couldn't get proper sleepers on the Wagon Lit of the blue train [...]. Mike, reluctant to leave on the second leg of the journey to Bristol and school, said ‘Richard, make just one more corny pun before we leave.’ Bloody cheek! He genuinely hates school, but I'm afraid he simply has to stay there. At least until next summer.

I took the whole mob to Colombe d'Or, and after a splendid meal with splendid wines the owners refused to let me pay.
¹⁰⁷

Tuesday 5th, Paris
The last few paragraphs of the preceding entry were written last night after work. The weekend was so thoroughly disorganized that I couldn't settle down to either read or write. One night for instance none of us went to bed until 4, 5, or six in the morning. And as a result of this behaviour I slept one day until 4.30 in the afternoon! Now I've never done that before in my life, except possibly when I have worked nights, and I doubt it even then.

Yesterday I felt ghastly and found that only the hair of the dog would meet the justice of the case. So I tried Fernet Branca, but couldn't face it.
¹⁰⁸
After a time I tried some bacon and eggs which I managed to get down and keep down – I had been throwing up before leaving for work. I was then able to drink slowly a couple of Martinis or so which stopped the shakes. Later on I had a couple more and another two before going home. [...]

I took a sleeping pill and didn't get to sleep until 6 in the morning! What a night. [...] So I read most of the night, a book on cricket by E. W. Swanton.
¹⁰⁹
He's not very evocative and nothing like as good as Cardus and John Arlott.
¹¹⁰
But he helped to while away the night.

Princess Elizabeth came over to the set. She is very pretty but quite impertinent. I am not absolutely sure that she might be a little nasty behind one's back. Tiny touch of the daggers. Just a feeling. She seemed to enjoy Rex's
inability to remember lines. [...] She was off to dinner with Warren Beatty. She was quite excited but pretended she wasn't.

Off to work in a minute. Oh the smelly man, who is Norma's boyfriend, on the train home from the South of France got drunk and smashed the glasses dishes etc in the train's dining car. He was taken off at some stop en route by the police whereupon he started hitting them. They can keep you for a long time in French gaols if they want to and I was surprised to find that he got out the next morning. Apparently Norma said that it was an act ‘passionalle’ or whatever it is, and that she'd been insulted by some Arab on the train and her friend was defending her honour. So they took her word for it and he was released. Besides she's a very pretty sexy looking woman.

Election Day today in America, and Guy Fawkes.
¹¹¹
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.