The Richard Burton Diaries (85 page)

Aaron, Bob Wilson and I went back to the Hotel together and went down to the basement bar for a drink. Hebe Dorsey of the
Tribune
came in and said that she and an American called Dwyer, who she says might be the next Mayor of New York, have fallen in love.
¹⁵⁴
She is perhaps 45 and he 61. He is married and she says he says that she transformed his sex life. So there. Later we went to Aaron's room where a woman said, looking at Elizabeth, she's not so beautiful, what's all the fuss about. I asked her why she didn't marry a hatchet and make a perfect match. She was Sam Pisar's the lawyer's wife.
¹⁵⁵

Wednesday 20th
It's 7 in the morning, I've been up since 6, and it's still dark. Not, of course as dark as I. Doomed and damned and dissolute and desperate and dull and dying. Alliterative despair. I get a few days off soon. I need them. I was in a mad mood last night and accused E of talking too suspiciously much about Warren Beatty and his various middle-aged amours. She said it was because she loved a good gossip. A likely story, I cackled venomously, you don't have a very good record sweetheart. Christ if you can marry Eddie Fisher you can marry anybody, I said, and having created wounds, rubbed the salt in nicely for an hour or so. The trouble is of course that I love the old bag too much. I must try and be dispassionate. That, of course, will be the day. But it is perfectly obvious to me, I am after all an old hand at the game, that one way to attract a woman is to pay a lot of attention to
other
women. It drives them mad. I remember screwing everybody in a large company over a year or so to get one woman. I got her. I wish I hadn't now because she was an evil virtuous bitch and filthy minded. But, he said with pride, I got her. There was another woman in a film with me which contained hundreds of good-looking extras. It must have cost me fifty ‘crowd artistes’ to get the one well-married beautiful lamentable girl. But I got her, he said defiantly. I know them, Dylanesquely, by the thousands. Anyway since
this
leopard can and has changed his spots I have to believe that the other one can ... and has. Better bloody had.

I had a letter from Kate yesterday. It was sweet and repetitive of my letter to her. She must be a good student, little ape, as she picks up other people's ideas so quickly. I wish I was her teacher. I wish I had the patience. I'd teach
her to avoid all the pitfalls of my half-baked education. As it is she is stuck with Syb's eighth-baked variety. That won't help. But Syb is as good as gold, fair dues.

[...] So now having written myself into an even more melancholy mood I will spritz myself up with a letter to Kate.

I've written a letter to Kate but it hasn't spritzed me up. So bugger it. It was Elizabeth's saint's day yesterday and since so many French people gave her presents she felt obliged to give a party. It was pleasant too and good to see how everybody adores her. She's a good old thing and not bad-looking. She'll be awake in a minute so that's something to look forward to.

Thursday 21st
Elizabeth's father died yesterday afternoon and I had to break the news to her. She was like a wild animal even though we've been expecting his death for some years. But of course there is no love comparable to a man's love for his daughter or vicky verka.
¹⁵⁶
I know to my cost. My passion for my daughters is ludicrous. Whether it's reciprocated as in Elizabeth's case, is another matter. I feel like one who, stabbed in the back, is dying of his wounds. If you know what I mean. I cannot bear suffering in others. I'd much rather have it myself and I'm no masochist, but suffering at second hand is rough enough in its way. Despite all E's protestations about her mother over the years, like the good girl she is, she now only wants to protect and cherish her. Me too. Death is a son-of-a-bitch. The swinish unpredictable, uncharitable, thoughtless, fuck-pig enemy. [...] He's done a lot of mindless damage. One day we'll cure the waster.

We fly over the Pole this afternoon. Francis will probably be buried on Saturday, and we'll probably come back on Sunday. There is, thank God, work to be done. We'll bring Sara back with us. That is if she wants to. I think, after the initial shock, that Sara could find herself a fairly congenial life. That is, I think she might enjoy being with us because we lead relatively exciting lives, and there's my vast family who would consider it an honour to fuss and pamper her. She could very easily be elected, unanimously, on the first count, as Chairwoman of the local whist-drive in any place she wishes to go. Including Pontrhydyfen.

Last night when Elizabeth was talking to her mother, I kept on screaming at her drunkenly and hopelessly to tell her mother to come back to Paris with us after the funeral. Elizabeth ignored me, which infuriated me. What I didn't realize was that Sara was telling E how she'd woken up to find Francis dead, and how she'd massaged his heart frantically, and given him the last agonising kiss-of-life. He'd been dead for an hour. I am illegitimately self-centred and take all tragedy and sins upon myself. Elizabeth's worth glows gooder all the
time. She might even make me good one day. Jesus, I sound like a latter-day Christ, if the pun is pardoned.

[...] I wish our children were with us. They would distract us a bit perhaps, or perhaps they wouldn't. Children and pups are very good value. Sometimes. I'll be acerbic to the death. That rotten latter bastard.

Ah! what it must feel like to have somebody die, somebody that you genuinely love, somebody of your own blood and bone that you worship with an intensity near to madness, what it must be like. Much worse than one's own death because I'll wrestle with the bastard. But when Ivor or Cis die, somebody hold me down boys. I cannot conceive of life without the knowledge that Ivor and Cis are not [sic] at the end of some tenuous cabled line. And chaps it will be alright if I die, but what's going to happen to me if she dies. I think I'll turn into a tyre on a bus and roll forever and forever over innocent feet.

Friday 22nd, Beverly Hills Hotel
¹⁵⁷
[...] It's now half past eight in the evening. Howard and Ron and I went to the funeral parlour and picked out the coffin, they call them caskets here, and did it by simply asking which is the most expensive. This one, said the man who was lugubriously invented of course by Charles Dickens. It is copper-lined, he said, to afford protection. Against what? Worms? They are already stirring inside poor Francis. Damp? Graham just arrived from Wales as a combined family representative from the family. I don't know what the hell they think I am. But after all it's a good and typically genereous gesture. Whoops there goes my spelling again. [...]

DECEMBER

Sunday 1st, Plaza Athenee [Paris]
I really must keep this diary up every day. It's hell to start up again once you've missed a few days.

Gaston's youngest brother was killed yesterday in a road accident which completes a splendid ten days. This has been a terrible year so far. Our films have done less well than usual. There was my fracas with Tony Richardson over
Laughter in the Dark
.
¹⁵⁸
There was André's suicide. There was and is Ivor's paralysis. There was E's operation which she's still suffering the side effects from. There was her father's death last week. I shan't be sorry when those wild bells ring out the old and ring in the new.
¹⁵⁹
And there is a month to go!

The week has been a mixed nightmare. It has taken us both until today to partially recover from the two murderous flights over the Poles. The flight going was long in time – it took about 12 hours – but it was smooth. The flight
back was shorter, about ten hours, but the seat belts were on practically all the way. What frightening drunken bores those long flights are. I shall never do one again unless it's, as it was last weekend, a matter of life and death.

We worked well enough last week and are either on or ahead of schedule so I'm told. Rex is a bit worrying latterly. He's become much less queer. In fact he's hardly queer at all – he's almost professor Higgins.
¹⁶⁰
However his natural lightness will probably carry him through.

People have been very kind to Sara and Elizabeth about Francis's death. Hundreds of letters telegrams wreaths for the funeral and flowers for suite etc. (Francis received short but good obits in most of the papers.) A notable exception was Frank Sinatra. What a petulant little sod he is. Edie Goetz says that he was annoyed because E had called him on Mia's behalf!
¹⁶¹
‘Bleah,’ as Peanuts would say.
¹⁶²

However, there was some good news even if it was only professional. It appears that
Where Eagles Dare
, a film I made earlier this year is a thrilling film and is likely to be a huge grosser. The few people who've seen it are enraptured. It's a
Boy's Own Paper
fantasy with a vengeance. I kill half the German Army.

[...] My brother who had flown over as a representative of the family who had a whip-round for the purpose, was a tower of strength, fetching and carrying and doing a lot of the dirty work and occasionally having to hold me down.

Ron Berkeley and Valerie too were enormously helpful, particularly the former. [...]

The funeral was well managed though my gums ached to get hold of the Bible when the old lady whose teeth kept on dropping was reading from it. And the family behaved beautifully. E was dewy-eyed but in control. That old bastard of an Uncle Howard Young, who's been using and robbing Francis all his life was weeping worse than anybody
¹⁶³
He's 92 and perhaps could feel death's icy hands. He told me later over the funeral baked meats that he had $25,000,000. I hope you're going to leave it to the family, I said. ‘No,’ he explained, ‘You have made your name and Elizabeth hers but I will be forgotten unless I leave my money to an Institution with my name on it.’ ‘Good luck,’ I said with a smile like a death's head. Later Howard, of all people, said he felt sorry for the old robber, and in the car on the way home Eliz said the same thing. Now all these years I've been hearing what a mean monster this Howard
Young is, so in my inimitable way I blew my top. Irastosably so. Every four-letter word in the book and some that aren't. I do, of course, choose my moments well to shout at my wife, like after her father's funeral. Ah well!

[...] We had Thanksgiving Dinner on Thursday night given by E. It went very well it appears, but we left early, me taken out by the ear by E, as we were still living half on California time and half European. Niven was there, smooth urbane witty and nice. [...]

Monday 2nd
Yesterday I awoke fairly earlyish and mucked around with the diary. I showered and shaved and reheated yesterday's soup for breakfast. Over the weekend, having started and put it down after a few chapters I finished
My Life
by Osbert Sitwell.
¹⁶⁴
It is a fascinating account of the political idiocy that was going on in my childhood. And what a brilliant egomaniac it was who could so delude himself about the temper of the naturally conservative British that he could preach Pacifism as his creed on one hand and dress his followers in blackshirts and uniforms, himself included, on the other. The latter to the suspicious and uneducated masses was symbolic of the thing they dreaded most, militancy and war. To add to the fear that everyone in my childhood suffered from, the fool allowed himself to be seen with Mussolini on the balcony of the Piazza Venezia taking the fascist salute in a march-past of the ‘might’ of the pathetic Italian Army. He let it be known that he had had many interviews with Hitler. But the maniac, and there is no question about it that the man was a little touched, if he'd remained in the Labour Party and become very remotely its leader, if he'd preached the same Pacifism from the by now reasonably staid Labour Platform with no Nazi and Fascist salutes and no private black-shirted army to frighten the ordinary bloke into ridicule, he might quite easily have swept the Tories out of power in 1935. And everything might have been very different. Some of his condescension about my class, the class that I knew so well, is pathetic and a perfect example of the total lack of understanding of the aristocrat of the then-called working class. I think in the end that though he was capable of a dazzling turn of phrase, he was essentially humourless. And the humourless man is in deadly danger, more than any other, of deluding himself. Hitler (1889–1945) and Mussolini (1883–1945), especially the latter with his posturing and his violin, obviously didn't have a grain. And they both deluded themselves cosmically. [...]

Tuesday 3rd, Paris
This is an entry just for the sake of an entry. Yesterday was desperate. I began alright but suddenly a drunken maudlin Rachel Harrison appeared with a drunk but not maudlin Elizabeth Harris. They both looked battered and both had very cheap looking dyed blonde hair. They both looked
like tarts. I fled from them to my room where I found Hebe Dorsey who stayed for
four hours
. Shortly afterwards Hugh French arrived and both of them plus Bob Wilson proceeded to get drunk. Bob asked me what I was going to do about Ron if I decided to holiday for the next six months. This in front of a journalist. Ron very quietly told him to shut up. During this time I was drinkless. How dumb and boring people are when they're drunk and you're sober. How dumb and boring I must have been for the greater part of my life. Finally in desperation I had a drink which only succeeded in making me cold and nasty. [...] I arrived home to find milady playing cards with Caroline. I sat down sullenly to read JBS – an autobiography, correction, biography of Haldane of those initials.
¹⁶⁵
Fascinating. [...] I felt nicely tired and went to bed about eleven o'clock. At midnight or a little later I was awoken by E who asked me if I wanted a sleeping pill! I nearly went mad. It turned out that I was talking in my sleep and she thought I was awake, but even so she knows I wouldn't take a sleeping pill anyway. Well after shouting at each other for a bit E went and made herself some soup while I continued to read Haldane. We turned out the lights about 2.30 or 3.00. This time I had difficulty in going to sleep but made it around 4.00 I would guess and slept like a log until 10.00. We made it up as, thank God, we invariably do and we cwched and cuddled.
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