Anyone else excited about the Richard Burton diaries?

The book will be released on the 23rd. The sneak peak in the daily mail is great.

• No, not particularly.

• YAWN.

• i'm interested in his diaries. I will read them when i find them available. He was a man of intellect and a womanizer... He was also Elizabeth Taylor's greatest passion if not love...:)

  http://www.seraphicpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/burtontaylora.jpg

• the most boring couple on earth. ET married a gazillion times after she dumped him. What does that say about their love.

• They ran some excerpts in PEOPLE. Underwhelming. A man of intellect? I guess so, relative to most other Hollywood actors, but that's not saying much.

• Burton was a cheater and a drinker, he couldn't overcome the weakness he had for booze and women. Elizabeth was a passionate woman who felt in love with him, but she couldn't stand such treatment from her husband and lover. She tried twice with Richard, Richard couldn't change so she gave up... There was great passion in their relationship, but it was not healthy for both of them, especially for a woman like Elizabeth who always needed a man 100% devoted to her.

  http://wdfyfe.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/elizabethreal.jpg

• I got all excited thinking some new Richard Francis Burton material ...

• In The Grand Surprise, The Journals of Leo Lerman, Leo describes meeting ET and basically says she was the most self-absorbed and boring person he'd ever met in a lifetime of meeting self-absorbed celebs. His best friends were Callas and Dietrich, two "world class" narcissists as he describes them. But ET was even worse than those two. Someone on DL recommended this book and it is available cheap/used on Amazon.

• Lol, ok R8. However, i believe that Elizabeth all of her life was just a very sensitive big child .She was self-absorbed, yes, but she was also caring to the troubled souls.

  http://i2.cdn.turner.com/dr/hln/www/release/sites/default/files/imagecache/textarticle_640/2011/12/15/kim-elizabeth-taylor-jewels_0.jpg

• I also forgot to tell you how much this woman moves me in her movies and as a presence. In this video i find her so sweet and childish and LOVABLE.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DwSHSc00wtjs

• I thought it was Claire Bloom who was his great love - in the 50s anyway, and he also had a heavy affair with Susan Strasberg, among all the others he banged. The whole Taylor thing swept them up in so much publicity that he had no alternative but to go along with it and pile up the money until the offers dried up - by the end of the 60s. By then they were both doing whatever rubbish they were offered, together or singly. The Burtons great years did not last that long in point of fact.

• I have that book in front of me too R8. Got it after I saw it listed here under good memoirs. I'll have to look for his quotes on ET. I think it's funny how Lohan is getting all this crap for her acting. Liz was no great actress. There are a lot of parallels between LL and ET. Liz has classier parents tho.

• Read two big excerpts in the UK press, and was underwhelmed. The papers usually pay big bucks for juicy bits, thus leading us poor saps to buy the book for more more more. In this case, no thanks. Burton drank all the juice. Given his alcoholism it's amazing he managed any diary writing at all; but except as a basic log of immense wealth and fame, it's sorry stuff. Jet-set chit-chat and self-destruction.

• I think that Richard was competitive with Elizabeth. She was so famous and glamorous, he couldn't follow through...He couldn't stand her extravagant way of life but he was also finding it appealing... He was stuck-up and could become abusive when he was drunk and i bet many times he hurt her with his attitude. But Richard also could win her back because he was very eloquent and tender with words. He knew how to use them. However, his grand mistakes made vain and sensitive Elizabeth to realize that they cannot be together forever in a marriage or two. I don't know really if it was possible for a womanizer like Richard to had one great love in his life. I can't understand men like him. He was attractive though, very attractive, lol.

  http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/wales/ukwpics/famouspics/richard-burton.jpg

• I saw them in 1970 when they appeared on stage at a film exhibition in London, sponsored by the Sunday Times. I was in my early 20s - they were there with director Joseph Losey and critic Dilys Powell, as they were protesting that their dud film (Liz & Losey's) Secret Ceremony was a giant flop and had been re-cut and sold to television (in those days films could not be shown on tv until 5 years had passed since their release) and they were furious about it. She wore a gypsy type dress and flashed that diamond, he was in a safari suit and ranted as usual saying everyone thought he just took jobs for the money. Well, he did.

• R15, would love to hear more stories from you about London, whatever.

• Taylor - great beauty, not a great actress. Burton - great actor, wasted his talent in booze. Taylor redeemed her selfish, narcissistic life with her AIDS work.

• Damn, and I was thinking this was THE Richard Burton's diaries, and was excited because I thought Burton's frigid wife had burned all his personal papers upon his death. Foo!

• Guys, Taylor was not even just a good actress, she was a GREAT actress. One of the most moving of all actors and actresses of all times. She was not just beautiful but she was also very expressive in her art and she has given right to the point heartfelt performances.

  http://cdn100.iofferphoto.com/img/item/141/677/961/x-y-zee-1972-16x9-widescreen-elizabeth-taylor-09f2f.jpg

• [quote] he was in a safari suit and ranted as usual saying everyone thought he just took jobs for the money. I can't imagine anyone thinking he did the Exorcist II for the artistic merit. The scene on the train: "Leave the girl alone, she belongs to me!" is comedy gold.

• Lol 20. Richard as a person from what i gathered could be pompous and stuffy at certain times. I loved him in 'My Cousin Rachel' and in 'Becket'. Guys, which Richard Burton performances you like the most?

  http://cdn100.iofferphoto.com/img/item/144/861/489/my-cousin-rachel-dvd-olivia-de-havilland-richard-burton-ed378.jpg

• Wow he actually looks good in that photo! My favourite is 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' One of the absolute best film performances by an actor.

• I liked him best in "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold." I've always read the love of Taylor's life was Michael Todd. The love of Burton's life was probably whomever he was with at the moment. That is typical of alcoholic womanizers.

• I want to know more about when he "experimented" with homosexuality.

• An earlier book, with many of the same pages, was published in the late 1980s. It is very interesting on some level (he hated Lucille Ball when the Burtons appeared on "The Lucy Show"). As his life goes on acting is almost a hobby, and a way to get more money. Burton is less likeable in the diaries with each entry.

• R24, there are bisexual rumors about Richard. I have no idea about specific details or facts about that yet. However, you can see him with Rex Harrison playing a gay couple in the movie 'Staircase'.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staircase_%28film%29

• R26, I am not sure but I believe RB said in an interview that he experimented with homosexuality,apparently lived with another man for some time. I don't have the source, so I can't quote or say with certainty about this. Maybe someone out there knows?

• R27 you probably know this but in case you don't know...read it. In a February 1975 interview with his friend David Lewin, Burton said he "tried" homosexuality. He also suggested that perhaps all actors were latent homosexuals, and "we cover it up with drink". In 2000, Ellis Amburn's biography of Elizabeth Taylor suggested that Burton had an affair with Laurence Olivier and tried to seduce Eddie Fisher,although this was strongly denied by Burton's younger brother Graham Jenkins.

• Didn't he also have an "affair" with Rudi Nureyev? Read it somewhere a million years ago.

  Princess%20Lee

• "Taylor was not even just a good actress, she was a GREAT actress. One of the most moving of all actors and actresses of all times" Not really. She gave a few good performances but she was definitely not a "great actress." She won an academy award for "Butterfield 8" because she had a tracheotomy. She won for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe" but not due to great acting; she WAS Martha. Her relationship with Burton was as violent and dysfunctional as the marriage of George and Martha. The perfect man for her was Mike Todd. Out of all her husbands he was the only one who had the balls to handle her.

• Mike and Richard didn't take any shit from her:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DQaIJhl1cTzI

• Agree with R30- Taylor lived long enough to make a meaningful difference against HIV/AIDS.

• I don't think so r30. Mike Todd was physically and verbally abusive. Taylor would have divorsed him eventually.

• It was sad, reading in his diary, about when he met up with Elizabeth years later to do a play. He basically commented on how she had lost her looks, and her figure was terrible. It was just such a contrast to years earlier, when he wrote that he woke up early just to stare at her beauty. He seems very shallow.

• SCREW BURTON if he indeed said that about Elizabeth. Elizabeth was too much for him anyway. Shallow bastard, who did he think that he was? Adonis? FUCK HIM. ELIZABETH TAYLOR was a true star and a great actress and humanitarian. That Burton dick was just a handsome for a while, pompous, wicked,, stuck-up fucking asshole.

• They were both fat pill-popping lushes. They derserved each other!

• but do the diary entries refer to any encounters with men?

• Just because she raised money for AIDS research, etc, does not make her a great actress - sometimes DL is like the black community who cheered when O.J.Simpson was acquitted. Taylor was a lazy drunk and pill-head and Burton was a great actor. She was an aging beauty who was so self-centered, demanding and either drunk or stoned that the only males who could tolerate her, especially when she was no longer attractive, were gay men. J. Edgar Hoover was gay, as was Roy Cohn - does that make them any less despicable as human beings? Many many people are gay-friendly but that doesn't mean they are my friends.

• I read the excerpts in the DM - Burton is a narcissistic, juvenile drunkard who acts as though his self-indulgence and lack of dicipline are admirable character traits. He is very bitchy and was a mean drunk who squandered what talent he had as an actor. I thought his diaries would be scandalous fun but instead they are just boring and depressing.

• Who 'killed' the Paul Newman thread? It does not longer exist. I demand an explanation fuckers.

• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Suddenly Last Summer- her monologue at the end of the film. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? These three performances alone demonstrate how great Taylor could be as an actress. I say "could be" because she really coasted through some roles, especially when she got older.

• R41 don't take seriously Elizabeth Taylor haters. They really have no evidence that Taylor was not a great actress. Elizabeth shined in her movies because she was great in them, she delivered unique performances, you are not blind to see that, only deaf people can be blind.

• I wish it was THIS Sir Richard Burton. The Socratic Zone Appendix to his Arabian Nights translation showed there was but nothing he didn't know about arabian sodomy.

  http://www.kalipedia.com/kalipediamedia/penrelcul/media/200707/18/relycult/20070718klpprcryc_676.Ies.SCO.jpg

• R43, THAT Sir Richard Burton is a character in the film Zero Patience.

• I once read Richard Burton had so many pock marks all over his face that they oozed booze ,which made his face reeked of a horrible stench. However,he had extremely beautiful and hypnotic eyes. Also, when Richard Burton died, the coroner said he never saw a spinal cord like Richard's in his career. The coroner said Richard drank so much in his life time that his entire spinal cord was crystallized and brittle to the point had he lived longer, his spinal cord would have broke down and cracked.

• "They really have no evidence that Taylor was not a great actress." You poor blithering fangurl. You must not have seen very many of your idol's movies, because in many of them she gave pitiful performances. One of them was in "Cleopatra"; one critic declared Taylor "overweight, overpaid, and undertalented."

• R46 i don't give a damn about this ''one'' critic that trashed Taylor's performance. I find her splendid and very convincing in 'Cleopatra. Cleopatra would love to look like Taylor in reality! Many critics love Taylor's performances but you feel the need to stand on the negative comments for your own dark reasons...

• Sneak PEEK, OP.

• ET was a great actress. She really didn't care much about her career after her second Oscar. She had been an actress for 25 years at that point and she was only 34. She just got tired of it.

• Elizabeth Taylor could be great and after the second Oscar she received. She was AWESOME in ''Reflections in a Golden Eye'', ''Secret Ceremony'', ''Zee and Co.'', ''The Mirror Crack'd'', ''Between Friends'', ''Alice in Wonderland'', ''Return Engagement'' how could you forget all these? I'm looking forward to find the Franco Zeffirelli movie ''Il giovane Toscanini'', i'm sure that Elizabeth is perfect in it.

• Awesome in "Between Friends"? That was first film that came to mind as proof she wasn't such a great actress.

• "i don't give a damn about this 'one' critic that trashed Taylor's performance. I find her splendid and very convincing in 'Cleopatra. Cleopatra would love to look like Taylor in reality! Many critics love Taylor's performances but you feel the need to stand on the negative comments for your own dark reasons..." There was more than "one critic" who bashed Taylor's performance, dear. There's a good biography, "Burton", by Melvyn Bragg. It features excerpts from the diaries and is very thorough and well-balanced. Here's an excerpt (pg.177) about the reviews Taylor got for "Cleopatra": The reviews were not nice; possibly the worst she had ever, would ever or could ever receive. "Overweight, overbosomed, overpaid and undertalented, she set the acting profession back a decade." "Miss Taylor is monotony in a slit skirt." "She is essentially a physical creature, no dept of emotion apparent in her kohl-laden eyes, no modulation in her voicethat too often rises to fishwife levels." Then they got worse.