Richard Burton' Diaries

E made me as jealous as vengeance earlier on by saying that she'd called Marlon on the phone and that they had talked for an hour and that he was very solicitous about me. He really is a smugly pompous little bastard and is cavalier about everybody except Black Panthers and Indians.

‘He's been keeping tabs on you,’ said E. That infuriated me even more. That sober self-indulgent obese fart being solicitous about me. You can't get any of those surrounded-by-sycophants one-time-winners on the phone unless they want something from you. Sinatra is the same. Gods in their own mirrors. Distorted mirrors. [...]

"I also attacked Marlon B for embarrassing Ray Stark by taking off his boot to demonstrate that poor Stark wears lifts. I accused Marlon of wearing them too. I think he does though what the devil harm there is in it I don't know. Women wear lifts all the time and I wore them throughout Shrew to make myself look bigger. Also I don't much like looking up at people especially those who were born to be looked down on...."

I've decided after many years of tolerance that I really don't much care for Ray Stark. He's a very little person I think and is wind blown and windy and, though meaning well, is not to be entirely trusted. He is blindingly transparent and his particular immorality offends me. He is greasy handed. His mind is dirty. I shall probably not work with him again. Short sandy and seventh-rate.

Marlon's immorality, his attitude to it is honest and clean. He is a genuinely good man I suspect and he is intelligent. He has depth. It's no accident that he is such a compelling actor. He puts on acts of course and pretends to be vaguer than he is. Very little misses him as I've noticed..."

Frank Sinatra :

"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...."

Tuesday 24th, Puerto Vallarta : It's a long time since I wrote in this thing. I fell by the wayside at the Sinatra house. It must be confessed that he is a very unhappy man – His house is a kind of super motel in shape and idea. A series of very elaborate suites with every possible modern gadget included, vaguely surround a small swimming pool. There is what is known as the rumpus room which contains a pool table and a magnificent toy train set given to Frank by the manufacturers and which he has arranged to have transferred to some children's home or something.

He is a very nice man in short doses but I imagine a bore to live with, especially now with the energy gone and where he is obviously watching his health. His library was quite extensive but ‘Prince’ Mike Romanoff told me that Frank had asked him to choose the books. That may have been of course Mike's intellectual conceit, but I did see lots of copies of Encounter around and I'm bloody sure Francis doesn't read that.

Elizabeth made sheep's eyes at him the whole time, and sometimes he at her. I've never seen her behave like that before and apart from making me jealous – an emotion which I despise – I was furious that he didn't respond!

We out-stayed our welcome and over-stayed it by three or four days, though I was longing to get away. Eventually we did and came back down here to Vallarta. We flew up to Palm Springs and back to LA in Sinatra's jet plane which is called a Gulf Stream jet or something like that.

It's a lovely plane and E of course immediately wanted to buy a similar one. It costs no more than $31/4 m. That's all. What with that and a $1m hospital bill we'd be flat. And the world has changed – I mean our world. Nobody, but nobody, will pay us a million dollars a picture again for a long time.

I've had two financial disasters Staircase and Boom!, and Elizabeth Boom! and Secret Ceremony. We haven't of course fallen very far – we could doubtless still pick up $750,000 a picture which ain't chicken-feed. What is remarkable is that we've stayed up there so long.

Instance Julie Andrews who on the strength of one picture The Horrible Sound of Music has stayed up for about 5 years but now the lads in Hollywood tell me that as a result of two big failures she is really out.5 Not only that but she has had her head turned so it appears from her enormous initial success and winning the Oscar etc., turning up late or not at all and sometimes for days. Well she can always get Blake Edwards to write her a script and he can produce and direct it. How fast the moods change – two years ago she was the darling of America and now she's hardly ever talked about. She doesn't have our consistently antagonistic press and therefore the shocks are still to come.

Wednesday 15th [...] I read yesterday in the LA Times that Frankie Sinatra has ‘come out for Reagan’. That's like Laurel coming out for Hardy.

I shouldn't think either of them has had a thought of their own in their lives except about themselves. Frank was asked by Haber of the Times, ‘Knowing your justly deserved magnanimity and interest in charitable organizations and support for ethnic minorities and the under-privileged etc., how do you feel about Governor Reagan's slashing of the funds for the aged and the blind by $10 million?’ ‘Has he done that?’ said Frankie, ‘I must talk to him about that.‘ Big, as they say, fuckin’ deal.

If we hear shortly that Reagan has only cut the aid-fund to $9,900,000 we shall know that Francis Albert Sinatra's fine Sicilian hand has been behind it again. All either of ‘em can do is count – using their fingers of course. Hathaway suggests that it's pique on Frankie's part. He was given the brush-off by Jack Kennedy. ‘Don't call us Frankie, we'll call you,’ he is reputed to have said to Frankie who had been plaguing him with phone-calls after he was President.

Even Frankie however, despite his monomania, should be able to see that Reagan is patched cardboard and dangerously stupid. Now let's hope that Jesse Unruh beats him in November and leaves Frank with egg on his face again. Silly sod.

Alain Delon :

[...] Miss Schneider impressed me so much, and I saw her a lot when we were doing Sandpiper in Paris and she was doing Pussycat with the Peters O'Toole and Sellers and she was for ever in the bar and so were we, that I simply can't remember what she looks like. I have a vague memory of someone small, I think, and blonde but that's about all. I think Ron would be on more securely prophetic grounds if he warned me of Delon who apparently will go with a Swan to get on.

Now there's a bloke who would like to get Elizabeth Taylor away from Richard Burton if you like. And don't think Ron that he won't try. Look at the publicity for Chrissake, and in Rome too of all places. I mean, he would love to do a Burton on Burton. And I mean, this feller had a go at Elizabeth through an emissary when E and I were lovers in Rome and at the pinnacle of our scandal. Here is a man who will stop at very little.

I don't know him and neither does E but I have an idea that I know his type very well. A sort of perennial juvenile delinquent who gets vicarious kicks out of hob-nobbing with the underworld. Very attractive to women. Not unlike Frank Sinatra and George Raft and Stanley Baker in their various milieux but without, in Frank's case at least, their talent. Actually, I know very little about his acting as I have, as far as I know, only seen him once in a film called Rocco and his brothers which must have been made about 1960.

A Visconti film, I think, in which Delon seemed as queer as an Arab but very very pretty and Visconti (with who, I hear, he set up house for a few years) and the camera lingered lovingly and almost lasciviously over his exquisite little bones in vast close-up after vast close-up. He must have had something though as he is the only thing I remember about the film despite the fact that it was another actor who made the biggest success in the film and won all the Awards and was critics pet etc.

Recently – that is a year or two ago – he was involved with an underworld killing of some kind. His chauffeur-companion, a bad lot with a record who was Delon's ‘bodyguard’ as well was shot dead in Delon's house in Paris or maybe it was an apartment. It was news in France – front page stuff for Paris Presse, Ici Paris, France Soir etc. – but it all died down after a while and I don't know exactly how deeply Delon was compromised. Anyway, he wasn't locked up or anything but spent a lot of time being questioned by the police

Wednesday 27th, Rome :.... I did two scenes today one with Schneider and one with Delon. Delon is surprisingly small. From a distance he looks six feet but close to he is only about 5’ 8".

Saturday 30th, Rome Very short entries. Largely because I'm not getting up early enough in the morning. [...] I worked with Delon all day yesterday. He is a much better actor than I believed. Quite sensitive and all that.

Thursday 7th [...] Another good thing is that apart from 3 scenes I don't have to work with Delon who is so non-actor that I think I would be embarrassed.207 He should be ok though in this part as E says he is marvellous at playing killer-gangsters and so on.

I Am also pleased that I have only one scene with Miss Schneider as from what I hear she is uneasy to work with. [...] Ron, with his usual look of dark foreboding, says that she ruined the film they did in Israel for John Heyman with Richard Harris playing the star male lead and directing which Ron says was meant to be a sweet film about a small boy's adoration for a great veteran footballer but, he said, with more and more and darker and darker foreboding, she raped Mr Harris and by means of the bedroom literally fucked the film up into a love story between herself and Mr Harris.."

‘Ah,’ Ron says, ‘Romy Schneider is the kind who will come in on her days off like pretending that she wants to watch you work because you're a great actor and all that I'm telling you Rich you've got to watch it.’ ‘But Ron. I've met the woman and I thought she was pretty dog-like and wouldn't have been interested in her even in the old days.’ ‘Ah! But she has become very beautiful in the last few years. You wait ‘til you see her.’ ‘OK Ron, OK.

’Yesterday, we worked well. [...] I worked with Romy Schneider for the first time. She is very arch. She displayed none of the ‘temperament’ which apparently manifests itself in screaming at the hairdresser, make-up man etc. and was, on the contrary the soul of modesty. [...]

"On the plane today Ron gave forth with yet another Jeremiad regarding the femme fatale Romy Schneider. This was, of course, after a couple of heavy libations which were by no means his first of the day I suspect. [...]

Laurence Olivier :

The LA Times today announce that Larry has been made a life peer ...Larry told me years ago that he was determined to be the first ‘actor-peer’.

It was a reply to my asking him what worlds did he have left to conquer in our profession. He was in his cups and we were living together at Tower Road in Bev Hills and he was doing Spartacus and I was doing Ice Palace and neither of our careers were sparkling which is why we were doing such bad films.

Larry was tearful because he couldn't get backing for a film of Macbeth which he lusted to do, and I was contemplating retirement from acting and writing instead – not for a living, not for money. I was already a dollar millionaire and with the inexpensive Syb could have lived like a prince for the rest of my life. I wanted to write because I sought for some kind of permanence, a cover-bound shot at immortality and not a rapidly dating film and acting to match.

Well he's made his ambition to be a peer but not to film Macbeth. Perhaps one will follow the other now, but not if I can get in first. I'll be interested to see the reaction of the British Press to both Larry's peerage and my CBE. Larry's is so sensational an elevation that he might take the heat off my award and the stuff about me being a traitor to Britain for running away to Switzerland and not paying taxes. I remember being lumped with Chaplin and Noel and somebody else as instances of rats leaving a sinking ship and all that.

Shall send a cable to Olivier today. It is a remarkable achievement considering that he has never been a ‘clubbable’ man in the Wolfit, Richardson or Guinness sense. He has remarkable stamina and it's about time they separated him from the herd.

Monday 13th, Kalizma [...] Yesterday received a long and incoherent letter from Larry Olivier re the National Theatre. He must have been very drunk the last times we talked to him as nobody could have turned down the job with more firmness. But he has obviously been persisting so I wrote a long letter, long-ish anyway, explaining that he mustn't worry about his not being able to get me the job and that I wouldn't take it if offered.

Not at least unless there were drastic changes. That is to say, I couldn't see myself being overruled by a board of governors over some project I had in mind. As Larry was over the Hochhuth Churchill play. Granted the play was a travesty and badly written or translated or both but I would have resigned. He also said in the letter that they hadn't been allowed the money to put on Guys and Dolls. Well, what sort of National Theatre is that? Those Old Etonians etc. would drive me mad in five months.

I love Larry but he really is a shallow little man with a very mediocre intelligence but a splendid salesman. But it is quite clear that when he is not active in the productions themselves the National loses all its glamour. It is impossible to get over-excited about people like Robert Stephens and his wife. They are good but lack ‘glamour’. And I don't mean ‘glamour’ in the vulgar sense of the word. I mean the sweeping grandeur of Edith or Gielgud or Larry himself.

The National should be full of the towering oaks of the profession. Scofield, Guinness, Redgrave should be permanent members of the company while those anonymous ‘stars’ like Stephens et al. should play the supporting parts with their usual brilliance. I saw both Stephens and Maggie Smith in the film of Jean Brodie and thought they were the dullest couple I've ever seen in an important film.Also, alas, the National has lost its initial excitement and has become the Old Vic again – upsydownsy and again slowly being invaded by a younger generation of Paul Rogers and William Squires.

No offence to either of them but they do not illuminate Shakespeare with flashes of lightning. I told Larry also, to ease his conscience if any, that when I went back it would probably be to do something with the Drama Faculty at Oxford if and when it's created out of the Faustus monies. And indeed the latter is an attractive idea and a nice thing to do in my fifties. Keep me active but not too active and I would delegate like mad

"Why do the audience look at Alec Guinness and not me? Or Marlon Brando. Or Alan Badel. Or Paul Scofield. I mean look at Scofield. He walks like a pimp, he's got a patently false voice, he's elephant-arsed and thin-chested and minute-shouldered and here stand I the shining and superb son of a hundred earls and yet they look at Scofield and his apology for acting.

And Larry, my dear, a Lord yet. I mean it's absurd. He's practically a dwarf. He has the most contrived voice, all affectation. And that vulgar streak in him is shaming.

As Othello I couldn't look at him. The audience could, of course. But then audiences are sheep, they believe the critics. Fools. And Brando. Have you honestly ever understood a word he's ever said? Be honest now. And as for Burton. Words almost fail me..."

"....Alec and Paul tend to ‘boom’ on stage though cathedrically quiet off and Larry Olivier's develops a machine-gun metallic rattle with an occasional shout thrown in ‘to keep,’ as he said to me once ‘the bastards awake.’ I'm not quite sure whether Larry meant his fellow-actors or the audiences or both.

But one has to be careful with Larry – he is a great dead-pan leg-puller and one is never quite sure whether he is probing very subtly for weak spots or majestically sending one up. Superb good value though all of them. O'Toole's voice too eccentrically accented in private is the same on the stage. I wonder what it means. Does it mean that Olivier, Guinness and Scofield are basically and essentially character actors while the rest of us mentioned above are simply extensions of ourselves. Well, the more I act and the more I think about it (which is not very often) the less I know of the heart of its mystery.

Why one believes absolutely in one actor and knows he's blazingly honest and not in another equally dazzling player is beyond my competence to explain. I can only accept it and hope for the best

"...Acting is a funny thing. Yesterday I read an article by that tall girl, Philip Hope-Wallace about the Cleopatras he has seen.Every one he mentioned (he was talking about Shakespeare's of course) was or is as ugly as sin.

Tony Quayle, oddly enough, had said the day before at lunch. ‘Why is it that all our so-called major actresses are so plain?’ Why indeed? Let's have a look at the dames: Edith Evans, Ashcroft, Flora Robson and those who are semi dames like Maggie Leighton, Pamela Brown and that woman whose name I can never remember who's married to Larry Olivier – ah I have it – she is called Joan Plowright. Vanessa Redgrave and Maggie Smith both tend to turn me agint sex.

He doesn't mention the only one who had the power or personality and physical beauty to destroy a man's life – Vivien Leigh...."

Lord.. he seems fixated on status ....

Thanks OP!

Who the fuck is Ron?

Nothing about sodomizing and humiliating Eddie Fisher though.

What right does he have to talk about Britain's best actresses that way? I've always thought it was a wonderful thing that the women he mentions were not beauty queens, but of course the (leather-faced, thin-lipped, pock-marked) male ego demands women have beauty in addition to great talent.

"Anna affected not to know what ‘Welsh’ was and asked if we were like the Irish and all that kind of rubbish...."

Anna Kashfi was such a piece of work...I can't understand how Marlon Brando who was a nobody fool got trapped by this woman who was obviously a big trouble.

R18 This was his private diaries, he wrote what he thought freely. it wasn't like he knew it would be published oneday!!!

"Vanessa Redgrave and Maggie Smith both tend to turn me against sex" LAMO

R18 do you realize this was his diaries? he had the right to write whatever he wanted.

R21, people have the right to write what they want and other people have the right to criticize them

R19, Marlon himself was trouble

Eddie Fisher :

[...] We've just heard from the Press that E. Fisher is suing E for divorce, for a property settlement and for custody of Liza.260 Over my dead body – the latter. I tried to comfort E re Eddie – She is so ashamed of herself for having married such an obvious fool. He really is beneath contempt – a gruesome little man and smug as a boot.."

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. 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, The trouble is of course that I love the old bag too much. I must try and be dispassionate..."

Thursday 21st .. Did two shots talking on the telephone and was finished for the day by lunchtime. Showered and shampooed and then lunched with E and Noël, Many stories were told. We talked about David Niven and how, though they had been fast friends, he cut E dead for seven months when she was involved in the ‘scandal’ with E. Fisher and how though we were still friendly it could never be the same again.."

Natalie Wood :

January 1965 : Sunday : Lunched with Sara and Francis. Dined with Natalie Wood and Young Niven (David Niven Jr) She emaciated and looks riddled with TB. Pekinese eyes. Sad case.

Michael Caine :

Thursday 5th : Michael Caine on board from his rented yacht – a veritable tub that bobs like a cork. He has a nice girl with him called Suzy Kendall who is married and presumably separated from her husband who is a comedian called Dudley Moore. Michael speaks in a shout which becomes a bit hard in a small room. He is very funny and very cockney most of his ‘wit’ being a regular and repeated pattern of catch-phrases. ‘Black as your hat,’ ‘A turkish religion with a tip-up seat’ etc. All repeated at various times during the day. Spends his time going to discotheques and parties of which, down here, there are hundreds. [...]

Tea spiller extraordinaire!

Burton was Right on the money about Alain Delon and Romy Schneider

It seems like these old Hollywood people had such exciting fabulous lives. A million bucks for a movie, traveling, lounging on yachts, finished work by noon.

Burton doesn't mince words. He talks of Elizabeth Taylor's innumerable illnesses; seems she had a bad case of "piles (hemorrhoids)" and had to wear something similar to a diaper to catch the blood from her bleeding arse. His life with her was chaos, all the time. And he drank like a fish all during their marriage to numb himself from what his life had become.

^^^How glamorous!

Grace Kelly :

We picked up Grace at 32, Avenue Foche which doesn't seem to be the Embassy and I forgot to ask Son Altesse if it was or not.[...] Grace and E chatted away at the back of the car while I sat in front beside the driver. Grace was nice and relaxed and, after the initial awkwardness which I always feel with people like Grace who are in a somewhat false position and know it, everybody talked freely.

Grace went into a blow by blow description of the Shah of Iran's famous or infamous party. Grace defended its extravagance with extraordinary obtuseness though neither of us attacked it.

It was meant, she said, as a tribute to the people of Persia and as self-advertisement for the Shah's magnificent governing which was bringing literacy to the illiterate and hygiene to the unwashed and culture to the brutish. She described the Shah as a marvellous man and once called him a great man which is going a titch too far.

She said how monstrous it was of the Western Press to be so vulgarly cynical of the whole show, all of them she said she knew for a fact writing their stuff before the thing had really got going. E was sweet and said that yes I mean Tito and the Hungarians and other communist countries were there and didn't seem to be particularly put out by the obvious ‘capitalism’ of the whole thing.

Absolutely said Grace and said it was a marvellous thing to see people of such enormous disparity in religions politics and races finally warming to each other after the birth-pangs of meeting and how a little chinaman who was stiff and unsmiling and reserved and talked only through an interpreter was by the last day chatting a mile a minute radiant with smiles in impeccable English to all and sundry.

So there. It all goes to show that we are brothers under the skin. And why for heaven's sake doesn't the Western Press attack its own spending of zillions a year on advertisements, corrupting the minds of the young and the stupid with their idiotics. And so on. One didn't suggest that it might perhaps have been more helpful to his appallingly poor people if he had promoted a sort of World's Fair, an Expo 71 or something and have the other people pay for the advertising. The ‘do’ of the Shah's was supremely silly under any circumstances and if it was to celebrate the extraordinary advances made for the benefit of his people then it was inane to the point of simple-mindedness

After a time wandering about Grace asked me to see her upstairs and help her remove her borrowed choker and get her to her car. I suppose it was about 1.30. This I did nearly strangling Grace to death while trying to get the necklace off.

For a minute she was in bad trouble as the necklace got twisted up as a result of my inept handling of the clasp as the bloody thing was too tight in the first place and, in fact, I had told her before we went down to the ball that she ought to remove it telling her she didn't need it. However, we finally twisted it around so that she herself could see it in the mirror and finally we released her. Even when off it took considerable strength to unclasp it.

So down the stairs we went together. At the bottom, alone, was Sam Spiegel. ‘Where are you going you two?’ ‘For God's sake’, said G, ‘don't Sam say a word to Elizabeth. She's at the Ball, she's dancing, she's happy, let us go. Richard will let Elizabeth know. It's going to be a shock but ... these things happen.’ Etc.

For a full 1/2 minute Sam, because of Grace's normal seriousness and because of her very good piece of acting and my deliberately stricken-with-guilt face, was taken in. We made off. Found Grace's car after a lot of waiting in the piercing cold and she was gone. She was quite the nicest she's ever been and David Rothschild expressed astonishment that she could be so gay.

She had always he said been a bit of a dead weight. On the contrary, we said, but she does need a little drawing out. Actually it is the nicest she has been in all the years since we've known her as a Princess.

At one moment during the choking choker episode I saw mental front-pages in France Soir’s and News of the World’s lurid headlines. Famed Actor Strangles Princess in Bedroom at Rothschild Mansion During Grand Ball.

"......During the time of the Scandale ,when we were front-page and vulgar sensationalism every other day and every paper. Much lesser people cut us dead, even, if you please, people from our own profession.

An idiot like Audrey Hepburn, for instance, a supposedly long time friend of E's was unobtainable on the phone and refused to acknowledge flowers that were sent her for her birthday.

David Niven was toffee-nosed too, though he has apologized since. Grace wouldn't have been seen dead in our company though I'm sure now that Rainier didn't give a bugger. We didn't give a bugger either and were perfectly content to be left alone..."

R32 Wow

Lucille Ball :

...Thursday 14th, Beverly Hills Hotel [...] Those who had told us that Lucille Ball was ‘very wearing’ were not exaggerating. She is a monster of staggering charmlessness and monumental lack of humour. She is not ‘wearing’ to us because I suppose we refuse to be worn. I am coldly sarcastic with her to the point of outright contempt but she hears only what she wants to hear.

She is a tired old woman and lives entirely on that weekly show which she has been doing and successfully doing for 19 years. Nineteen solid years of double-takes and pratfalls and desperate up-staging and cutting out other people's laughs if she can, nervously watching the ‘ratings’ as she does so. A machine of enormous energy, which driven by a stupid driver who has forgotten that a machine runs on oil as well as gasoline and who has neglected the former, is creaking badly towards a final convulsive seize-up.

I loathed her the first day. I loathed her the second day and the third. I loathe her today but now I also pity her. After tonight I shall make a point of never seeing her again. We work, or have worked until today which is the last thank God, from 10am to somewhere around 5pm, and Milady Balls can thank her lucky stars that I am not drinking. There is a chance that I might have killed her. Jack Benny, the most amiable man in the world and one of the truly great comedians of our time, says that in 4 days she reduced his life expectancy by 10 years

. The hitherto impeccably professional Joan Crawford was so inhibited by this behemoth of selfishness that she got herself stupendously crocked for the actual show and virtually had to be helped to her feet and managed, not without some satisfaction I dare say, to bugger up the whole show.

I said very loudly after yawning prodigiously and being asked by the director, a nice but not overly brilliant man called Jerry Paris, whether I was tired or bored or what, that I was not particularly any of those things but was puzzled as to why anybody who didn't have to for financial reasons et al. would submit themselves to this mindless routine week after week for 19 years. Miss Ball and her apology of a husband who were sitting beside me said nothing at all. The husband is a man called Gary Morton, who laughs at all her ‘takes’ etc. however often she does them and whether well or not.

But for a life-time! Ah no. It is fascinating to watch her reaction to Elizabeth. She calls her for the most part Mrs Burton or Miss Taylor and occasionally Elizabeth but corrects it to the more formal immediately. She calls me in the third person His Highness or Mr Burton and sometimes Mia.

This is a joke that E made on the first day when she, E, said that I had become so thin – I am now about 160lbs – that sleeping with me was like sleeping with Mia Farrow who is first cousin to a match-stick.

She asked E yesterday how she felt. ‘Fine thank you,’ said E., ‘today my ass is not hanging out.’ Miss Balls then went into an embarrassing convulsion of hysterical laughter which terminated in her throwing herself helplessly over the back of a sofa and drumming her legs against the floor in a false ecstasy of amusement.

Anna Kashfi was ahead of her time!

His diaries actually sound pretty entertaining. Thanks, OP!

R36 She was, Marlon wasn't an easy man to fool. he was called "the human Xray" because he've had the ability to read people' minds and see right through them. But i guess Anna Kashfi escabed Marlon' Xray ability

LOL on all his Lucy comments. What a monster she must have been. Desi seemed like a nice guy, despite his being an alcoholic and womanizer. How the hell did he put up with Lucy for so long?

Hemorrhoids hurt like hell. I feel for Liz and her sore ass. Amazing how some people are just so prone to every health problem.

How did Eddie Fisher think he would ever get away with taking Liz's kid from her? What court in the world would give him a kid? I can't believe she was worried about it. Richard should have beaten the shit out of him.

I wonder if RB or ET had any friends that weren't famous and fellow celebrities, what a shallow life they led.

Hammy Richard Burton criticizing Maggie Smith is priceless. He didn't have a tenth of her talent. Asshole.

R39, it seems to me that celebrities often lack genuine friends. At the peak of their celebrity Burton and Taylor had a huge entourage of employees and family members to support. In his diaries Burton comes across as a troubled soul but he was generous with his large family, buying houses for them and setting them up in various businesses.

As for his comments about Maggie Smith, Smith herself is an acerbic character and in her day was renowned for having a fearsome temper. Her performance in Brodie has always been divisive-- some people find it mannered, others brilliant.

Mia Farrow :

".....then Mia Farrow and Mike Nichols arrived from NY. That M. Nichols really gets the girls. I wish Farrow would put on 15lbs and grow her hair.

"Today we had a letter from Mia Farrow. It is written in a huge childlike hand and is so goody as to invite suspicion of affection. I remember her at lunch forever apologizing, with eyes as round as her fist, for her silly little ability not to know anybody in theatre or films before her time – which she inferred was last week. Or last year. She and M. Nichols appear to be in love and register in hotels as Mr and Mrs N.."

Celebrity Memoirs Troll: when do you sleep?

[quote] [R18] do you realize this was his diaries? he had the right to write whatever he wanted.

Since he was famous he knew they would be read some day if he didn't destroy them. Since he didn't destroy them, we thus have every right in the world to judge him.

He was a pompous narcissist.

Elizabeth Taylor :

"The weekend turned immediately from an idyll into a nightmare. We drank to the point of stupefaction and idiocy. We couldn't go outside. We were not married. We were impregnated with guilt. We tried to read. We failed. We couldn't go out. We made a desperate kind of love. We played gin rummy.

E kept on winning and oddly enough out of this silly game came the crisis. For some reason – who knows or remembers the conversation that led up to it? – E said that she was prepared to kill herself for me. Easy to say, I said, but no woman would kill herself for me etc. with oodlings of self-pity. Who knows what other kind of rubbish was said. Who remembers from so long ago with everything shrouded in a miasma of alcohol what was said.

Out of it all came E standing over me with a bottle or box of sleeping pills in her hand saying that she could do it. Go ahead, I said, or words along those lines, whereupon she took a handful and swallowed them with gusto and no dramatics. I didn't believe that they were sleeping pills at first. For all I knew they could be Vitamin C or anything else. She then, I think, took herself off to bed in an adjoining room. From then I hardly remember any detail. Vague memories of trying to get her awake, of realizing that she wasn't joking, running around looking for that awful ‘contessa’ who, I discovered later was having an affair with our sometimes chauffeur Mario, searching also for the latter.

Loading E into a car and a hair-raising drive to Rome and a hospital and hiding at home because officially E had a tummy complaint or some other excuse which the press told immediately to the Marines. Not being able to go to the hospital because of the snappers and not answering the telephone to all the disaster-lovers like Roddy McDowall and Manciewicz and almost everybody.

So now we have just come back from the very same café where E had a cafe latte and a cognac as she did that time ago, and I noticed that it was Friday the 13th. I mean today and decided that I didn't want any repetition of that awful Easter. By God, what if she'd died. Worse, what if she'd lived with an impaired brain? I'm perfectly sure that I am incapable of suicide so presumably I would still be alive. What would I be doing? Maybe I would have drowned myself in booze by this time. Anyway, it's all over though never forgotten. It certainly has cured any thoughts of suicide from this family.

In that year also Sybil had a go at knocking herself off. I was furious with her but not furious oddly enough with E. I suppose I must have been thinking of Kate being motherless and didn't think similarly of Liza, Maria et al. being likewise because they were still little-seen-known or loved by me at the time. [...]

Sunday 15th, Capri [...] E saw Cleopatra last night with all the kids. I popped in at one point for about ten seconds and went away and slept for another couple of hours. No reflection on the film! As a matter of fact E said this morning that the film is not at all bad – marvellous spectacle and all that.

My lack of interest in my own career, past present or future is almost total. All my life I think I have been secretly ashamed of being an actor and the older I get the more ashamed I get. And I think it resolves itself into a firm belief that the person who's doing the acting is somebody else. That accounts presumably for my fury if anybody shows me anything about my acting in the magazines and journals.

I don't mind the gossip stuff like ‘seen walking on the Via Veneto last night’ or ‘The Burtons on their luxury yacht’ etc. And I am equally angry whether I am praised or damned though mostly I'm praised.

The press have been sounding the same note for many years – ever since I went to Hollywood in the early fifties, in fact – that I am or was potentially the greatest actor in the world and the successor to Gielgud Olivier etc. but that I had dissipated my genius etc. and ‘sold out’ to films and booze and women. An interesting reputation to have and by no means dull but by all means untrue. [...

Tuesday 9th, Aston Clinton : Yesterday at last I finished the fucking film. You'd think that would be a cause for rejoicing, but not a bit of it. It all started because of my absolute, almost feminine [...] passion for neatness. The place we live in is so small that all extras must be kept down to a minimum. Gaston came in like a porter from Paddington station loaded down with cartons, bags, a box full of booze. There were several of our own towels when all she has to is pick up the phone and they'll bring her a hundred clean towels.

Does she not realize that we have been paying the Bell Inn an average of £100 a week for a year to keep Gwen in comfort?238 They'll turn cartwheels for us if you ask them. Well I went mad which ended up with Elizabeth smashing me around the head with her ringed fingers. If any man had done that I would have killed him, or any woman either, but I had sufficient sense to stop myself or I most surely would have put her in hospital for a long long time or even into the synagogue cemetery for an even longer time.

I still boil with fury when I think about it. I took myself off on a long walk to some farms that are around the corner and thought of every possibility and its consequences. I decided that for a time anyway we are stuck with each other. I thought that what E needed was a long rest in a quiet place and that so did I and we might get together again. We are fighting and have been fighting for a year now over everything and anything.

I have always been a heavy drinker but during the last 15 months I've nearly killed myself with the stuff, and so has Elizabeth. She has just come out to this minute back room where I type and we're at it again. Neither of us will give in and if one of us doesn't something is going to snap.

And I'm not going to give in, I'm too small a man and not feminine enough. I prided myself on not having the shakes this morning but the minute E came out and sat down they started up again. Now what the fuck is the meaning of that? Anyway this naturally is one of the black Celtic melancholy days. I see nothing ahead of me but a long grey waste. This afternoon I may see a little colour in the desert and tomorrow perhaps even an oasis.

But at the moment I am in despair. If we cannot understand each other or what is worst not stand each other we'd [better] go our separate ways pretty soon and go back to work ... She'll film again and I'll write.

It's true R17...he did that to prove that he could take Liz from him. Liz knew about it, and said nothing.

[quote] Miss Balls then went into an embarrassing convulsion of hysterical laughter which terminated in her throwing herself helplessly over the back of a sofa and drumming her legs against the floor in a false ecstasy of amusement.

This is delicious

Thanks, OP. These stories are amazing.

Burton's diaries are really good. More, OP!

Thanks OP.

Your version of Readers Digest has been very entertaining. And perfect for DL.

I noticed the Cybill Shepherd autobiography among your selections. Somewhere I have link to that whole book online. If I can find it I will post it.

The Mia comments were fun.

I love how he and Elizabeth are living this life of incredible luxury yet she can't be bothered to housebreak her Pekingeses or whatever those little dogs were, so their yacht and ultra swank hotel suites inevitably have dogs relieving themselves everywhere, something that understandably drove neat-freak Burton crazy. He was also very punctual whereas Taylor was literally late to her own funeral.

Dear God, more OP!

Monday 13th ; My sins have come home to find me! Who would have thought that a man who had been known in his time to smash windows or fight against odds as a result of drunkenness should be appalled by it in others? At least others close to him. And who's closer than E?

For the last month now, with very few exceptions she has gone to bed not merely sozzled or tipsy but stoned. And I mean stoned, unfocused, unable to walk straight, talking in a slow meaningless baby voice utterly without reason like a demented child. I thought, at first, that it was merely drugs but I understand that the stuff she's having now is merely vitamins so it has to be good old-fashioned booze.

I made a desperate attempt this last weekend, when there was no pressure of work on her, to see if I could handle it. Result: the same. The awful thing is that it's turned me off drink! So perhaps it has its virtue. There is very little I can do about it. It would be a mistake to have a notorious old pet lecture, with much finger-wagging, a decaying kettle.

So I'll continue to pray that it is a psychological reaction from that bloody removal of the uterus last summer, that it is only temporary, and that gradually she'll come back to normal. I'll have to be very careful that I don't allow myself to join her otherwise we'll have to get a keeper to look after us both. But the boredom, unless I'm drunk too, of being in the presence of someone to whom you have to repeat everything twice is like a physical pain in the stomach.

If it was anyone else of course I'd pack my bags, head for the hills and go and live in a Trappist monastery, but this woman is my life. I cannot go to work with her though I will try this afternoon and see how she functions on the set. Last night I was so worried about her and us that I didn't get to sleep until well after dawn.

I tried to imagine life without her but couldn't. The intolerable dreariness of her life in that studio is hard to watch. Endless long takes from a multitude of angles, surrounded with possibly the dullest collection of sycophants it has ever been my pain to come across. [...]

This is much better than the Cybill Shepard thread. All she wants to write about is her pussy.

[quote]"Today we had a letter from Mia Farrow. It is written in a huge childlike hand and is so goody as to invite suspicion of affection. I remember her at lunch forever apologizing, with eyes as round as her fist, for her silly little ability not to know anybody in theatre or films before her time – which she inferred was last week. Or last year. She and M. Nichols appear to be in love and register in hotels as Mr and Mrs N.."

never knew Mia & Mike Nicholls were lovers.

she really kept a lot under cover when she wrote her autobiog, didn't she?

I wish OP would post the dates. It is a diary after all. It's confusing without them.

Richard burton was discovered by an old queen and lived in his house when him before finding stardom

Thursday 20th, Puerto Vallarta [...] Another long silence in this pathetic journal occasioned I suppose by acute unhappiness added to stupendous quantities of guilt, alcohol, laziness, fear for Elizabeth's health and reason..

The last six or eight months have been a nightmare. I created one half and Elizabeth the other. We grated on each other to the point of separation. I had thought of going to live alone in some remote shack in a rainy place and E had thought of going to stay with Howard in Hawaii. It is of course quite impossible. We are bound together.

I dread the children coming down here. My temper is still fine-drawn on the edge of impatience and trying to accommodate that with the warring claims of Liza and Maria and, to a lesser extent, with the demands of Chris and Mike is going to stretch my nerves to the limit. The fact is that children bore me. I discovered after a couple of days of fairly close proximity with Kate in Beverly Hills – and after all I don't see very much of her – that I could do without her too. I long for them to grow up and come and see us only at Christmastime, during which festivities I shall build an igloo in the garden and not come out until the New Year. [...]

Friday 21st [...] E's stay in hospital in Los Angeles started another and inevitable wave of rumours. The Detroit Free Press announced that she was in the Cedars of Lebanon because she had cancer of the spine.31 So much space in print and time of TV was accorded this rumour that I almost began to believe it myself. [...] I will try, as I've tried before in this diary, to fill in some of the things I missed as I write from day to day.."

Tuesday 7th : Today is Hollywood's big day – the day of the Oscars. It's curious that the whole world makes fun of it, but that all actors want to win one and in the obituaries of actors it is invariably mentioned as the summit of their achievements. Even in The Times or the Guardian.

For instance one of the reasons is that if the Oscar for leading actors is won tonight by John Wayne it will be out of pure sentimentality because, though I haven't seen his performance, I'm told that it is little more than his usual walk through.33 His performance is not comparable with Voight's or Hoffman's. I haven't see O'Toole's and I am no judge myself.

The supporting actress will probably be won by one Goldie Hawn because she is a famous TV personality. The leading actress will probably be Liza Minnelli because her mother died last year – Judy Garland a great and sentimental favourite here. And so on. That's what makes it absurd and still it's coveted, even by me! My only chance is that I am a Kennedy-Adlai Stevenson associate and a ‘Dove’ while Wayne is a Republican, ‘my country right or wrong’ Birchite Hawk, and the ‘artistic’ Hollywood fraternity is usually very liberal.

Also, John Springer says that a great many people thought we were robbed when I didn't win for Who's Afraid. We shall see. [...] The rest of the day is going to be chaos and I look forward to Vallarta with longing. One more day.

Wednesday 8th : Richard is the BEST That was written in his sups and cups last night – I mean this morning at 4.30 by a pixilated Brook. But cups or not I think he means it so shall leave it in. [...]

John Wayne won the Oscar as predicted. We went to the party afterwards and sat with George Cukor the Pecks and the Chandlers (owners of the LA Times) but were surrounded by scores of photographers, who, to my delight, took very little notice of anybody else including the winners Barbra Streisand who fancies herself a big star was completely eclipsed.

And a whole queue of people, literally hundreds, passed the table to stare at E and tell me that I was robbed and after all these protestations we began to wonder who in the world voted for Wayne.

We got out with a great difficulty because of the hordes of photographers, visiting Gig Young, who won best supporting actor, en route, who was stoned but sweet. Hawn won the supporting actress, also as predicted. We couldn't find Duke Wayne so came home, [...] Later still came Wayne himself also very drunk but, in his foul-mouthed way very affable. I survived another night without booze [...]

Anyway, I lost again, and am now the most nominated leading actor in the history of the Academy Awards who has never won. So I carved my tiny niche in the wall of Oscar's Wisden.."

[quote] I dread the children coming down here. My temper is still fine-drawn on the edge of impatience and trying to accommodate that with the warring claims of Liza and Maria and, to a lesser extent, with the demands of Chris and Mike is going to stretch my nerves to the limit. The fact is that children bore me. I discovered after a couple of days of fairly close proximity with Kate in Beverly Hills – and after all I don't see very much of her – that I could do without her too. I long for them to grow up and come and see us only at Christmastime, during which festivities I shall build an igloo in the garden and not come out until the New Year.

What a selfish prick.

Movie stars should NOT have children.

LOL R62, I was just thinking how much like my grumpy Welsh ex he sounds! Maybe they are just chronically gloomy people. It does rain a lot there.

Katharine Hepburn called it. Some folks just should not breed. Or adopt.

Friday 10th, Puerto Vallarta We arrived yesterday [...] and are safe at home again. [...]

The day before yesterday was a right cock-up. We had arranged, win or lose, to have a ‘Thanksgiving’ dinner at 4.30 in the afternoon. Afterwards, at six o'clock, we were to have a cocktail party for the ‘losers’. The thanksgiving was to be held in a small room at the hotel and the party in our Bungalow.

[...] Most of the losers turned up. Jon Voight and his girl friend Jennifer Salt who looks 15 and is actually 25.42 Rupert Crosse, negro supporting actor, Elliott Gould (didn't like him) Susannah York (very nice) Jane Fonda, who talked of nothing but the black panthers and got $3,000 each out of E and me, and Sylvia Miles, who was the only one I felt sorry for, a nice handsome negro called Otis Wilson and other people whose names I never found out.

It went on until 9.30. By this time we all thankfully returned to the Bungalow with everybody drunk except me of course (still no drink) and E really sloshed. [...] I went to bed and Elizabeth went to the bathroom. Then I heard her calling me and she was bleeding from her rectum, it turned out she'd had a burst ‘pile’.

I called Kennamer who told me to wrap some ice in a towel and for her to hold it against the bleeding. But she still wanted to see poor Kennamer, so I rousted the poor sod out of bed [...] and he came over within ten minutes. By this time naturally, it always happens, the bleeding had stopped.

However he mucked about and put a bandage around her arse stayed for half an hour and talked about having just before us being sent for to the Hotel where John Lee, also pissed out of his mind, thought he was dying and Dick Hanley (drunk) had called for a priest to give the last rites. According to Kennamer the scene was so ludicrous that even the priest, a new young one, nearly laughed at the whole thing. What a lot.

"Elizabeth went to the bathroom. Then I heard her calling me and she was bleeding from her rectum, it turned out she'd had a burst ‘pile’........However he mucked about and put a bandage around her arse stayed for half an hour..."

Oh dear!

Maureen Stapleton :

"....Beloved old Maureen Stapleton played it on the stage and very brilliantly apparently and I can imagine her being very good. It's very sad that she photographs like a sack of potatoes. The story too is the story more or less of Maureen's life. A woman of superb talent – if she were British she would become an automatic dame – she is also a drunk and it kills her career. Like the woman in the play she also becomes enormously fat and also has to go to a home to have a rest cure.

Orkin and I watched her in and out of more alcoholic crises than one can imagine. I remember too, many years ago in Hollywood, her discovery of the joys of masturbation. ‘Why the hell didn't someone teach me all about it when I was in that fucking convent?’ she demanded. ‘Think of all the emotional involvements I could have saved myself instead of having to get myself laid by guys I didn't even like just because I was horny. For Christ's sake I spent my youth looking for big cocks when I could have screwed myself with a brush handle.’ And so on. All this revelationary [sic] talk took place in an apartment hotel, rather shabby, where most of the New York actors used to stay, on Sunset Boulevard.

I think it's still going and is called the Sunset Towers.In the middle fifties it was the thing to do if you were a New York stage actor, and to show your contempt for the contract stars, to stay there in that stucco monstrosity making it quite clear that you were your own man and not owned by some studio and the minute the fucking lousy film you were in was over you were going back to the great New York THEATRE where you re-found your soul as an artist and where the Real Work was done.

I, because I was a real stage actor and had played your standard classics, was accepted there despite the fact that I had a million-dollar contract with Fox. Marlon and Monty Clift were habituees too for a time because they were always going to go back on the stage (and actually did for a second – Marlon did a couple of months in summer stock playing Arms and the man and Monty went back off-Broadway to do The Seagull) but gradually Marlon shifted further and further away until he eventually had a permanent house of his own. For Marlon, it must have been a harrowing time because he was their natural leader.

Words to live by:

‘Think of all the emotional involvements I could have saved myself instead of having to get myself laid by guys I didn't even like just because I was horny. For Christ's sake I spent my youth looking for big cocks when I could have screwed myself with a brush handle."

R67 HILARIOUS

So now we know Burton played himself in Staircase.

LUCY does NATALIE WOOD impression

Rex Harrison :

Wednesday 11th, Kalizma We left Monte Carlo two or three days ago and went to Portofino which is as enchanting as ever and where of course we inevitably met Rex Harrison and his future wife Elizabeth Rees-Williams.

She was married to an actor – very good I believe, though I have never met him or seen him – called Richard Harris. Professional Irish type I gather, getting drunk and fighting when sufficiently so. Rex came on the K at cocktail time and was already paralysed with booze. So was the Rees-Williams.

Acutely painful hour or so with Rex being endlessly repetitive and eventually tottering on the brink of outright rudeness. We all agreed after they had left that this couple were among the most unattractive we'd come across in a long time and the thought of their getting married before the end of the month a monstrous joke.

She is a kind of brazen blonde type with a veneer of finishing school. I feel very protective about Rex as I fear this woman is not just a harum-scarum shouter and bawler like Rache but a devious minx on the make. She looked ugly with dissipation and so did Rex. His casual elegance was noticeably lacking and he has put on a lot of weight – tremendous pot and jowls.

E and I sat up in bed after they had gone and after dinner and had a smug hour telling each other how lucky we are in that we have each other and that we like each other. And so on. And by god we are lucky in virtually every way. E kept on saying: How lucky we are to love each other. Too right.

Sean Connery :

Monday 31st [...] We went to see a James Bond film yesterday afternoon [...] called Diamonds are Forever which was good fun but surprisingly ill-acted and amateurish.

There are some good sequences – notably a car chase – but the plot, which as far as I can remember has nothing to do with the original, is very silly indeed.It makes Eagles [...] look realistic by comparison.

Sean has got potty and now really looks like a miner going to seed. Which he is. [...] His Scots accent was more pronounced than ever – perhaps deliberately – perhaps indicating Home Rule for Scotland. He has become a devout nationalist. Anyway it was all good clean fun

[quote] E and I sat up in bed after they had gone and after dinner and had a smug hour telling each other how lucky we are in that we have each other and that we like each other. And so on. And by god we are lucky in virtually every way. E kept on saying: How lucky we are to love each other. Too right.

I hope that came before the entry about her screaming to examine her burst hemorrhoid. Otherwise he must have had Alzheimer's.

Love this! This is a great pick. Thanks Celebrity Memoir Troll!

"Barbra Streisand who fancies herself a big star"

Richard perfected the plummy snarl.

The Lucille Ball story is classic.

Does he say anything about Roddy McDowell?

Burton and Taylor made ten movies together and sadly most of them aren't any good. Their celebrity was far out of proportion to the quality of their films. Boom! anyone?

R78, Briefly, in post 45: "Loading E into a car and a hair-raising drive to Rome and a hospital and hiding at home because officially E had a tummy complaint or some other excuse which the press told immediately to the Marines. Not being able to go to the hospital because of the snappers and not answering the telephone to all the disaster-lovers like Roddy McDowall and Manciewicz and almost everybody."

So Roddy was apparently a big old gossip. It's a shame his diary probably will never be published.

Eewww piles.

Wasn't McDowall the one whose diary is supposed to be published 50 years after his death? I seem to recall that being stated on other threads here, because yes, he was known as the biggest gossip queen in Classic Hollywood.

Never mind, I just googled and found this: "Legend has it that Roddy kept a very dishy diary, and left instructions in his will that it be kept sealed until 2100 AD."

Damn. We need a leak!

Nobody, but nobody, will care in 2100.

That's like us caring about gossip about the 1934 diaries of Charles Laughton. "Paul Muni was devastated at his loss!"

I wonder if any celebrities are doing this today, not Twittering or blathering on Facebook, just quietly reflecting in a private journal?

Somehow I don't see Brad quietly recording thoughts on his career and relationship with Angelina at 2am.

[quote] It is impossible to get over-excited about people like Robert Stephens and his wife.

Hilarious. Maggie Smith, of course.

[quote] In that year also Sybil had a go at knocking herself off. I was furious with her but not furious oddly enough with E. I suppose I must have been thinking of Kate being motherless

I didn't know this. I do remember reading once that Kate Burton said that after the divorce, Sybil never again spoke to Burton.

I met him in Puerto Vallarta a hundred years ago. He was a lovely man, very quiet. When he did speak he had the most beautiful voice.

We all know "he had the most beautiful voice," r86! But lucky you for hearing it in person!

The Welsh are the British equivalent of Native Americans. When Burton mentions "black Celt melancholy days," he's referring to the natural Welsh tendency to depression (correlated also to a chronic dependence on alcohol.) They've survived millennia of oppression, slavery and the occasional genocide but still hold on to their original language and culture, including the glorious bardic tradition of which Burton was a notable exemplar (note that he fancied himself as a writer as well as performer) and an exceptional gift for sardonic humor.

He probably had a hand in creating those hemorrhoids, maybe quite literally.

Enflamed wincing asshole is Burton's home turf.

[quote]He probably had a hand in creating those hemorrhoids, maybe quite literally.

+

[quote]Enflamed wincing asshole is Burton's home turf.

=

I'm glad OP has taken a break from posting - it gives people a chance to send in these interesting comments from all over the world.

LOVE these diaries , Thanks a lot OP!

Sunday 20th : I have been going through one of my periodic moods of depression for the last three days. Periods when the very thought of seeing anyone except Elizabeth gives me a real physical pain. And when I'm not drinking which I've not been for the last three days it is at its worst. Actually during the last 12 months or so I have become increasingly anti-social and am only really at comparative ease when fairly drunk. [...]

The fact remains [...] I simply don't want people, including my own children whom I love, around. The first two or three weeks here without anyone except E were happy-as-sandboy days. It is the damnedest paradox. I miss the children terribly when they're not here, especially Liza. My heart does several varieties of dance when I first see them coming off the plane or whatever, and within three days I wish them gone. It is very puzzling. [...]

Time was when my chiefest enjoyment after love-making and a good poem was standing at a bar with a convivial few and rambling around poetry and politics and ideas of all kinds – generally second-hand of course – and talking of every subject except the loathed one of acting. And now ... nothing except to be crouched over a book in our bedroom with the air-conditioning turned on to drown the noises of the outside world. The mood is only temporary of course and even this illiterate apologia may go some way towards dissipating the gloom. [...]

The pool is a green pool. Unswimmable. A combination, they say, of acid, chlorine and copper coins dropped into the pool by our intelligent. children.

Thursday 24th : The children left yesterday at 11 o'clock on time. There was a lot of suspiciously wet eye and the three hugs I had from Liza verged on the desperate, especially the last.

E wept freely as we drove to have a drink at the Posada Vallarta to stay our sorrow. I snarled at her to try and stop the flood with a little harshness. It backfired and I was accused of not liking the children as much as she, and it would all have been different if it were Kate who was leaving, blood is thicker than water etc. etc. I left her to ramble on until she ran out of gas. She was alright in a few hours

Monday 1st : E not feeling very well and last night had a temperature of about 102 and a bit. A bit worrying as she doesn't have much resistance, and as I've preached and preached she never takes any exercise. And E is the kind of person who turns a cold of the head nose and throat and common variety into near-death from double-pneumonia. Take out a tooth and she's laid up for a fortnight. Graze her knee and it suppurates for a month. [...]

[...] Heard in Cadonau's this morning that Julie Andrews is in town also that John Kenneth Galbraith has just left.14 Wish it were the other way round.

15th : It's afternoon and am sitting on the lawn outside the library. Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards (husband, film director) came to dinner.

They seemed very nice together. He had sent a book the day before by Kingsley Amis called the Green Man.15 It is, as one expects from Amis, expertly written but has ‘don’ written all over it. About ghosts which is never my cup of tea. But this one held my interest to the end which considering my inability to read at the moment is a fair old feat.

They may use the house, this one at Xmas. Have ordered a lock-up filing cabinet to put away all the papers and diaries etc. Good idea anyway, even if we don't have visitors..

Friday 10th, Grand : E is eating as if she is about to acquire some dreadful disease which will include a loss of appetite, and so that while she is hungry she will eat and eat and eat. I keep on telling her that she is as round as she is tall which is a complete lie as apart from her impossible stomach and her hereditary double chin she is not really all that tubby.

She is well covered though. She is one of those who can only diet when the mood takes her and then she goes too far. Since she doesn't have a weight problem of any consequence she could eat very well, not dieting and still remain trim without too much trouble, but milady has all the discipline of a mountain pony.

I enjoy self imposed discipline, there must be a masochist hidden here somewhere, though in the matter of dieting I find it hardly any trouble at all. [...]

Sunday 7th, Rome

[...] The virtual cessation of drink has made a terrific difference to E. She is more active, more spirited and at the same time more relaxed. And she looks even more beautiful than before. Her face has thinned very subtly and her ever present baby double chin is much less. Even with E there is bound to be a certain amount of bloat from booze.

If she loses 5 or 6lbs with the diet she will look 25 again. And there is no doubt that less grey in the hair takes a few years off too. (For the first time in her life and after years of my refusing to let her have it done she has dyed her hair a bit, that is to say it has been ‘streaked’ leaving some of the grey). In the last two or three years and for the first time in her life E has looked a bit blotchy in the mornings when she first awoke. I told her so and for the first times ever had to suggest that she put some make-up on if someone was coming to visit us early.

But now again the morning face is as fresh and glowing as the one that went to bed. I was going to say ‘as a young girl's’ but remembered that Liza and Kate too, both a mere 14 years old, look pretty ghastly in the mornings. We have to tell Liza frequently to go and splash water on her face.

Most women look fairly diabolical in the a.m. Syb was pretty good but a lot of other ladies I knew under those circumstances looked awful, even in their teens.

Jean [Simmons] was alright, as I remember, and like E had no need of make-up at all tho she did wear it. Clara Cluck had to wear make-up all the time and not just in the morning.276 She had, like so many women, a faintly ‘bald’ look without it. Some girls I knew looked so frightful under those circumstances that the ‘intimacy’ stopped right there. Hasty retreats in the cold cruel light of morning was often-times the order of the day.

The guy was a rapist and a bully. More than one person has confirmed to me what he did to Eddie Fisher, which goes a long way in explaining his erratic behavior in the 60s - Rape Trauma Syndrome. Eddie began using pills and booze in excess after Liz left him. People thought that Eddie had a bad attitude, but he was behaving like a typical victim of rape.

[quote]Time was when my chiefest enjoyment after love-making and a good poem was standing at a bar with a convivial few and rambling around poetry and politics and ideas of all kinds

ZZZZZzzzzzzzzz....

David Niven :

I read David Niven's autobiography yesterday in one sitting. It is very funny though not very well written and is, like all actors’ biographies, very anecdotal and full of ‘and then Mike Todd called me and said "Get your ass over here"’ etc.

He describes one scene on Bogart's yacht which is not what happened at all as I was there. He describes Sinatra singing all through the night on a motor yacht with a lot of other yachts around awe-struck’ he says. Frankie did sing all through the night it's true and a lot of people sat around in boats and got drunk it's true but Bogie and I went out lobster-potting with Dumbum [...] while Frankie was singing kept on making cracks about Betty [Bacall] sitting on Sinatra's feet etc.

and Frankie got really pissed off with Bogie and David Niv who describes himself as bewitched all through the night was trying to set fire to the Santana at one point, because nobody could stop Francis from going on and on and on.

I was drinking ‘boiler-makers’ with Bogie Rye Whiskey with canned beer chasers so the night is pretty vague but I seem to remember a girl having a fight with her husband or boy friend in a rowing dinghy and being thrown in the water by her irate mate. I don't know why but I would guess that she wanted to stay and listen to Frankie and he wanted to go.

And Bogie and Frankie nearly came to blows next day about the singing the night before and I drove Betty home because she was so angry with Bogie's cracks about Frankie's singing. At that time Frankie was out of work and was peculiarly vulnerable and Bogie was unnecessarily cruel. But any way it is not at all like Niv's description.

He's very sweet about E and indeed about practically everybody

[quote]E wept freely as we drove to have a drink at the Posada Vallarta to stay our sorrow. I snarled at her to try and stop the flood with a little harshness

Yes. He looked like a snarler.

[quote]I snarled at her to try and stop the flood with a little harshness

A little?

After all these years of hearing stories about Burton and Liz I started thinking Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf was a documentary.

[quote] In the last two or three years and for the first time in her life E has looked a bit blotchy in the mornings when she first awoke. I told her so and for the first times ever had to suggest that she put some make-up on if someone was coming to visit us early.... I was going to say ‘as a young girl's’ but remembered that Liza and Kate too, both a mere 14 years old, look pretty ghastly in the mornings. We have to tell Liza frequently to go and splash water on her face.

I wonder how he looked in the morning.

Wednesday 6th Liza's Birthday. We are confoundedly trying to find a hunter for L's birthday present. [...]

E said this morning that I lacked loyalty – simply because I said that Sheran is a snob and cultivates people only because they're temporarily ‘in’. Now E is a bright bugger to talk about loyalty. The list of her dis-loyalties would fill the yellow pages of the New York Telephone Directory. Except of course to her children. And there she defeats me because I've been dis-loyal to mine.

Liza is very excited because she's just been told about the prospect of the horse. She's a lovely old kid and, despite my temper, I could spoil her almost as much as I spoil her mother. And that would take some spoiling. She is growing up at a fantastic rate and is tending to mother us all.

She has latterly acquired the admonitory wagging of the finger with me and the ‘now-you-relax-and-take-it-easy-he'll-come-to-his-senses-because-he-really-loves-you-and-cannot-live-without-you’ sort of dialogue.

It's a hot race in this family as to which is the most spoiled. But we all have instincts of generosity so I suppose we'll be alright. [...]

[quote]E said this morning that I lacked loyalty – simply because I said that Sheran is a snob and cultivates people only because they're temporarily ‘in’. Now E is a bright bugger to talk about loyalty. The list of her dis-loyalties would fill the yellow pages of the New York Telephone Directory.

The sort of couple I like to spend time with.

Thursday 7th Well, I'll tell you. Liza's birthday is over and the change in her has been remarkable in the last 12 months and when other people take notice of it and tell me

I had been a little bit worried because it was quite obvious that people found Kate easier to handle and have around than Liza. But miraculously it seems, in the last month, Liza is running neck-and-neck with Kate and will, I guess, because the influences on Liza are more positive and because Liza's instincts are more generous, beat her (Kate) to the post.

Understand that I love both children to the point of idolatry. She will never have charm in the ordinary sense of the word, she will never be, as Ivor says, and which I am, a ‘shw'd ichi heddi’, but, like her mother, she has the great virtue of honesty.

She enchants me because of course she is in any case a delightful child, she is her mother's daughter and because in the absence of her mother she lectures me exactly as if she were Elizabeth. She wags a self-conscious finger as portentously as Noel Coward.

And she loves wicked and naughty words as innocently as her mother. She told me last night on her birthday if you please that she loved the word ‘Shit’. I just love it she said. I just love it.

I remonstrated but to no avail.

Just like her mother

[quote]She will never have charm in the ordinary sense of the word, she will never be, as Ivor says, and which I am, a ‘shw'd ichi heddi’,

Is this Welsh?

Friday 8th, Kalizma, Thames It's 6 in the morning [...]. I am on a stand-by. I'd had very little sleep the night before (took a shower with my pyjamas on. Is't possible?) and for the rest of the day was like a somnambulist, drinking steadily under the water until the exhausted and drunken body was given a succession of rockets from E and L on this yacht and ordered to go bed below decks. Example of dialogue with the two witches:

Me, in bed, with a book: Liza, bring E'en So downstairs.

Elizabeth: Get her yourself.

Liza: Get her yourself.

Me: Get me a sandwich.

Elizabeth: Get it yourself.

Liza: Get it yourself.

Outcome: A silent Liza appears with a tray of sandwiches and small exquisite tomatoes and spring onions with immense disapproval on the side. I gave her a sorrowful look with all the sly Celtic charm I could muster up, but it fell on deaf eyes.

I think that child loves her mother. I hope she realizes that I do too. It's a shared privilege.

Saturday 30th, Rome: ......... Just had a long talk with Liza about masturbation – prompted by a Dear Abby column she is just reading.

I told her that it was a perfectly normal part of growing up – especially I said in boys. Why especially in boys? Because I said I knew about boys, having been one believe it or not but never having been a girl I wasn't too sure.

I told her some of the frightful and stupid things I was told and heard as a kid. That you'd go blind and bald before you're 21 etc. All rubbish. Also told her that excessive masturbation might lead to an onanism which might spoil one for more normal sex though I wasn't too sure about that either

Rex Harrison and Tennessee Williams

Thursday 1st, En Route St. Marg – Portofino We were in St Margherita yesterday for watering and fuelling and just as well as it gave us a chance to get away from Rex and Rachel.

We had spent Sunday up at their house and, as usual it was very liquid. Rex seems to hold his booze better than he used to but Rachel is still maniacal. We saw them again on Monday evening at La Gritta bar in the Port. Fortunately before Rachel became totally demented they left (not without difficulty for Rex) for home and dinner at about 9.30.

By this time Tennessee Williams and his friend Bill had arrived and Joe Losey and J. Heyman and H. French. Tennessee, who now prefers to be called Tom, seemed sloshed and spoke in a loud voice, powerful penetrating and incoherent and somewhat embarrassing.

E told him to lower his voice a few times. We were in the Pitosforo at the time, and we attract enough attention as it is. Have now decided to do Boom! with E. [...]

On Tuesday everybody came on board. Rachel became stupendously drunk and was or became totally uncontrollable. The strangers T. Williams, Losey, Bill, French, Heyman, left in disgust.

She insulted Rex sexually morally physically and in every way. She lay on the floor in the bar and barked like a dog. At one time she started to masturbate her basset hound – a lovely sloppy old dog called Omar.

E lectured her, I did, Rex did. All to no avail. She bitterly harangued the memories of Carole Landis and Kay Kendall, hurled imprecations at Lilli Palmer. Christ

[quote]I wonder how he looked in the morning.

What does it matter? He wasn't passing himself off as the most beautiful woman in the world.

Fun stuff- a very smart, literate guy when not drunk! I going to get the book! Glad my life isn't so full of drama-

Liz's grandson Quinn Tivey. Anyone here met him?

It looks like Rachel Harrison, Rex's wife killed herself.

"She married Alan Dobie (1955–1961), then Rex Harrison (1962–1971). Both marriages ended in divorce. Her alcoholism and depression increased after her divorce from Harrison. Devastated by their divorce, she moved to Hollywood in 1975 and tried to forget the relationship. In 1980, a final attempt to win Harrison back proved futile, and, impulsive and insecure, she died by suicide on 26 November 1980, at her home in Los Angeles.

It was reported that her death was a result of swallowing lye, alkali, or another unidentified caustic substance, as well as barbiturates and alcohol, as detailed in her posthumously published journals. The corrosive effect of the poisonous agent was an immediate cause of death. Her gardener found her body on her kitchen floor, lying amidst shards of glass; she had fallen through a decorative glass divide between two rooms.[5] Her cause of death was initially reported as cardiac arrest.[5] The coroner documented the cause of death as "swallowing a caustic substance" and, later, "acute barbiturate intoxication."[5][6] It was ruled a suicide.[6] She was 53 years old."

[quote]It was reported that her death was a result of swallowing lye, alkali, or another unidentified caustic substance, as well as barbiturates and alcohol, [bold]as detailed in her posthumously published journals. [/bold]

We should get hold of her diaries.

"Hemorrhoids hurt like hell. I feel for Liz and her sore ass. Amazing how some people are just so prone to every health problem."

It was all of those drugs she took - pain killers cause constipation, then hemorrhoids.

"She insulted Rex sexually morally physically and in every way. She lay on the floor in the bar and barked like a dog. At one time she started to masturbate her basset hound .."

Classy!

R118

And yet, sooooooo convincing as a dead serious lezbeen in MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Burton raped someone?!R98

Allegedly. I have doubts.

The weird thing is that Rachel Roberts' character in Picnic at Hanging Rock dies nearly exactly as she died in real life a few years later: the character jumps from a window onto the greenhouse, and her corpse is found among the shards of broken glass.

[quote]"Hemorrhoids hurt like hell. I feel for Liz and her sore ass. Amazing how some people are just so prone to every health problem." It was all of those drugs she took - pain killers cause constipation, then haemorrhoids.

Yes, but she was often on the verge of death. It's amazing she lived so long.

Has anyone other than Darwin Porter (who does not count) ever made the claim in print that Richard Burton raped Eddie Fisher to show him who was the real man? I just find this story so hard to believe--it is so out of character for Burton (the rape; not having homosex), and Porter is a notorious source of false stories.

Wouldn't beating up someone more 'manly' than raping someone?

r38 Brando was extremely intelligent but he loved drama, particularly if he could manipulate and mind fuck people. I think his ego took a hit when he'd been duped, but deep down any drama was better than nothing.

R126 "but deep down any drama was better than nothing."

This is absolutely TRUE! Someone who knew Brando said, "Though Marlon would complain about his ex.wife Anna Kashfi' craziness to the extent of her kidnapping their son Christian, Marlon Loved this shit! "

Rachael Roberts was bipolar and a hot mess most of her life as she sought comfort in booze and pills. Tragic story.

However she was quite a good and respected classically trained actress and it was well known that Rex Harrison was a miserable cunt of a husband who beat her.

The 1971 film Doctor's Wives is a good campfest in which Roberts chews up the scenery with Gene Hackman after having been seduced by Dyan Cannon.

The Kennedys :

Wednesday 23rd [...] The ‘moon-men’ are already out of the headlines and poor Teddy Kennedy is in them. I feel sorry for him and I suppose understand his panic and indeed it ‘could happen to anybody’ but unless he comes up with something extraordinary when he appears in court next week, he has had his presidential and possibly even his senatorial chips. The K family are of course notorious satyrs.

I was amazed when Bobby K took Margot Fonteyn off into a back bedroom at Pierre Salinger's house in B. H. and my asking Salinger, when they came back, ‘where the hell have they been?’ and Salinger's fat-faced reply which was a finger over the lips.

It was undoubtedly a hot party and Kennedy may have tried to save his friends. I doubt that he lacks courage, maybe brains though. We shall never know I suppose. Maybe they, the Kennedys do believe that they can get away with anything. Gawd Help him. The press are ready for the kill.

I know too that when Jack Kennedy was running for President and stayed with Sinatra at Palm Springs, that the place was like a whore-house with President Kennedy as chief customer. Christ the chances those fellers took. But they all got away with it except the last remaining baby.

Perhaps somehow or other he'll be able to get out of it. E and I like the Kennedys, though, except through a phone call and a couple of letters we do not know Teddy K .....

I must start putting this diary together. I just slide it into the nearest drawer and so can't look back and find out what I wrote or didn't write about what or who or which. I mean, have I written about Gielgud or the dog he gave E. About my first time as a patient in hospital since I was 7 or 8? If I'm not called today I'll start assembling it. [...]

Burton is very charming...love his comments about Liza. I am falling for him. At first, I was immune to his charms but the more I read,,the more I like.

It's 6.30 and Liza has just arrived sleepy-eyed and looking like bad breath and has just gone in to see her mother. The poor little girl is going through a bad time, a time that I don't understand and can therefore do nothing about. I hope her mother can. Her mother is also going through a bad time, but that she can cure herself. I am going through a bad time and already I've started to cure myself.

I had forgotten how alien Americans are from me. They speak the same language, more or less, but it is utterly foreign. They are loose somewhere in the centre. It will not hold.Rife with sentimentality, woolly-minded, and on the average, brilliant – at least their Jews are – like a vast race of Huns

Saturday 26th, Kalizma, Thames [...] Liza went to see Becket the night before last and was I think surprised to see that her father could, despite his dissipation, play a saint. Now she wanted to see all the other films that E and I had done. We explained that a vast percentage of them were rubbish and not worth anybody's attention but that, however, there were some that would bear re-watching. Which ones, we asked ourselves?

Now E has made around 50 films and I have made around 30. Let us say a rough total of about 80. I guessed that about 10 would bear re-examination. We tried to sort them out. In E's case: National Velvet.

A Place in the Sun.

Cat on a hot tin roof.

Butterfield 8. (for her performance only, I understand.)

Suddenly Last Summer.

Virginia Woolf.

Boom!

Secret Ceremony. (I think.)

Shrew.

Faustus. (For her eyes and her breasts alone.)

I'll think of something else in a minute but what is odd is, since actors are considered to be stupid, how E's best films have been made OUTSIDE the studio to which she was contracted. And in my case the only films I've made that were any good were the films that I chose, again outside the influence of contracts.

The only two watchable films that I ever made before the end of my 14 year contract with Fox and Warner Bros., were Look Back in Anger and Alexander the Great. After that, and because of the remarkable impact of E on my life, I have had virtually free choice. I have, except out of fear, hardly made a mistake. Since Elizabeth I have practically caught her up. I have done, now let's have a look:

Becket.

Woolf.

Spy.Shrew.

Boom! (Support)

Iguana.

Faustus.

Staircase.

Not, if you have a careful look, a bad record, for two people, who happen to be in love, and compete with each other, and who have the same temperament.

So, in some way it proves that we have our own taste. And if they allow us free rein, we will manage not to let anybody down. I think we should revert to being splendid amateurs, and if E wants to shoot the love life of a turtle, with herself as the vet, we shall do exactly that. I'll be the turtle.

We are, for a minute or two, at the absolute zenith of our ragged professions. So they, before they start tearing us apart again, should gracefully withdraw. The last sentence does not make any kind of sense, so let us stop. NOW. It is still a beautiful morning. The Americans have arrived back safely from the moon. [...]

R112:

I wonder how he looked in the morning.

What does it matter? He wasn't passing himself off as the most beautiful woman in the world. —Anonymous

Be fair. Neither were Clara Cluck, Sybil, or, indeed, the children Liza and Kate. Yet he still felt comfortable enough policing their looks.

Frank Sinatra :

Thursday 4th, Grand Hotel [...] ... I slept fitfully and awoke every hour but I must have slept happily as E reports that I laughed a lot in my dreams.

I awoke to the alarm clock – a new and very expensive one which Frank Sinatra gave us for last Xmas. It makes a strange ullulating noise which is not very pleasant and is yet not harsh.

I was very very sleepy and practically slept under the shower. I am dressed in outrageously expensive new trousers from some posh shop here in Rome. That's money that I do not like to spend – my idea of clothes is Ohrbachs or Vallarta where you can clothe yourself from top to toe, white thin shirt, white thin trousers and white sandals for an extravagant $8.267

I wonder why Sinatra gave us so unexpectedly that expensive clock? What motive prompted the gift? What was going on in the poor man's Mafia mind?

Had he realized perhaps at last that the painting we gave him – I've forgotten what it was – cost a great deal of money and told himself that he hadn't thanked us with sufficient grace? Whatever it was, the reason is likely to be vulgar

Friday 5th : E said last night that I am very snobby about Sinatra and that he's really nice and means well. [...]

When did ET have her affair and subsequent abortion re: Sinatra?

Burton takes Americans to task as "rife with sentimentality" (r131), yet is anyone more self-consciously sentimental than he? WAS he as in love with "E" as he avers?

As for his discussion of masturbation with his step-daughter Liza: Eeewwwww.

R135 When did ET have her affair and subsequent abortion re: Sinatra?

It happened in the mid 1950s after her separation from Michael Wilding and before Mike Todd' entered the picture

Saturday 28th It's a sod of a world today. I am extremely unhappy and as melancholy as a Sankey and Moody hymn. My instinctive aversion and distrust of the human race is brought to a head periodically, drunk or sober. [...]

The people around me in the house are all engaging but today, at least, I don't want to see any of them. I am writing this on the top private patio of the house wearing a Mexican hat, Mexican fashion over my nose because at the moment I could easily play Bardolph without any makeup...

Monday 30th [...] Things seem to be more congenial around the house, largely because I kept out of the way of the family and guests practically all day. My teetotalism is inhibiting I can see. Every drink they take is almost apologetic which is silly. I am the one with the battered liver not they, though E will have to watch hers carefully by the time she's my age. [...]

The dreaded trip to Los Angeles approaches fast. We leave on Friday and I present a prize to Army Archerd on Saturday at lunchtime. I have never done such a thing before and certainly not sober. I am followed by Bob Hope, not an easy man to precede with his vast experience as an international toastmaster. [...]

Burton sounds like a miserable old retired hairdresser throughout his diaries. He would have been right at home in the Palm Springs Dog Park - in the section for small dogs where the little fluffy ones yap and play.

R138

Been there have you ?

Only for the cruising.

Saturday 4th, Beverly Hills Hotel [...]

Yesterday I went to a press lunch where I presented an award to Army Archerd, the columnist, which was well received. Almost all the other people went on far too long, particularly Anthony Quinn who went on and on with a typically verbose extract from Wolfe's Time and the River. He also didn't know how to speak it.

E made a surprise appearance at the end and had a standing ovation. Typical. We did all the work and she received all the applause. And where there had been no more than two or three photographers taking shots of the various candidates and donors, there were suddenly and from nowhere about forty or fifty of them.

It must have astounded an actress, said to be very good, called Jacqueline Bisset who had been sitting on my right throughout the proceedings on the dais, and who was also a giver of a prize. [...]

Almost no mention of his daughter Kate, and none of Jessica who was autistic and institutionalized at a very young age. Perhaps he drank himself into a stupor over guilt about Jessica much like Spencer Tracy did over his deaf son John.

Few people know that there was a bit of scandal associated with Maggie Smith in the late 60s and early 70s, around the time of "Jean Brodie". She and Robert Stephens were much like Olivier and Leigh, a volatile pair who appeared in many stage plays. Stephens was a rip-roaring drunk, to the point where he made Burton and O'Toole look like pikers, and he was running around London cheating on Maggie with various famous women. She was having her own problems dealing with fame and the Oscar, and Stephens alleged she was high on amphetamines trying to keep her weight down so that she could get the good movie parts. She eventually left Stephens, married an old beau named Beverly Cross, and they moved with her two young sons by Stephens to Ontario, where she spent most of the 1970s acting on stage.

Sam Spiegel was a notorious lecher, notorious even among the depraved Hollywood crowd. His yacht cruised the Mediterranean as a floating whorehouse, crammed to the gills with Madame Claude's girls. Spiegel himself had a taste for extremely young girls, in the age range of 10-13.

I read Burton's diaries years ago, and admired his mind and writing ability. He was trapped by many things, including the desire to make as much money as humanly possible to support his gigantic Welsh family (ten siblings). As mentioned above, it was sad that he and Elizabeth ended up with a very limited social group consisting mostly of employees and hangers-on.

I've known Kate Burton for years. She is the most down to earth person imaginable. Salt-of-the earth generous. Sybil was a great mother.

It's hilarious he thinks "Boom!" was one of their better films. It's only watchable for camp reasons. I also don't think "Faustus" is any good at all.

She did other films prior to "A Place in the Sun" besides "National Velvet" that are absolutely worth watching: I would have added "Jane Eyre" and "Father of the Bride" at least.

.....Kate leaves today to go to LA and tomorrow to NY. I can kiss goodbye to innocence. When we see her next she will be a teenager and the child will have gone for ever. It is unfortunate that sweet as Sybil can be that Kate picks up Syb's platitudinous lack of thought.

One is aware all the time of half thought judgements on a great many things – from poetry to politics. I have told her that nobody knows what poetry is – she obviously could have a passion for it as I have, and has the ear – but that it can only be known to those who recognize it. She said that Rod McKuen was an awful poet.206 I asked her if she'd read him. She said no she hadn't. Well, I told her she was quite right but that she should read him first and decide for herself. Pompous as pride I was and am. [...]

Tuesday 21st [...] Kate during her annual visits can't wait to get away from us and into the arms of her friends. Ditto Liza and Maria. Ditto the boys, though not so much as the girls. Christopher is the only one whose company I enjoy like that of an adult, largely because he's so very quick and so honest. All the rest are evasive and downright dumb about most things. [...]

Sunday 17th [...] So far little attention has been paid to us and certainly no mob scenes. On Friday a big blonde woman or large girl passed us on a bike and said ‘Look there's Kate's Daddy and this is her bicycle.’ She said it to herself loudly as we took no notice of her. I talked to Kate on the phone yesterday and told her about it and she knew exactly who it was. She can be with us for a month this year so that's ok. I wonder if Liza will overlap with Kate's holidays. I love to see them together and to watch the competition.

Tuesday 9th [...] I talked to Kate yesterday and she comes out to stay with us after school finishes, which is Friday so she'll be here on Saturday for which many thanks and general rejoicing. She is still a little girl and hasn't become a long-haired unkempt pot-smoking hippie yet at least.

[...] Kate arrives tomorrow at 2.15 LA time at LA. I shall drive in to pick her up. Longing to see her. Watched Mexico play Belgium in soccer at Azteca Stadium, Mexico City. It's the world cup. Mexico won on a penalty.

I wanted to have the Belgians win. Silly. Just because they were Europeans I suppose and had to put up with the mindless antagonism of 100,000 screaming Mexicans. There might be trouble down there on a big scale before this competition is over. International sport on that level brings out the most virulent hatreds.

I wouldn't enter myself. Soccer fans seem particularly idiotic even in England. I myself become a nervous wreck when watching Wales play rugby, though it expresses itself in silent writings internally with an occasional roar of relief or arbitrary remarks to perfect strangers and lots of pulls at the flask of whiskey or brandy. I'd rather not go any more. I cannot even read the accounts of a Welsh loss!

Saturday 13th [...] [Elizabeth] watched me in an old film last night – The Rains of Ranchipur – and said I was very handsome and sexy-looking and that the film was nothing like as bad as I said it was. Perhaps it's mellowed with age. [...]

Sunday 14th Drove with Brook to LA yesterday to pick up Kate at the airport and it proved to be an eventful and very tiring journey. [...] At a place called Banning I was gonged down by a Highway Patrolman for exceeding the speed limit. He said I was doing 80mph in a 70 zone. I didn't argue because I was actually going faster than that.

Unfortunately I had no licence and no means of identification at all. Nothing in my pockets at all except cigarettes a lighter and about $300 in cash. I was forced to tell him that ‘I'm quite a well-known actor, my name is Richard Burton.’ He recognized me and I did have Dick Hanley's car-hire form and explained that he was my secretary. The boy was very polite but gave me a ticket nevertheless. [...]

Kate is already 5 ft 4 ins in height and is not yet 13 years old. She is as tall as Elizabeth. She is very white like all easterners and tells me to my surprise that she takes the sun very badly. Odd that, as both Syb and I take it very well. Throw-back to some funny gene somewhere.

E had had a rough day what with Sisler sticking a finger up her behind and wiggling it about to make sure that the passage was kept open. She shouted, she tells me, a great deal. Glad I wasn't here.

[...] Will try to do some Spanish. Kate is reading Jane Eyre and announced fifteen minutes ago ‘Rochester has just kissed Jane. Wow.‘

Monday 15th Have been up since 5.45 and for once was beaten to it by Kate and E and we all went to breakfast at the Dunes Hotel Coffee Shop driven by E in the golf-cart.[...]

yeah yeah get to the lucy part.

"a long-haired unkempt pot-smoking hippie"--Yes, Richard; SO much worse than a drunk who will die young.

Tuesday 16th 7.30 and out on the concrete beside the pool in bathing costume and back to the sun. [...] Kate asleep still therefore am writing on this notepaper as my diary is in her room. I sleep tremendously heavily nowadays since the booze is working or has worked perhaps out of my system. The sleep is not long – 5 hours or 7 at the very most – but it is very concentrated. No dreams or nightmares or at least none that I can remember. I wonder if death is like that? If so it won't be at all bad. [...]

Shopped at the bookstore and bought mags and a French/English version of Rimbaud. Have never read him in the original. She [Kate] bought one for Jordan Xtoph Syb's husband. I suspect she calls him ‘Dad’. And feels guilty about it. I also suspect that he does not read poetry, though I may be wrong. Nobody has any opinion of the fellow at all, neither for nor against. He's nice and quiet, is about the only reaction I can get out of anybody. [...]

Dr Sisler's son watched me on The David Frost Show and heard me say that I used to learn the major classics of Shakespeare's by heart when I was a small boy. Fired with ambition he has learned ‘To be or not to be’ or something and wishes to recite it to me. What can I say except yes? He is 12 years old. I shrink I flee I die but it has to be done.

Marvellous what the public and press will persuade themselves of. I have this marvellous reputation as an actor of incredible potential who has lazed his talent away. A reputation which I enjoy, but which I acquired even when I was at the Old Vic those many years ago

And unless I go back to England or the National Theatre in Cardiff etc. and slog away at the classics for a decade, that is the reputation I shall die with. ‘Will you ever go back to your first love, the theatre?’ they ask all the time. ‘It's not my first love,’ I snap. The theatre, apart from the meretricious excitement of the first night and the sometimes interesting rehearsals has always bored me and reading scripts has always bored me

I do not wish to compete with Olivier or Gielgud and Scofield and Redgrave etc. as they are too ‘actory’ for my liking. Apart from occasional performances, few and far between, I don't believe a word they say.

Larry is the past-master of professional artificiality. A mass of affectations. So is Paul. John is always the same and when it fits the part he is very watchable, but when it doesn't it can only be described as regrettable. They have splendid presences and are very hard-working and genuinely love their jobs. I cannot match the two latter qualities. And do not wish to. [...]

Thursday 18th [...] Watched myself in old film called Prince of Players on TV last night. I had never seen it before. Can't think why it failed so badly when it came out in 1956 or whenever it was as it is more than averagely good. I was surprised at the speed at which I spoke and the very obvious Welsh intonation on occasions. Kate E and I watched it together in the bedroom and E said she thought it was a fine film and Kate said she was proud of me. I must be getting calloused in my latter days because I wasn't in my usual despair after watching myself.

Thanks OP, really enjoying this thread. I put on a smoking jacket (some might call it a bathrobe) , whipped together a sidecar drink, and am sitting here reading as if I was part of their set.

Yes, thanks OP. This is one of the better-written memoirs. Does RB write anything about the movie "Candy"?

[quote] Wasn't McDowall the one whose diary is supposed to be published 50 years after his death?

Some of you don't even bother to read the thread before you post, do you? It's not even that long of a thread.

R153 There is no mention of the movie "Candy" in his diaries.

From the book :

Richard ceased making entries in his 1967 diary in early November, and did not start his 1968 diary until late July. During this period he played the part of Mephisto in Candy, filmed in Rome at the end of 1967....

[quote]I've known Kate Burton for years. She is the most down to earth person imaginable. Salt-of-the earth generous. Sybil was a great mother.

Who is you, gurl?

I am theatre.

Friday 7th, Queen Elizabeth We sailed yesterday at 5 o'clock. The ship is fine but horribly decorated. The British really have no sense of style, no sense of colour, no sense of line, of proportion, even of simple utilitarian sense. For instance, the door to the bedroom will not close unless you move the bed. The bed is fixed so the door remains permanently open. In both the bathrooms there are three sets of lavatory papers with the fitting fixed into the wall.

In a desperate attempt to be ‘with it’ the decor has only succeeded in looking like 1925 German exhibition. It looks not unlike our little Kalizma before Elizabeth had it re-done. The tables in the Grill room are decorated with lamps about a foot high that look like blocks of box-flats lighted on the inside. The famous Daily Telegraph newspaper is a flimsy couple of sheets without even the virtue of the crossword puzzle which was a feature of the ship's paper on the old Queens.

The passengers so far fit the decor – nobody seems first-class and we got the impression this morning when we went exploring around the deck at 7 o'clock that we were eternally wandering into the tourist section from the look of the passengers and the way they were dressed. We are still not sure. It may be a classless ship and we must ask and find out. She sails beautifully so far and there isn't a tremor from the engines

E became very nostalgic last night saying how unglamoured the whole thing was compared from her early journeys when First Class contained fabulous film stars and famous writers and crowned heads etc. And the engines really made the ship quiver and shudder. She became quite misty-eyed. I remember of course that the old Queens were pretty horribly decorated too, but at least it was substantial and expensively so.

This ship gives the impression of being shoddy. But the rooms are pleasant and there are two little bars with all kinds of cute fittings and two small fridges – one in each bathroom. [...]

Richard complaining about John Wayne probably winning the Oscar. Well Wayne should have, Rooster Cogburn being a lot more interesting then the Mr Chips remake. Burton couldn't even bother to watch it. Voight and Hoffman cancelled each other out for Midnight Cowboy. And Burton's King Henry was a pale comparison to Robert Shaw in "Man for All Seasons". That film didn't even make it into Burton's own list of his good movies.

Winner John Wayne True Grit

Richard Burton Anne of the Thousand Days

Dustin Hoffman Midnight Cowboy

Peter O'Toole Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Jon Voight Midnight Cowboy

Kind of disappointed there has been no mention of the VIPs, with the dull actress amphetamine-junkie who could turn him against sex Maggie Smith.

VIPs was the first film LIz and Dick made after Cleopatra. Yes, wish there was something about it in the Diaries.

Maggie Smith, Louis Jourdan, Margaret Rutherford (Oscar winner!).

Rotten Tomatoes thinks one of his best performances (96%) was on the TV show "The Wire."

God, that Burton would complain about never "believing" another actor's performance is mind-boggling. He's one of the worst film actors ever, with the exception of Virginia Woolf. And even that isn't as good as some of the performances given by the people he derides.

Oh wow, Kate grew up to be the actress who played Meredith's mother on Grey's Anatomy.

What's interesting is he lives the full STAR life - 5 star hotels, crossing the Atlantic in The Queen Elizabeth, Gstaad, Beverly Hills etc...and all he seems to do is moan.

"I've got to got to LA tomorrow to give someone a fucking prize".

"This ship is shit!"

[quote]Oh wow, Kate grew up to be the actress who played Meredith's mother on Grey's Anatomy.

I recognise her from something else - but I don't know what it is.

[quote]I am theatre.

SO pretentious!

R163 Burton was a typical parvenu. He grew up dirt poor and once he became rich and famous, he acted liked he grew up rich and famous.

The rumor that he raped Eddie Fisher is beyond ludicrous. Who thought that one up, anyway? Darwin Porter? Scotty Bowers?

[quote]The rumor that he raped Eddie Fisher is beyond ludicrous.

Gee, I wonder who started it.

At one point he wrote something about 31 million that Liz wanted to spend on a plane or something would have wiped them out. Now a days the most nobody star gets probably at least 20 million to make some piece of crap that would have been called a B movie back in the day. Today no one could have that lifestyle on 31 million. Sure 31 million sounds like a lot to someone like me but in reality it doesn't support the kind of lifestyle the Burton's were able to have back then. One week of living the way they lived these days would wipe them out.

I think it was 3 1/2 million, not 30, R168. There was a weird typo involved.

That said, your point is well taken, especially when you remember how high the income tax rates were back then. He mentions leaving England for Switzerland to avoid taxes and catching flack for it, but even in the US the top rates were about 70%.. You pay those kind of taxes off the top and then deduct for your agent, business manager, household staff, etc. etc, and 20 million gets whittled down pretty quickly. Liz married money, but Burton was probably still supporting the ex-wife and paying for the kids, so at the end of the day he was almost certainly living off her money almost 100%.

R166

I for one think that DARWIN is FABUlous and I believe every word that he writes !!

I've always liked seeing Kate Burton on TV. Seems to me that she has been on Law & Order (not sure which version) more than one.

Interesting comments about "Prince of Players", which I saw years and years ago on TV - perhaps one of those "Saturday Night at the Movies". Burton played famous actor Booth, brother to John Wilkes Booth (played by John Derek). Apparently it was once up on Youtube, but has been removed for copyright reasons. It's available on Amazon, but reviewers are enraged that Fox stupidly released a pan-and-scan version instead of the original CinemaScope (even though the box art prominently mentions CinemaScope).

Burton enjoying the competition between Liza and Kate is sickening, and admitting that he like Liza best ... I'm sure that the kids picked up on his attitudes, but he was probably too thick to realize that.

"John Carter," a flop cost $263.7 million to make. They should have at least tried to come up with a better title to sell it. Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons earn $1 million an episode for their TV show and the "Rock" is the highest paid at $64 mil.

He was only in 3 or 4 good movies, right?

Nice to see that both of them chose "Taming of the Shrew" as one of their best films. It's fun, has a truly lush look and superb supporting actors too.

I wonder if Kate Burton kept in contact with Elizabeth Taylor & her various half & step siblings.

Her grandson Quinn certainly inherited her looks-

Why didn't Richard and Liz have bio kids together?

R177, I believe that Elizabeth had to have a hysterectomy. Perhaps OP can find a reference to it in Burton's diaries.

"Why didn't Richard and Liz have bio kids together?"

Maybe they didn't want any more children. Burton certainly didn't.

I don't understand where the children were kept. Boarding schools?

They seem to arrive from somewhere - Burton gets bored of them after a few days.

The Burtons were racing all over the world all the time, from house to house and film location to film location.

There have been no tell-all books or interviews, as far as I'm aware.

Interesting about his first wife Sybil.

She seemed to slip away with little fuss with her $1M divorce settlement, after he met ET.

"I don't understand where the children were kept. Boarding schools?"

Probably. They're a convenient place for inattentive parents to stash kids in. Cher supposedly shipped her unfortunately named son Elijah Blue over to boarding school when he was only six years old. But some parents (like Marlon Brando and Angelina Jolie) simply cart their kids all over the world with them, which provides no stability in their lives and leaves them poorly educated.

Sybil sounds smart to me.

From the article at R181:

[quote] As Burton became more successful, she gave up her career to travel to Switzerland and then America for her husband to pursue his film career.........Remembering her decision, she told the New York Times in 1994: "It was very clear to me that I wasn't making a sacrifice.........."I knew that Richard would have an exciting career and that it would be fun, two Welsh kids on the Queen Mary, travelling first class."

[quote] She added: "In retrospect, that is what I would like to preserve, that nice warm feeling I had on the boat. I had the 23 year old (Burton), the best........"I look at the pictures but I don't know that other guy. I had the golden boy."

With her divorce settlement Sybil moved to New York and opened 'Arthur' nightclub which was a BIG success.

Mid'60s - the music must have been great!

Here she is dancin' with Nureyev at Arthur.

Look how well dressed everyone was in that picture at R184!

R169, no one, NO NONE paid 70% in taxes in the US.

[quote]Look how well dressed everyone was in that picture at [R184]!

Not so different from today >>

Burton is fantastic in what I think must have been his US feature debut, My Cousin Rachel. He looks absurdly young, but his presence is incredible, a real force of nature. Seeing that intense young man and what came after-- the tragic burned out mess sleepwalking his way through terrible dreck like the Exorcist sequel or The Medusa Touch or that aberration he did with Tatum O'Neal, the title of which I have mercifully forgotten -- the contrast is horrifying. Alcohol is a fucking blight on humanity.

SYBIL also re-married; One year after BURTON married TAYLOR, SYBIL married 25 year old musician JORDAN CHRISTOPHER.

BURTON & TAYLOR were the 'It' couple of the 1960s.

Wonder who died with the most money, Lucy Ball or Richard Burton?

I don't think Burton or Taylor were especially smart people. I guess Elizabeth's only education was at the MGM school and who knows about Richard. Either way they don't come off as bright people.

He only became a MEGA-STAR when he married ET.

Kate looks just like the young Sybil - before Sybil changed her 'look'.

Kate >>

Sybil Christopher was a beloved figure in the NY theater world in the 1990s and onwards, as a cofounder (with Emma Walton, Julie Andrews' daughter) of the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, Long Island. Because of her show biz connections the little summer theater got a lot of high powered talent over the years and a very starry audience.

I worked there a couple of times in the 90s and always found Sybil an exceptionally warm presence. She knew everyone's name, even every intern and apprentice, and really cared about what you were doing.

Actually, r94, your photos prove how much Kate looks like her dad.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

[quote]When she decided to open a discotheque in 1965 on the site of the old El Morocco, at 154 East 54th Street, she raised money from hundreds of people, most of them New York friends, including Roddy McDowall, Julie Andrews, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.

Interesting that

1. Burton did not appear to like Roddy, who was a long long time old friend of ET.

2. Wasn't Roddy a partner in the nightclub Arthur that Sybil started? Roddy would have known Sybil, possibly from the time spent filming Cleopatra, if not before.

3. Burton writes about asking people about Sybil's second husband Jordan Christoper and doesn't appear to get much info - certainly nothing negative.

4. Sybil and Jordan Christopher were married for 31 years until he died of a heart attack at age 55 in January 1995. She was 11 years older than he was.

[quote]4. Sybil and Jordan Christopher were married for 31 years until he died of a heart attack at age 55 in January 1995. She was 11 years older than he was.

They met when he became house singer for her club.

He even released a few records.

YOU decide!

I guess the writer Richard Burton needed attention, too.

the "other" richard burton, got quite a lot in his day

Sybil and Elizabeth both adored Roddy. There's still a dressing room named after him at Bay Street Theater.

That's about all those two had in common after the original divorce.

He really did know ALL the secrets.

Jordan Christopher was one of the 7 in "The Return of the Magnificent Seven".

Burton had another daughter Jessica who was autistic, or diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia as they did in those days. She was institutionalized in early childhood and forgotten about.

[quote]Sam Spiegel was a notorious lecher, notorious even among the depraved Hollywood crowd. His yacht cruised the Mediterranean as a floating whorehouse, crammed to the gills with Madame Claude's girls. Spiegel himself had a taste for extremely young girls, in the age range of 10-13.

Sounds like Jack Woltz in The Godfather!

[quote Richard Burton, a Welsh actor looked upon in his youth as the successor to Laurence Olivier, received his sixth Oscar nomination, for his performance in the film Equus, on the morning of the day the phone rang in my apartment in New York. It was Robbie Lantz, our mutual agent calling. The year was 1977. “I’ve organized tickets for Richard and Suzy to come see you in Dracula tonight. Do you have any liquor in your dressing room?” “No.” “I think it would be a good idea to get some.” ... As the level of liquor lowered in the bottle, he began a series of reminiscences about Olivier, Richardson, Gielgud, and other theatrical luminaries, and then launched into reciting lengthy sections of Dylan Thomas. By the time the bottle was near empty, so was my brain. The sonorous voice, now slurring its words, had succeeded in numbing and stunning me. Could anyone, I wondered, be so unaware of what a crashing bore he had become? There sat a man approximately fifty-two years of age, looking ten years older, dressed in black mink, with heavily applied pancake, under a tortured, balding, helmet of jet-black dyed hair, grandly reciting tiresome poetry ... He stared intently out into the dark. “How many seats in this house?” he said. “About eleven hundred,” I answered. “Hmmm,” he said. “Can’t gross enough for me.”

Give me Burton over Langella any day. FL is really slimy.

OP, thanks again. Fun stuff.

Burton was sort of a "small person" as he was not seeing the grand aspects of his own blessed (much by Elizabeth) life, but how others struggled in the theatre for a tenth of the acclaim he received as an actor.

He loved calling men "cunts" if they were lesser (it's a Brit thing), but his diaries show him to be a much bigger bitch or cunt than Taylor on her worst day.

Roman Polanski & Sharon Tate :

Sunday 10th, Kalizma, ...... Not very nice however was the news that lovely Sharon Tate, wife of film director Roman Polanski, was one of the victims of a mass-murder in LA. She was pregnant which somehow or other makes it worse.

It is all very odd and perfectly like one of Polanski's films because all his films have bizarre sex killings etc. in them, and E wonders if it was some ‘nut’ who was carrying out in practice what Polanski preached in theory. In which case Elizabeth is due to be beheaded.

The poor little thing was apparently strangled and then hung from a beam. We shall find out more details today from the newspapers. And then we must send off a letter of condolence to Polanski because E likes him very much and says he's a sweet little man. I do believe that Mrs Polanski is the only person I've ever met who was murdered. Friends of mine have been killed but not murdered.

I have arrived at the stage, which E tells me is predictable, of being thoroughly bored by what I'm doing. The next three weeks are going to be torture. I have tried for several weeks, and all my friends have too, to make Gin Bujold feel like a desirable person. But it's a lost cause. It appears that she goes out to discotheques with her husband every night, ignores her child-son, and arrives at the studio looking like the end of the world. And smells like it. She is forever throwing up. She is only 27. She has re-invented biliousness. Why can't she learn to look splendid at 6 in the morning, even if she went to bed at 5.30. Elizabeth looks dew-dropped with 15 minutes sleep. [..].

Tuesday 23rd, Fitzroy-Nuffield Hospital, London...I have just spent the two most horrible days of my adult life. There was nothing before, as I recall, no shame inflicted or received, no injustice done to me or by me, no disappointment professional or private that I could not think away in a quarter of an hour. But this is the first time where I've seen a loved one in screaming agony for two days, hallucinated by drugs, sometimes knowing who I was and sometimes not, a virago one minute an angel the next and felt completely helpless.

Elizabeth had her uterus removed on Sunday morning. The operation began at 9.30 and ended at 1.00. Three hours and a half. I tried to read Holroyd's book about Lytton Strachey – what a vile, cruel, self-centred man he sounds – but during those hours I read about 5 pages and when I knew she was temporarily safe at least and back in the room I found I had to read them all over again.

But it's the nights that have been so harrowing. I took a room – next door to E's – to be near her until the pain had eased somewhat. The walls are like tissue paper and the first night I heard nothing but her groans throughout the night. It is not a normal hysterectomy – there were great complications – and she is suffering far more than normal.

In addition they have given her a drug, which eases the pain, but gives her vivid hallucinations. And extraordinary shafts of clarity at the same time. She thought for a long time yesterday that she was on the yacht and, at one point, when flowers were brought in she told them to ‘put the flowers in Liza's room downstairs.’

She then sternly told me, looking up from her book (Public Image – M. Spark) that I must never shout at Raymond (the steward on the Kalizma) again. I said that I wouldn't and she said, ‘Hush – he'll hear you.’ ‘Look’, she said at one point, ‘they're showing Faustus in colour on the TV.’ The screen was blank as a blind eye though a greetings telegram had reflected a red into the screen before which it was lying

Last night she suddenly appeared in my room about midnight supported by a minute Latin nurse and said she was lonesome. She is not supposed to move at all except for the commode.

I put her back to bed. Half an hour later I heard her scream ‘Jim’ – she was in the corridor. Back to bed again. I told her she was a naughty girl and she told me to fuck off.

I said I would sit in the room with her. She told me to sit in the hall outside the door as she couldn't stand the sight of my face. She turned away from me. I waited 5 minutes and left the room. Then there was a shout of ‘Richard.’ The nurse and I arrived together.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed. Another time she crashed against a chair in the next room. I shot up and out and she was sitting on the lavatory with the door closed.

I've asked them to give her a drug, if possible, that's not illusion-making. Christ I shall be glad when this week's over. And won't she. She finally fell asleep, or at least remained quiet, at about 4.00 in the a.m. I fell asleep but kept waking with the sort of convulsive wide-awakeness of a man who's afraid of having a heart attack in his sleep

The press has been pestering us night and day and we're in all the papers this morning. What a vile lot they are – especially the English. They're so smirky and sneaky and smug and provincial. They are not honestly scandalous with the awful dirty pornographic glee of the Italians. They are merely snide.

Kate is here – she arrived a week ago, and is as joyous as ever. Within a day Liza was calling me ‘Daddy!’ I must see her today sometime. Them days are slipping by and she has only 3 weeks left.

The most alarming lesson I learned about this whole thing was the extraordinary effect that hallucinatory drugs have on the brain. E looked at me on occasions yesterday with a malevolence that made a basilisk look like a blood hound. I can only hope that in vino veritas doesn't apply to drugs.

She looked at a poster of the Mona Lisa on the wall and said very hostess-like, ‘Vicky would you like a drink?’ She called me a ‘stuffed shirt’ at one point – and she's right. That'll teach me to be smug in future.

[...] 2.45 and E is awake and perfectly normal. She is completely aware of everything she did last night! God save the mark

R190, why are you telling us that like we and everyone on the face of planet earth doesn't already know it?

r208 ", grandly reciting tiresome poetry"

Julie Andrews said that Burton could dazzle you for the first two weeks with recitations and monologues, but in the third week he would start to repeat himself.

Wednesday 24th, Dorchester [Hotel] Have decided to change to typing this diary badly rather than that I should write so hurriedly that sometimes I have difficulty reading my own writing.

[...] Janine Filistorf rang today from Geneva with the shocking news that André Besançon, the gardener of Pays de Galles, Céligny and a very dear and honest man, had committed suicide. Poor bugger. How solitary can you get? We, Kate Ivor and I will fly in the jet to Geneva on Friday or Saturday to attend the funeral.

He hanged himself. I remembered that he had suffered from a nervous breakdown some 12 or 13 years ago after the death of his wife and before we employed him in 1957. He was about to go into a home this morning at 10 o'clock but it was too late. He killed himself last night. I feel such a bloody fool for not even suspecting it. If I'd known I'm sure I could have helped. I could have had him transferred to Gstaad instead of that amiable but quite useless drunken musician of the mighty name, Johann Sebastian Bach.

Kate has a desire to be left alone for a bit, I think, and so tonight she is going to stay in Hampstead with Ivor and Gwen while Liza, Maria and I will stay at the hotel. We took K to the Wells Pub in Hampstead before lunch today while Ivor and I had a couple of pints. [...]

I am trying to persuade Elizabeth to postpone her film with F. Sinatra.7 It starts in only 5 weeks time and it's hardly likely that she'll be properly prepared mentally for such a big job so soon. [...]

Just shared a pot of caviare with Ivor and Liza. K. says she doesn't like it. I suspect she has her mother's fear of famous but untried foods. I had it myself for a long time. It's very working class but I was weaned early by PHB. I was reading A. L. Rowse's second volume of biography recently in which he recounts his embarrassment at being offered asparagus when dining with Lord David Cecil and not knowing how to eat them. I know the feeling well

Thursday 4th Elizabeth started bleeding yesterday from her behind, great gouts of blood which were frightening to behold. I cleaned it up periodically – on one occasion the bathroom floor was awash with it – and thanked the Lord that I was a non-drinking man and felt no nausea at all. I am convinced that were I a drinker as I used to be I would have thrown up convulsively. [...]

The poor little thing had about 8 of these emissions before we finally got her to hospital. The unfortunate doctor – named Sisler, a relation of the hall-of-famer – gave her a sedative which only succeeded in making her very jumpy and nervous.[...]

Endless telephone calls were made to Kennamer and Swerdlow who both obviously thought that it was a minor thing and that she was trying to swing for some hard shots again. Finally we got Sisler, who has done a great deal of proctology and who is the doctor of and known to Dick Hanley to come over. After more phone calls it was decided to remove her to the Desert Hospital.

Swerdlow drove from LA in what must have been a hair-raising 90 minutes and waited to examine another dollop of blood. It was not long in coming and he decided to knock her out and have a look at least and see if she was haemorrhaging and she was knocked out and they wheeled her in to the theatre and found out that one of the stitches was ripped out, re-stitched it and she was all out in 30 minutes.

I aged another ten years. She was pathetically frightened and kept on saying like a child as she was being wheeled down the corridor, ‘I love you Richard.’ ‘I love you too, Baby.’ And a baby she was, and a father I was. [...]

Friday 5th [...] E still in hospital but considerably more comfortable. She lost ‘a unit and a half’ of blood, i.e. about a pint-and-a-half, and is correspondingly weak and will have to take it nice and easy until she's built up her own blood again which will take from six to eight weeks.

[...] Last night I had a vivid nightmare in which our Michael was dead. He was a skeleton in a desert. I must have guilt about Mike because I kept on calling him Absolom in the dream and E – a vague figure – was accusatory.105 What does it all mean. What's the meaning of this?

Sunday 7th E still in hospital with her blood-count very low and weakening and depressing for her, but if the count has remained the same or gone up this morning she will come out today. She is to rest a lot and not strain herself or overtire herself etc. until the blood has been restored. This should take about 6–8 weeks. It means she won't be able to come to Mexico with me probably when I make the film.

It will be very strange without her but perhaps it's not altogether a bad idea as I shall be working terrible hours and will hardly see her at all, going to bed early and up at the crack of [dawn] in intense heat and so on. She might as well take it easy with somebody congenial in LA or Malibu. Female of course. Also, unlike E, once I start a film I want to get it over as soon as possible and will work any hours and seven days a week if necessary to do so.

E, having grown up inside the MGM machine, gives them nothing free and considers adding to their costs fair game. I couldn't care less about that but with all the energy of a profoundly lazy man wish to get it over as soon as possible so that I can laze again or go to fresh fields. There is no film or play that I've ever been in that hasn't bored me after about six weeks so I like to get them over fast.

[...] I'm waiting anxiously for the phone call to find out if she's coming out or not. If not I shall sit there with her and do Spanish verbs. One a day keeps broken Spanish at bay. There are programmes on TV all day long here in that language but apart from the commercials, I have a terrible job trying to keep up.

Monday 8th Elizabeth came home yesterday at 4 o'clock, thank God, looking pale and wan but beautiful. Now for a slow but sure recovery. [...]

We watched the ‘Emmys’ on TV last night. Horrible and shaming.

A girl called Patty Duke who, when a small girl, was in Wuthering Heights with me and Rosemary Harris. That enchanting child has turned into a dope-ridden idiot.

Her acceptance of the Emmy was among the most embarrassing things I've ever seen. Clearly she was stoned witless. It made one want to crawl under the chair. What a mess.

Saw Charles Collingwood interviewing Speer about war crimes – his in particular. Charles seemed a bit holier than thou to me and Speer came out of it better and made no excuses. He seemed thoroughly likeable. There was a slight air of kicking a man when he's down in Charles’ attitude and more than a touch of self-righteousness. [...]

Is the film in Mexico Night of the Iguana? Hope there's lots of dirt there, OP. Please continue posting excerpts.

Thank you.

r219 "A girl called Patty Duke who, when a small girl, was in Wuthering Heights with me and Rosemary Harris. That enchanting child has turned into a dope-ridden idiot."

It was Neely O'Hara pretending to be Patty accepting the Emmy.

He was so spoiled and bored. Everything bored him, which is why he had those endless fights with Taylor.

[quote]A girl called Patty Duke who, when a small girl, was in Wuthering Heights with me and Rosemary Harris. That enchanting child has turned into a dope-ridden idiot. Her acceptance of the Emmy was among the most embarrassing things I've ever seen. Clearly she was stoned witless. It made one want to crawl under the chair. What a mess.

She said she was having one of her manic depressive episodes.

Peculiar how many years it was before someone diagnosed her.

Thursday 26th, Paris We worked from 7 last night to approx 4 this morning. [...] Elizabeth has gone off to work and ‘test’ costumes. She should be back before I leave I hope. After 7 or is it 8 years I still miss her if she goes to the bathroom. She starts work on Monday, and after a time we shall be working the same hours, ‘Continental’ hours, so called, which means from mid-day to 8 at night.

Occasionally, as I hopefully continue with this diary I will try and fill in things that happened during the unrecorded days. e.g. We took Kate to NY with us on the Queen Elizabeth. With us also we took Liza and my God-Daughter Sally Baker (Stanley's daughter), Nella, and a nurse named Caroline O'Connor for Elizabeth.

While at dinner one night in the Verandah Grill, which is the same as ever, I was called to the phone to Ethel Kennedy. I thought it was some sort of crank, because I'd read in the papers as we left England that Ethel was on Onassis's island in Greece.

However it later turned out that it was Ethel calling from Hyannis Port to ask me if I would do the narration of a documentary film about Bobby Kennedy. I said yes and did it in Quogue at Aaron's house. It was shown at the end of the disastrous Democratic Convention and was apparently the only thing in those vulgar five days that was well received

Tuesday 1st Eliz started work yesterday, but without Beatty. Tomorrow he starts. I continued mine with Rex, and oddly enough he was in sparkling form, not worrying about his lines much, and we got along merrily.

Hugh French told me that R. Zanuck was more enthused than he'd ever seen him over the rushes from Staircase. [...] At Eliz's I saw John (Goulash) Shepridge who told of his favourite restaurant in Paris, known only to a select group, he says. It's called ‘L'Ami Louis,’ , Rue Verte Bois.I think he said it's near the Bastille. [...]

I am much happier in Paris than I am in London. It is perhaps that I have a dread of seeing my family, i.e. most of my family? It is because I like acquiring new French every day, or that I speak the language, albeit roughly if fluently on occasion?

Perhaps I'm ashamed of Britain's weakness. It's awful to see how despised and dismissed she is by the foreign press. Eight in the morning and I must be off to work.

Darling Nose and Drife

I miss you like something awful – for some reason especially today – so be all loving and tenderness tonight please – and if you play your cards right I'll take you out to dinner

All my love

Wife

P.S. Call me later

[Elizabeth Taylor's hand.]

r225 She was supposed to play a showgirl in that film and even at ten years old I thought, "She's too fat to be showgirl." In another scene, she asks Warren Beatty to pick her up and carry her to the bed, and I thought "He'll brake his back trying to pick her up."

All these trips on the Queen Elizabeth long into the jet age make me wonder, did Taylor have a fear of flying after Michael Todd was killed in a plane crash?

Wednesday 2nd : George Stevens is behaving beautifully, and Beatty worries about whether he should wear a tie or not, according to E. George thinks E is smashing. So that's alright. Richard Zanuck thinks Rex and I are smashing too, according to a telegram we received yesterday. So everybody loves everybody as of this writing. [...]

Picked up E last night and brought her home, and for some reason [...] I suddenly turned from Jekyll into Hyde and went to bed dinnerless in one of my huffs. Eliz ate downstairs with Dick and John. I woke at 4.30 and waited for the world to get up. The world being Elizabeth. Finally decided to wake the world up at 7.00, whereupon it made me a Bloody Mary. That I said is my Vitamin C for the day.

Thursday 3rd Worked all day until about 5 and went to Eliz's studio to pick her up as usual. They seem to be getting on fine. Ours goes well too, though Rex is very funny in his old-fashioned attempts to upstage, get into my close-ups, do funny business on my lines etc. It's rather like acting with a very determined young actress. [...]

I mentioned it to the director who said first that he hadn't noticed and then that he'd never seen it before in his life. Come to think of it, I never have, on films, and from a man. That is to say if you consider Victor Spinetti to be a Welsh-Italian girl. Because the latter did everything except break wind, and stick his finger up his nose to the knuckle. [...]

My Darling Husband

Just to let you know that going to bed with W.B. hasn't changed my love for you at all – increased it if anything – Aren't you thrilled?

All my love,

Wife

[Elizabeth Taylor's hand]

Maria Callas :

Tuesday 8th I tried like mad to write an article about Bobby Kennedy last night but failed abysmally. I read this morning what I had written and immediately tore it up. I will try again today but I am totally without inspiration. I can't find a peg to hang it on. I've been thinking about it for days too.

[...] Maria Callas told us on Sunday that she and Ari had parted. Said he was too destructive and that her singing was affected. I think she's a bit of a bore.

She told me how beautiful my eyes were and that they demonstrated a good soul! Said she was a little shy of asking but could she play Lady Macbeth to my Macbeth in the film of it which she had read we were going to do. I suppose she thought Elizabeth was going to play Macduff or Donalbain.

Maybe it was merely an off day but she seemed pretty silly to me. [...] She is riddled with platitudes. Was on Sunday anyway. Elizabeth who has eyes in the back of her bum and ears on stalks was aware of everything that was going on.

When E by the way, walked from the paddock to the Loge with Guy and Marie-Hélène the thousands of people applauded her all the way. Not bad for an old woman of 36. I am always pleased and surprised by that sort of thing. We have been expecting it to stop for years but it hasn't. [...]

Who is "PHB"?

Thursday 10th Yesterday was unique. I didn't see or talk to Elizabeth for an entire day. I felt desperate all day long and suddenly about 5 o'clock began to drink Martinis.

By the time I got home I was so drunk and tired that I fell asleep, euphemism for passed out, almost before I'd managed to get my clothes off. I think perhaps, though it is good for her, that I don't like Elizabeth working without me. [...]

I received telegrams threatening to sue me in ‘six countries’ if I didn't agree to do Anne of The Thousand Days. I am so sick of being sued that I shall probably agree today. But I shall never work with that lot again. [...]

Terry O'Neill, the photographer, told me yesterday that the most rigid professional he knows is Lester Piggott, the Jockey. He wears a rubber sweat-suit permanently, and drinks nothing but coffee, whereas famous footballers like Bobby Charlton of Manchester United and Billy Bremner of Leeds, I think, drink very heavily after having reached a certain peak of physical fitness.

Apparently they confine themselves to beer but nevertheless it's amazing to me that they are able to keep running around for two non-stop periods of 45 minutes. I've seen them on TV and it's tiring just to watch them. [...]

Sunday 13th, Kalizma, Cap Ferrat [...] Elizabeth has great worries about becoming a cripple because her feet sometimes have no feeling in them. She asked if I would stop loving her if she had to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. I told her that I didn't care if her legs bum and bosoms fell off and her teeth turned yellow. And she went bald. I love that woman so much sometimes that I cannot believe my luck. She has given me so much

Monday 14th, Studio, Paris This morning [...] when we arrived at E's studio we heard the mind-shattering news that Ivor, my brother who is paralysed, is able to move his toenails [...] on his left foot. This might mean, and we don't ask much, that he will be able to manipulate himself around in a wheelchair, and go to the lav etc. It is the most exciting news I've heard since I received a letter saying I was going up to Oxford. Even more!

We had quite a lot of people for lunch at Saint Jean Cap Ferrat. George Hamilton [...] Hal Polaire and his future wife who seemed out of her depth a bit and was ill to boot, a man called Mr Tinker, who has something to do with Universal Pictures, and is the trouble-shooter for them, and his wife with whom we all fell in love, Mary her name is. And of course one of the nicest fuddliest men in the world, who always reminds me of Eliz's brother, Kevin McCarthy. Mary is the girl we saw in Thoroughly Modern Millie. One of these days I'll try to spell when I typewrite. She was also in a TV Series with Dick Van Dyke.63

Before lunch I went in the Riva to La Fiorentina with Simon and Sheran to visit with Rory Cameron. [...] Simon didn't fancy George Hamilton, though we didn't mind him much but on reflection we tended to agree with Simon. E. and Sheran thought he was greasy looking, and I thought he was bit big-headed. [...

Ha! MTM

It's all amusing but for some reason the image if Liz doung this made me laugh:

[quote]She looked at a poster of the Mona Lisa on the wall and said very hostess-like, ‘Vicky would you like a drink?’

I wonder if Liz loved him as much as he seems to love her. If so I wonder even though they were divorced if they loved each other until they died.

Seems everyone loved MTM.

I have this book somewhere, I'll have to dig it out again. Thanks for posting these, OP. There's nothing like the diary of a bitchy theater queen.

he was such a fucking pompous ass. It's as if he thought he was doing the universe a favor by being alive.

He's only redeemed at all by his love of Elizabeth Taylor.

He was excellent in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

[quote] Hammy Richard Burton criticizing Maggie Smith is priceless. He didn't have a tenth of her talent. Asshole.

I don't think he said she was untalented. Rather just boring. I watched a long interview with Maggie Smith on Charlie Rose and I was rather taken aback by how right he is. She had nothing of intelligence to say about her work or the theater or anything. I remember thinking I suppose the talent to act is a different type of "intelligence" or whatever it takes. But she WAS boring and rather simple minded.

I remember that Maggie Smith interview. She is rather boring but almost refreshingly so. She's just very unactressy and not self-indulgent about her work, as though she doesn't see herself as having any special process to her art.

Back to the ever-bleeding Ass! Did it ever stop???

[quote] Seems everyone loved MTM.

She could take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile!

"I wonder if Liz loved him as much as he seems to love her. If so I wonder even though they were divorced if they loved each other until they died."

I think in his case it was more infatuation than love. For him, their affair was just that: an affair. He'd have them, then go back to his wife Sybil. Taylor, on the other hand, was totally besotted. When it seemed he would go back to his wife, she made a suicide attempt by taking an overdose of pills. Knowing he'd gotten himself in too deep, Burton went all the way and made the very bad decision to leave his wife and throw in his lot with Taylor. For a while, it was a heady existence; he, the son of a Welsh coal miner, married to Elizabeth Taylor, the great beauty and movie star. He was really full of himself and Taylor. But then reality hit, and he knew he was really fucked; he was considered a celebrity, not an actor, and this life with her was endless chaos, all the time. His feelings for her changed over time; he eventually fell out of what he thought was love, but remained fond of her. On the other hand, she never fell out of love with him and hovered around the rest of his life, even though he eventually married twice more.She upstaged his widow at his memorial service and wanted to be buried beside him (his widow understandably prevented that). Although romantic doofuses try to give the impression that he pined for her until his death, that was not the case. He was very happy with his wife Sally. He had moved on for good.

R230 Philip Henry Burton, the teacher who discovered him and from whom Richard Burton took his stage name. His real name was Jenkins.

He seems to have been in love with her for a number of years, R243. I mean, it's clear from his diary the he truly loved her.

Each one of Elizabeth's husbands was so different than the next.

She really didn't have a type. Except maybe brunette.

The great unanswered question was always, if Mike Todd had lived, would he and Elizabeth have remained married?

" I mean, it's clear from his diary the he truly loved her."

I think he came to believe he loved her. He certainly didn't at the beginning; it was just another affair. But after it really hit him in the face what he'd done by marrying her he knew he'd made a big mistake. They had one of those awful co-dependent relationships; they were both alcoholics and she was addicted to prescription drugs too. Doesn't sound like a match made in heaven.

I like r243's post...almost too sensible sum up of Liz and Dick. I love her, but she always came across as extremely self-centered...Carroll Baker, her costar in [italic]Giant[/italic] said as much when they were on the same flight together and Liz allegedly sent a flight attendant to Carroll's seat and told her Miss Liz wanted her to come and sit with her because she couldn't believe Carroll didn't come to see her on the plane and they had made a film together. Carroll told the stewardess to tell Liz where SHE could get off..."hell, it was like she was some sort of queen or something", Ms. Baker was quoted as saying. More or less.

It's not what I get from his diary at all, R247. You write with such assurance as if he told you himself how he felt. Bizarre.

Everything I've ever read about him, everything he's written, every interview, it all sounds as though they were genuinely in love. They just couldn't live a real life together.

I've never heard that she was ever mean to anyone. Self-centered and lazy, yes; but she liked almost everyone she met, and was pretty kind to people.

Disillusioned Richard Burton' interview (after the divorce)

In that interview at r252 it's so clear that despite what he says that he clearly USED to think he was powerful and beautiful and touched by God. That's why he's bitter about Taylor (and always bitches about Brando and especially Olivier in his diaries all the time)--those people never stopped believing in their genius and specialness.

He and Liz did remain friends until his death.

"You write with such assurance as if he told you himself how he felt. Bizarre."

Not "bizarre". There's a very good biography of Burton : "Richard Burton: A Life" by Melvyn Bragg. It includes excerpts from the diaries and is very insightful and well researched. It goes into detail about the tortured relationship between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. It really explains everything.

Drunk/addict couples sometimes "love" the other person because they dont stop them from drinking or taking drugs. In fact, they often encourage each other. They both have so little to give emotionally and they both "love" to get wasted. If one cleans up their act their entire relationship falls apart because the only thing holding them together is their shared addiction. I know two couples like this. They're very co dependant, but when one half of the couple tries to give up completely, the other person either resents or sabotages them. From the outside they seem like a solid, devoted pair, but in both cases alcohol is what is keeping them together. And in one of the relationships when one person temporarily gives up drinking, he can barely stand to be in the same room as his partner. Only when he fall off the wagon is he "in love" with him again.

I wonder how much addiction contributed to Taylor and Burton's love affair. And how much of it was genuine love and how much was a shared love of pills and/or booze.

I remember reading a story told by Catherine Oxenberg, whose mother, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, was once engaged to Richard Burton. He did not marry her, but remarried ET the year after. CO told a story about being in a restaurant with Burton and urging him to try to stop drinking. He just sort of looked at her and ordered another drink.

Reading these diary entries has made me think that they lived a truly bizarre life. On a yacht with a lot of sycophants pampering them, being paid a fortune to work for a few weeks at a time. Their children shipped in occasionally to spend time with them, only to be shuttled away again back to their other, more constant parents (if they existed) or to a boarding school. Self involved, narcissistic, selfish and completely separate from real life. Blotto most of the time. Very, very strange.

What's so bizarre ?

Actors narcissistic. Who knew?

One thing that really surprised me after reading the diaries was the alarming depth of Elizabeth Taylor's substance abuse problems. I mean, when Richard Burton is telling you it might be a good idea to try to sober up a bit... yikes.

The interview snippet posted above of Burton post divorce is strange and sad. He comes across as insecure, self loathing even. I did like the Welsh speaking Pekingese though.

He basically lived his entire life after the mid 1950s convinced he had forever wasted his potential as a great actor. It's clear from these entries and interviews he was haunted by the career of Laurence Olivier, who had been triumphant both on the stage and on the screen.

The weird thing is he had the kind of stage and screen career 99.99% of serious actors would kill for. For years he had more "Best Actor" nominations than anyone period (although he never won), and he himself admits he got to play all the great roles from Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, and Shaw. He just wasn't quite Laurence Olivier, and he sounds as if he decided very early on he had to be Laurence Olivier's equal or he would be a flop.

Her megastardom didn't help things either. For about twelve years (starting with when they met) she was the biggest movie star in the whole world, and he was in her shadow the whole time they were married.

[quote] He basically lived his entire life after the mid 1950s convinced he had forever wasted his potential as a great actor.

Doesn't he disabuse this theory about him throwing away his talent by doing movies vs the theater? I think that is mentioned in one of the diary entries.

It was my impression after reading the diaries that Burton really didn't like being an actor and would have much preferred a career as a writer but once he got on the treadmill of fame and fortune he found it difficult to give up.

I recall Peter O'Toole saying in an interview something to the effect that actors who are all about acting-- like Olivier-- who don't cultivate any other interests were rather pitiable hollow figures. Watch an old interview with Olivier sometime and see how colorless he seems. People who knew him during his marriage to Vivien Leigh commented that she was easily his superior in terms of intellect and education.

I wonder if Burton drank in part just to blot out the extreme boredom.

Whatever their relationship, it was breathtaking to watch.

Burton should have won "Best Actor" for "Night of the Iguana" (I know he wasn't nominated) and "WAoVW." And maybe "Becket," but I think Peter O'Toole was better in that film (Rex Harrison won for "My Fair Lady," 1965).

I believe Richard was bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by Elizabeth, but I also believe he, being Welsh as well as a thespian, was taken by the idea of a Great Love, a Shakespearean love, mythic, the incarnation of Antony and Cleopatra (while forgetting the ending). He called Elizabeth "Ocean" to suggest her force of nature effect on him.

They entranced each other and us with the drama they lived and the dramas we watched on film---until it all turned to sad melodrama.

R259, I felt the same way. When Elizabeth Taylor went to Betty Ford, then came out and glammed herself up and started promoting 'her brand' so to speak, she tried to give the impression that her drinking got out of control after her marriage to John Warner, while she was at home and he was in Washington. And that she didn't start smoking until attending AA meetings. Just Googling some old photos of her, though, she was often pictured with cigarettes, and Burton's diaries show that her serious problem with alcohol dates much further back than she implied.

There was a photo I saw of the pair of them long ago. I wish I could find a copy.

They were getting off a plane and as Burton was coming down the stairs he was wearing a pair of striped bell bottoms. I can't recall what else they were wearing but that ridiculous image of him in those stupid pants has stayed with me. Sort of an indication of the level of dissipation and detachment.

Whether he was truly a brilliant actor or thought to be because of his great voice, I do not know.

My Dad who loved poetry used to buy LPs with actors reading poetry and I realize now that it was a great way to memorize poems. I think Dad had an LP of Burton's "Hamlet" that he used to listen to.

BTW, the DVD of "Becket" is great, including a delightful secondary audio track done by Peter O'Toole. One of the best I've ever heard. At a scene toward the beginning of the movie where King Henry (O'Toole) bathes, dries himself, and puts on his crown, O'Toole comments "That water was COLD. And the crown was made out of some kind of cardboard!"

Very interesting funny interview of Burton (Post divorce)

Another interesting revealing interview

When did Liz become a food addict?

To my eyes she didn't look plump until The VIPs which was her first film after Cleopatra and her next film with Burton._____

Given Taylor's fondness for food, her prodigious booze consumption and aversion to exercise it's surprising she didn't weigh a hell of a lot more. In his diaries Burton makes frequent references to various diets and weight loss attempts for them both before having to start filming. In an era before sports bras Elizabeth had to hold her breasts with her hands when she tried jogging, an image which Burton recounts fondly. I guess nowadays her figure would be described as curvy, and she began to take on increasingly lavish proportions as she aged. Elizabeth looks very short and very buxom in The Sandpiper. Caftans are virtually around the corner.

R269 she got really big when she married the Senator. He didn't have enough time for her. She was alone and ate a lot. Short women with big tits look luscious when they're young, but they have to work hard to keep those bodies. Even those who try hard can lose the battle. Liz was a hedonist she wasn't going to deprive herself of life's pleasures.

It's easy to forget how very beautiful she was.

Once while channel surfing I happened upon "Butterfield 8" which I had never seen. What struck me was a kind of amazement how beautiful she was in that picture. What struck me next to seeing Eddie Fisher who is remembered as somewhat of a joke.

This picture was taken 4 or 5 years later when they were shooting "The Sandpiper"

I seem to remember saying she are fried chicken by the bucketful when married to Warner.

IMO when a guy is willing to lovingly tend to woman's roids and bleeding ass, he loves her.

"She got really big when she married the Senator."

She was plump when she was with Burton. She got really heavy after she married John Warner. Being the wife of a senator is very different from being a movie star who traipses around the world being pampered and cossetted. She was used to lots of attention and admiration and wasn't getting it like before. She also wasn't being showered with expensive gifts life before. She got bored and a lot of people turn to food out of boredom. She blew up and became a laughingstock. Remember when John Belushi did an impression of her choking on a piece of chicken? That was so funny. And it really happened!

[...] E still asleep and now must wake her up as she, at least, has to work today. She models for a furrier-artist so called, called Soldano who furs out of Genoa as one might say and who afterwards gives her the furs, and others, that she models.159 Bozzacchi calculates that the furs on the market would bring in $150,000. I wonder what happened to the pledge that E signed in common with other famed ladies that she would never wear the furs of anything in future except pest furs and vermin. Must ask her and will record the answer tomorrow. And now back to The Decline of the West.

Saturday 18th [...] E said that her declaration about furs, done through John Springer, was carefully worded. It said that she would continue to wear furs from vicious creatures like mink who were specially bred to be de-furred but would ban the buying, advertising or wearing of fur that came from genuinely wild creatures since, as a result of the trade in furs, they were in danger of extinction. She pointed out that she would wear Persian lamb since she still eats lamb chops. Personally, I said, I couldn't care less about the fate of wild animals and that I was far more concerned with the fate of wild human beings. And particularly with the fate of my wild human family. [...]

E did her fur reportage yesterday under great difficulties as they couldn't shoot out of doors as there was a continual downpour. I went over about 1.30 and was fitted for Trotsky and had a bite to eat. Couldn't wait to come back here to the warm intimacy of the yacht and with the two volumes of the Shorter Oxford on the sofa and Decline of the West across my knees I settled down together with endless cups of tea to a long read until E came home, quite late and slightly the worse for wear, about 7.30.

She has just given me a graphic description of the delight of over-eating kippers and the particular joy of their repeating. She is the only person, certainly the only woman who will tell you – not anybody I mean, just me – details of the internal workings of her body. She knows it appals me which is why perversely she enjoys telling me. Liz la Perverse

Elizabeth Taylor, Steve Rubell - arriving at Studio 54, New York May 21, 1979

[quote]Remember when John Belushi did an impression of her choking on a piece of chicken? That was so funny. And it really happened!

& Joan Rivers :-

"What does Elizabeth Taylor do when she stands in front of the microwave?"

"She shouts - HURRAY!!!"

Tuesday 21st, Aboard Presidential Plane On our way to see Tito complete with Alsatian dog [...]. The plane is very posh, very presidential – two apartments with beds and sitting accommodation for about 40 people I suppose.

This all came about when Tito told us in Tjentiste that his old Alsatian ‘Tiger’ had died and E suggested we get him a pup from England. He is very highly bred – the descendant of many champions including a few ‘best dog of any breed at Crufts’ and other 3 stars.He is very good looking – a very blacky sort of brown.

It is also a good coincidence as Tito told us of Tiger II snarling and attacking the Russian Ambassador when he, the latter, brought the ultimatum from Stalin. Brezhnev arrives tomorrow for a state visit which I'm told by CBS and NY Times is a thinly disguised look-around for a possible puppet successor to Tito when the old man dies. So now he'll have another Tiger around.

Wednesday 22nd, Kalizma–Cavtat A horrendous journey back from Belgrade as E was in great pain throughout the journey. Bite-on-bullet, tearful type pain. [...] One of the famed pink pills seemed to help which I've told her to take even if she does get woozy oh willy-nilly-she's-a-ruby. Brilliant morn and God's in his heaven all's right with the world. [...]

Tito was obviously pleased with the puppy and chuckled richly when he saw it. The poor thing [...] followed him in from the garden once so that pleased him no end. I think he was genuinely moved. And so was the Madame Broz. He talked about Brezhnev coming today and how hard the work was going to be.

E insisted that he, Tito, speak English for a while. He protested that he confused it with German but she would have none of it and indeed for about 10 minutes he laboured on in English. A few days and a few books and he'd be speaking it very well. We asked him the form for such visits and he sighed and said it would start with an hour or two tete a tete followed by lunch followed by a mass exchange between delegates from both countries.

They want us to come back on Sunday to visit the War Museum but museums ought, as Dylan once said, to be put into museums and I can't think of anything more boring. One of the men there, a very suave under-secretary of the Foreign Office said that some ambassador had been to visit and after a couple of hours said that he had tears in his eyes. Lying bastard, I thought. Unless they were tears of boredom.

[...] E wrote two letters last night while I read Dombey and Son. Years since I read it but page after page comes back to my memory. We had several volumes of Dickens at home. They were won by my brothers, principally Ivor I think, for good attendance at Sunday School or day school

They sound really boring. No shit...I'm reading a Milton Berle autobiography and he's ten time more interesting and funny. A lot more sex to.

E told me tonight that she was always perfectly assured of herself in the early fifties when she knew that she was a sort of second string to Jean Simmons, Grace Kelly and Colleen Gray and Audrey Hepburn variously because deep down she could fall back on a sort of cultural or artistic background.

She is vague as to exactly what she means and so am I [...] but she thinks that growing up as she did surrounded as she was by great works of art, by your Van Goghs, Monets, Renoirs etc. gave her a sense of proportion about the relative insignificance of whether she played ‘Young Bess’ or whether somebody else did – in this case Jean Simmons.

E thinks that makes her sound like some kind of intellectual egotist but I don't think so at all. I was and to a certain extent still am, an awful academic snob. There was no mind, if G. B. Shaw will forgive the paraphrase, that I didn't despise in the film business when I compared it with my own.

There was nothing much to compare it with. One can hardly describe Darryl Zanuck, Lew Schreiber, L. B. Meyer, Jack Warner and all their little satellites as being the owners of towering brains.173 As E says, for her it was a harbour in which she could watch with some dispassion the busy toing and froing while for me, much more arrogantly, it was a mountain peak on which I could look down on the despicable ants

I went to Rome to interview Richard Burton for BBC TV. He drank wine steadily all day as we filmed (around five bottles) and then invited me and the producer to dinner at the huge villa he and Elizabeth had rented outside Rome. (She was filming [italic]Reflections in a Golden Eye[/italic].)

[. . .]

Large group of guests in entrance hall of villa. Richard, the producer and I are chatting when R. suddenly directs his wolfish grin at me and says: 'How do you think Elizabeth is looking, Ken?'

'Fine,' I say, inwardly meaning 'Fat.'

Pause: still eyeing me, he says: 'How would you like to go to bed with her?'

A no-win situation, as they say: to answer 'Very much' is to lech after the host's wife; to answer 'Not at all' is to stigmatise her as unattractive. I wiggle out by self-deprecation: 'To be quite candid, Richard, I doubt whether I'd be capable of making it with Elizabeth.'

'You mean you couldn't get it up?'

'Something like that.'

'Elizabeth!' Richard bellows at her across the room. She breaks away from a group by the fireplace and teeters a little unsteadily across the hall to join us. 'Yes, Richard?' 'Do you know what our friend Ken just said about you?' 'No, dear.' 'He said he didn't think he'd be able to get it up for you in bed.'

Elizabeth turned blazing eyes on me. [italic]'That,'[/italic] she said noisily, 'is the most [italic]insulting thing[/italic] that has ever been said to me. [italic]Leave my house![/italic]'

So here I am being ordered out of a house for [italic]not[/italic] having made a pass at the hostess. I retire to avoid a drunken row in which goblets are likely to be thrown. Next day the phone in my bedroom rings. It is Elizabeth, her voice honeyed with hungover apology-- 'So terribly sorry. Don't know what got into me.' (A crate of vodka?) 'Please forgive us both.' Flowers are delivered to my room. But the scene sticks in memory, not inspiring affection.

Sorry, posting problems-- R284 was an excerpt from Kenneth Tynan's diary.

He comes off as very shallow and boring. He constantly remarks and bases women's worth on their looks.

Lets face it, his last two wives were young and pretty. He fell out of love with Liz when she started looking older. He ran off with that race driver's wife, who was in her 20s, a blonde model and absolutely beautiful. However, he is gross.

Burton bought Suzy Hunt from her race-car driver hubby for $1 million dollars.

Richard Burton, master of Drunk-Fu!

Richard Burton is the Star of the Month on TCM for March 2017

21 of his movies are screening this month, stating Monday March 6, including many of the titles he mentions in his diaries and many that have been discussed on this thread.

Talk about serendipity...!

[quote]Burton bought Suzy Hunt from her race-car driver hubby for $1 million dollars.

James Hunt was a BIG celeb in England in the mid-70s. A sort of David Beckham of his time, but not quite as hyped!

I hope TCM shows "Look Back In Anger." Burton was marvelous in that. There's a scene with him and Claire Bloom; they're arguing violently and finally she slaps him. During their argument he seems to be about ready to explode with anger; when she slaps him you'd think he'd hit her back. But instead he touches his hurt cheek like a little boy. They end up on a bed, in a passionate kiss, one of the best screen kisses I think I've ever seen. He and Claire Bloom were involved in a hot affair at the time; it doesn't look like they had to fake anything.

........

March 6:

My Cousin Rachel (1952) co-starring Olivia deHaviland (his first Oscar nomination, supporting actor)

Prince of Players (1955) about the brother of John Wilkes Booth

The Desert Rat (1953) co-starring James Mason

Sea Wife (1957) co-starring Joan Collins as a beautiful nun

The Robe (1953) the first CinemaScope motion picture (his second Oscar nomination, first of six for best actor)

.........

R269, it seems like Taylor began to put on weight when her substance abuse escalated--shortly after she took up with Burton. Maybe the calories from the booze began to take effect or the pills began to slow down her metabolism. It's also likely that being more or less constantly shitfaced robbed her of any inhibitions and self-control where food was concerned.

Tuesday March 7:

The Night of the Iguana (1964) co-starring Ava Gardner

Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) co-starring Genevieve Bujold (his fifth best actor nomination)

Look Back in Anger (1958) kitchen-sink realism by John Osborne

Bitter Victory (1957) by offbeat director Nichols Ray

Alexander the Great (1956) an epic with Burton as a blond

Wednesday, March 8

Cleopatra (1963) the eye-popping spectacle where Liz met Dick

The Taming of the Shrew (1967) Franco Zeffirelli's romp co-starring Elizabeth Taylor

Doctor Faustus (1967) a misfire co-starring Taylor

Thursday, March 9

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) major hit and Burton's fourth best actor nomination

The V.I.P.s (1963) co-starring Elizabeth Taylor and an all-star cast

The Sandpiper (1965) a big hit co-starring Taylor with dreaming settings and color

The Comedians (1967) co-starring Taylor, a political thriller that didn't click with audiences at the time

Sea Wife is a great flick, saw it years ago.

Friday, March 10

Where Eagles Dare (1969) a big hit co-starring Clint Eastwood

Staircase (1969) a supposed comedy with Rex Harrison as Burton's aging gay lover

Villain (1971) with Burton as a gay British gangster modeled on Ronnie Kray

Equus (1977) gave Burton his sixth and final best actor nomination and his final motion picture success

Has anyone seen Villain? Ian McShane plays Burton's boyfriend. Allegedly they shot a sex scene that had to be cut before the film's release in the US.

I've seen the film, yes...don't remember the gay aspect.

The gay aspect (edited down) >>

It seems as though the regularly scheduled programming is on tonight

Is the story true of Burton suddenly vomiting down the front of his shirt in public true?

Liza has that same odd midge troll look as dL fav Gia Guidice. Is slight dwarfism combined with creepy eyes some kind of weird mutation in the Italian gene pool?

What a weird looking kid. Must have been tough with such a beautiful mother.

bump for more gossip.

He died so long ago that I think of him as much older than he was. Died in 1984 at age 58! Several actors born the same year as him are still around, or have died just recently - Dick van Dyke, Angela Lansbury, Hal Holbrook, Doris Roberts, Paul Newman, George Kennedy, etc.)

I have no recollection of him dying.

Isn't Doris Roberts dead?

I met Kate Burton at a Broadway show last Fall--we were sitting next to each other and while I rarely talk to celebrities (I get shy and I also assume they find it intrusive), I did say hello and tell her how much I admired her work in Hedda Gabler and The Elephant Man. She was very warm and unaffected, we chatted a bit longer (turned out we knew some mutual friends), and she invited me and my husband to a dress rehearsal of the site-specific production of The Dead she did with Boyd Gaines. I found her bright, down-to-earth, gracious, and warm. And I do think she is an excellent actress and has the same strong beauty of her parents.

And she was both commanding as the dying mother on Grey's Anatomy and a hoot on Scandal.

R279, the punchline is 'Hurry!' not 'Hurray'.

She also had the 'Elizabeth Taylor has more chins than a Chinese phone book ' joke and 'she's so fat she needs to wear stretch caftans'.

I lived in Middleburg, VA and ET lived on some horse property in the area while she was married to Warner. She was not well liked or accepted by the horsey set and I'm sure it was an isolating and depressing experience. No doubt that contributed to her turning to food to make herself feel better.

I never understood that match up with ET and Warner. Never made sense to me.

I could understand the others - Hilton, Wilding, Todd, Fisher, Burton, Burton, and even Fortensky. Each, was understandable, given her life at the time, but I never understood Warner.

Any insights?

I don't get Warner either. Totally boring. I guess she thought being a "political wife" might be a new adventure. It wasn't so she drank Jack Daniels and ate fried chicken.

The big joke with the Washington wives was, "All our lives we've wanted to look like Liz Taylor and now, God help us, we do."

What is this?

"I don't get Warner either. Totally boring."

He was an attractive, stable, well off man. Maybe she wanted to try a different lifestyle, with a man who was not an alcoholic. But it didn't suit her. She'd been a movie star/celebrity practically her entire life. She needed the attention, the adulation, the avarice. I guess the life of a politician did seem boring by comparison. But there was nothing wrong with Warner.

The one I "don't get" is Larry Fortensky. He was some nobody clod she'd met while she was in rehab; poor Liz was so lonely and desperate that she fell for the loser. He was 20 years younger than her, not bright or interesting in any way; how could she marry this guy? But she did, in a gross lavish wedding at Michael Jackson's Neverland estate. Of course, they eventually divorced but he got a nice divorce settlement and she left him a tidy sum after she died. I could never figure out the attraction. He wasn't even good looking. After they married she cleaned him up and dressed him in Armani suits, but it didn't help much. He always had this dumb redneck look about him.

R317 she was an old woman by then. She was desperate for a man and he wasn't in any position to be picky.

maybe he was a great fuck, rednecks are sometimes

R317, perhaps he was kind and supportive of her. Love develops in various ways. He may have been a big help to her during rehab and that can form a healthy bond. She obviously retained warm feelings toward him.

If she left Fortensky "a tidy sum" in her will, then he obviously had good qualities. He may have just been "a good guy". I don't recall any negative stories about him while they were married or after they split. It's true, though, that I was not really all that interested in her goings on.

Here's a picture of ET and Warner before they married. He didn't look all boring and button down here.

I didn't realize that he only became a Senator after they married.

The whole wealthy gentleman farmer thing about Warner is crap. He married that Mellon heiress and got a HUGE divorce settlement. That's where "his" wealth came from.

"She was plump when she was with Burton. She got really heavy after she married John Warner."

Liz was FAT in her 30s. SLOPPY and fatter in her late 40s during the marriage to Warner. Not working on a regular basis (as much as she used to) gave her nothing to do but eat, drink and take pills.

I saw her on Broadway in The Little Foxes in 1981 - I sat in the FIRST row - and thought I'd be smothered if she fell from the stage on top of me, she was that big. Her drinking was still out of control at the time. She stayed in Rock Hudson's NY apt and he was horrified that there was dog shit all over the place after she left.

Last night a cable TV station broadcast a 1980 Dick Cavett 60-minute interview with Richard Burton. Now that have re-read some of his diary again and then saw the public Burton with Dick Cavett, he made a huge, live changing mistake in getting so involved with Taylor. His diary has a bitter, sad tone.

In 1980, Burton was doing a revival of "Camelot," which was a step backward, but perhaps all he was capable of at that point.

Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton interview - 1967

Interesting that Burton's first wife Sybil seemed to live a full, fulfilling life after they split, even up until she died. Married again and was married for 29 years. Had another child. And was a driving force in a theater company. Lived until age 83

Sounds like she was the most stable of the three.

Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton interview - 1970

interview - 1967

1966

Elizabeth Talking about Burton

Taylor really liked both Warner and Fortensky, and kept them in their lives after she divorced. In her later years she would say, "I'm friends with all my ex husbands except Eddie Fisher, so I leave you to think about what that says about him." (By this time, Nicky Hilton who had beaten her was long dead)

I love her. There will never be another LT.

Agreed, r332. There are beautiful women, and then there is Elizabeth.

It's odd how the stars sometimes align: We have this thread with his very interesting diary excerpts; TCM has a week of Burton movies playing at the same time this thread is active; and then there's that Dick Cavett interview that has surfaced, which I've recorded but have not yet watched.

I feel like I'm taking a symposium course on Richard Burton this week. I've watched Night of the Iguana and Anne of the Thousand Days already, I have Look Back in Anger and the VIPs on my DVR, and tomorrow night Staircase, Villain and Equus are scheduled. Plus that Cavett interview...

Not only Nicky Hilton. Michael Wilding and Mike Todd were also dead when Elizabeth made that statement about still being friendly with her ex-husbands.

So she was actually only talking about Burton, Warner and Fortensky. Not even half of them.

But I loved Elizabeth and I'll give her the benefit of the doubt that the dead ones would have also remained friends had they lived.

I loved that she would marry and divorce whoever the fuck she wanted to and fuck the rest of the world if they didn't like it. She was very liberated from those Christian values and hypocrisy.

She was on Carson's show during his last week and he said "You're a Pisces right? I was married to a Pisces once". She smiled and said " I'll just bet you were". You could tell he was genuinely charmed and amused.

Elizabeth never married long term 1970s BF, used-car salesman Henry Wynberg. And it didn't look like it ended friendly:

266, these striped slacks?

R266, or these striped slacks?

Liz is too plump to pull off this look.

Thank god Liz was a fatty. Its the one thing that humbled her.

They kept bugging him because he married Liz and wore striped pants instead of having a career on the stage or Laurence Olivier's career.

The real love of her life was Mike Todd. He was the only one of her husbands who would have been able to handle her. Once Burton was asked what his opinion of Liz's former husbands in relation to how well they did as the husband of Elizabeth Taylor. About Todd he said "Perfect, but he's dead."

Reading this and and watching the clips I realise that her AIDS work really gave her weight as a person (not THAT weight, the other weight).

& not just on other people's eyes but in her own eyes.

She was the first one to speak out and then TAKE ACTION and she stayed with it until her last days.

I was once working as a cater waiter at a big Forbes party/event and she walked past me as she went up to speak to everyone gathered and she twinkled like a star as she went by. Just sort of shimmered. The only time I ever say that was when Queen EIizabeth went by in her coach when I was a school kid and she smiled at us. She was still a youngish woman then. Something you never really saw in the photos.

She and Mike Todd would probably have had a good 5 years before he got bored and moved on. They had a very volitile relationship, similar to hers with Burton, so Liz would have pined for him after they split up.

And Liz didn't age well, facially. Most women's faces who gain weight look better than those that stay very thin. Liz for the last 15 years of her life had the face of a pig.

Mike Todd physically abused her, R343. Like beat her up.

1975 :

Monday 6th E in splendid form and a trifle tiddly but sweetly so when we went to Sol's house for a late (very late!) lunch. Then E with what seems like aid and abettance from Adele that E and I should get married in Chobe this week I thought they were joking and said so. But E and E turned out to be serious. Result the latter half of the day a series of 1/2 joking 1/2 bitter invective from E. I told her that I was afraid! Literally afraid, at the moment, that marriage might horrifyingly end in divorce. We will of course get married again if E so wishes but until I get over my fear and since I am, at least, deliriously happy at the moment why spoil it!

Tuesday 7th, Johannesburg – Chobe Grass landing. Slight brush with grim reaper. Left suspension, left wheel packed it in. Very rough landing. Guess that we were within 6–8–12 inches from kingdom come. Decided to get married here as soon as possible unless E (or I, for that matter) changes mind. Love her beyond measure and above anything. She fast asleep. Bathed and shamp in private pool. Shiver, shiver, shake shake. Can't wait for E to awaken! [...]

Wednesday 8th, Chobe Awoke at dawn. Went up river in the afternoon. Carmine breasted bee-eater chief delight. E talks endlessly about wedding. Can't make up my mind. Might be that cancer scare has given everything an unnatural shape. Also, like being hanged, it concentrates a man's mind wonderfully. All well. Thursday 9th Stayed in bed all day yesterday. Read and slept. E fed me in bed lunch though had dinner in living room. Looks like marriage is on. I wonder why I am still doubtful. It doesn't seem right but I don't know why. Perhaps I'm afraid of legal responsibility. Also sex urge temporarily dormant. Very puzzling.

Friday 10th75 Got shamefully sloshed and despite all my idiocies – nasty too – we are as happy as children. We catch our breaths every so often and say with a kind of smiling wonder and delight ‘Hey!’ Do you realize we are actually married?’ We must have said it scores of times. I have never been so happy in my life. E cured me with loving even lavish attention. This is far better marriage than the first despite its silly (and dangerous) beginning [...]

Saturday 11th Woke up feeling very ill and to make sure that I would not get sloshed on ‘livener’ ETB gave me antabus which might quite easily have killed me feeling as I was.76 However, despite physical ill-being felt emotionally very content. Worried about E.

She not aware of it but sometimes, in a few seconds she changes colour. Much as I (and she) loves this place must get her back to somewhere sophisticated for a thorough check up. Sleep on it and tell her tomorrow perhaps. Nobody else seems to notice, but I watch my love intently without making [it] obvious. Please God she's OK. I'd die without her now.

Sunday 12th Went on picnic. Cucumber sandwiches on the marriage grounds. Cold wine, beer, champagne and cold chicken for the other. Coca-Colas and water for me. E still worrying me. So much so that I wonder if she thinks me a bit weird at times. She started talking oddly too now and again. [...] Went by Land Rover and returned by boat. Fritz (manager) Brian (white hunter) and wife. [...] E came back into bedroom and fell fast asleep. Is asleep now. Will finish this tomorrow.

Monday 13th E arrived back from safari very late. [...] Black told me ‘Madam sick,’ she was too. Brian and Fritz with much difficulty, as there was no purchase at first got her out of Land Rover. Put her to bed. Undressed her. Said she was fine until she smoked cigarette then blacked out. Insisted she took shot. What is it? Nerves? Not enough exercise? Can't be lungs unless doctor an idiot. Liver? Want to take her back to England for check.

Tuesday 14th [...] E assiduously writing journal. Writes simply and well though spelling atrocious. She felt faint again twice after cigs. What the devil is it? Read hysterical book by one Douglas Reed called Siege of S. Africa.78 Utterly absurd political rubbish for the most part but sometimes some truth to it. Must find out more about South Africa

Thank you to R338 and R339.

Neither of those pictures is the one I remember. The one I saw had them exiting what I think was a private plane. Short, steeper steps and he may have been holding her hand as they came down. It was more a picture of him sideways as he was turned somewhat back toward her. The picture was in Black and White (perhaps from a newspaper).

As for your possibilities: I don't think the pants at the picture from R338 are the ones. (Harder to tell since the picture is in color) But these pants are more subtle.

The pants in the picture at R339 are more possible, but the picture I saw was not head on, so I don't recall the front view (as seen in this picture). In the picture I saw, the bell bottom flair was pretty obvious. Can't tell too much from the picture at R339. But the R339 pants are GHASTLY. My eyes! MY EYES!!!

Thanks for trying. Funny how that image has stayed with me. Sort of emblematic of what his life had become.

Sunday 19th E not well at all. Don't know how to help except put her to bed and feed her. Honestly think before too late that she should go into sanatorium. [...] Wonder if booze at fault though she doesn't drink much but if liver bad even a little is bad. Love her and cross fingers.

Tuesday 21st [...] Drank enormously and cheated when E wasn't looking. Don't remember much except falling a lot and suggesting divorce. Can't control my hands so cannot write any more. One word only. Very silly. Booze!

Wednesday 22nd, Chobe Having been so drunk yesterday felt terrible in morning and was desperately ill. Went quietly at 9.30 to find a double brandy. Bar closed until 10. Asked for Fritz (manager). Reluctantly he opened bar for me and suggested vodka as it wouldn't be so smelly when E had morning kiss. Drank it with very shaking hands. Have become a ‘falling down’. [...] My hand writing indication of shakes. Painful knee, bottom, right elbow, back of head, right ear in great pain.

[...] E an angel and looked like one. How does she do it? Look so well I mean for she had a lot to drink too. Fed monkeys who now come about 4–5 feet into room. Starting to tame them.

Thursday 23rd Two weeks married, Still faintly dizzy if I make any sudden movement. Awoke at 5.15. E too and went lion hunting with Brian and his wife.

Monday 27th Drank a lot. Don't remember anything, if at all.

Tuesday 28th Drank some more.

Wednesday 29th Ditto. Must stop!

Thursday 30th Shook and shivered all day long today. Read very dense history of Africa. Lost five days behind me. [...]

Friday 31st Felt inexplicably terrible last [night]. Slept badly. Actors’ dreams. Went out on the tiny out-board motorboat. Very uncomfortable. Saw little but all made up for by a superb sunset. Read about Africa again. Africa in History by B. Davidson. Africa now coming out of ears.

Saturday 1st, Chobe – Victoria Falls [...] Took pills for bed dutifully but hopelessly awake. Put me into a fury that would not abate!

Sunday 2nd, Victoria Falls E practically sloshed all day on and off mostly because we got into bitter arguments about wording of invitation cards re my birthday party. At one point after I had been peculiarly destructive she went off in tears to ‘Shen Buddhist's’ room.

I let her stay there for an hour or so and alternately read and wrote, very difficult stuff the latter because I know what I want to write but cannot decide on its form. Have decided that it must take two forms in two books. It means a year's work and a lot of research (which I will pay for).

Tuesday 4th, Johannesburg Booze.

Wednesday 5th Booze.

Thursday 6th Booze.

Friday 7th Started antabuse. Absolute torture. Read books all day long and tried to sleep fitfully. [...]

Saturday 8th Big pull out from booze. Talked to Liza on phone. Very sweet. Doctors all over me taking blood tests, intravenous feeding etc. I look terrible and feel diabolical. Arranged for return of ring I bought E. Amicably arranged eventually.95 Really must now never drink again except possibly a glass of wine with dinner.

Wednesday 12th Did TV. Went alright. E looking splendid. Presented award to Albert Finney – a chap I've ever [sic] seen – but called him ‘uniquely remarkable’.99 Touch of hyperbole but better than the truth. Rather shabby affair and very provincial. [...]

Thursday 13th Had Antabuse and then tried one small vodka. Antabuse works! V. sick unto throws-up and the trots. Didn't feel right for hours. E went to have X-rays. Spots still there but inert as before. Thank God. She very ashamed of me with antabus and vodka. Quite right too.

Saw A. Finney for first time in film Orient Express. Very amusing and obviously enjoyed by the cast. Tom very sick and wife Hyral has terminal C.100 Harvey Orkin died. Loved that man. [...]

Monday 24th, Dorchester [Hotel, London] [...] Unusual 24 hours in which I slept 18–20 on and off. [...] E unhappy about something. [...] Talks about sex a lot. Just like Sara (Mom) sometimes.

She in a quandary about piece of writing anent our marriage for which L's H. Journal has offered $25000. She very sensitive to criticisms. Warned her. Think she might expand into a book. Good idea! She is also upset that people might think I wrote it. Furious. She must get work soon as L. Olivier has offered TV film. She must do it. Do something. Have to fire Gavin today. Ugh. Liza to have car. Chosen Austin Mini. Long to drive it myself. Also MG should be ready. [...]

Richard Burton ceased keeping his 1975 diary at the end of November. With one exception, he did not resume his personal record until late June 1980

1980

....Talking of O'Toole I only knew by chance that he had taken such a terrible hammering – a front-page hammering – from the British critics for his performance in Macbeth. I knew only because Onllwyn Brace came to supervise my narration in the documentary film about Welsh rugby football. ‘Your pal O'Toole,’ he said, ‘has been murdered by the English critics.’ ‘For what?’ asked I. ‘For Macbeth,’ said he. I phoned Peter that night as soon as the hours were right and managed to catch him before he'd left the Old Vic.

I said, ‘a couple of boys from the BBC were over today to record my voice and they told me you've had a bit of stick from the critics.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How are the houses?’ I asked. ‘Packed.’ ‘Then remember this my boy,’ I said (he is 4 years younger), ‘you are the most original actor to come out of Britain since the war and fuck the critics.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘Think of every four letter obscenity, six, eight ten and twelve letter expletives and ram it right up their envious arses in which,’ I said, paraphrasing Robert Atkins, ‘I'm sure there is ample room.‘ ‘Thank you.’ ‘Good night Peter. Don't give in and I love you.’ ‘I won't and it's mutual.’ ‘Good night again.’ ‘Good night Richard and thank you.’

That was the extent of our conversation but my fury at the critics took me through the night – another sleepless one – and I thought of all the things I should have said to Peter and didn't and thought I should write him a letter and didn't and prayed to God I hadn't sounded like a false sympathizer secretly rejoicing in his critical debacle.

But no, I comforted myself, he knows I too have been through the fire and understand. And by God I have too. It's a phenomenon that is again inexplicable that a few of us – O'Toole, Sinatra, Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand et al. carry something sanguicolous and the parasite is called ‘press-envy’ – especially in our own countries. Why is it? Because we take risks and run against the conventional.

It cannot be because we are, albeit patchily, successful and earn millions because one never hears of viciousness anent Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman Paul Newman or De Niro or Jon Voight but one does about Al Pacino – my dear he has – an American Film Star yet – dared to play Richard III! And what's more – horror of horrors – he's going to have a go at Othello. Shakespeare's Othello, no less.

I can hear the critics and gossip-mongers and the Sardi-Set already stirring up the vitriol. Mr Pacino is certainly not lacking in courage – he has my deepest admiration. [...]

1983 :

Saturday 12th Arrived NY on time. What a change in weather. [...] Everyone drank except me. ET phoned in middle of dinner. Noise of clientele so loud that I could only get half of what she said. Will phone her or she me tomorrow sometime. Doesn't know a word says she.

Sunday 13th, New York, Lombardy [Hotel] Sunny day. Talked to Kate and coming over Monday night. Working off Broadway. Irish play. Maria came over with baby. Went with them to see ET who's using Rock Hudson's flat in Beresford. Little or no library. Horrid flat.

E's face OK but figure splop! Also drinking. Also has not yet read the play! That's my girl! Became very sentimental. ‘Please don't marry Sally for my sake for a long time’ ‘I have no dates.’ She is very lonely. Buffman using her as is everybody else except us.37 Feel sorry for her. A mass of mess. Poor thing. ‘I have no dates’ means ‘nobody wants me for myself.’ True too!

Monday 14th Began rehearsals. Arrived at 11.30 to find, as usual, that ET couldn't get there ‘til noon. They had tried to phone me, they said, to stop my coming so early. Too late, tho! I was there. Director not very inspired. Perhaps he'll get more inventive. Kathryn Walker (Sybil) competent but not competition.[...]

ET still drinking. Wine only she says. Honest Jack Daniels not too distant. ET bad. Couldn't even read the lines properly. Doubtless she'll come up to scratch eventually. ET as exciting as a flounder temporarily. [...] This is going to be a long long seven months.

ET beginning to bore which I would not have thought possible all those years ago. How terrible a thing time is

Tuesday 15th ET only 15 minutes late but then spent 15 minutes more doing her eyebrows. She stinks of garlic – who has garlic for breakfast? She is also on something or other because there are lines here and there which she can't say at all. Very worrying.

It's appalling, but I'd not mind if she found she couldn't do it and we had to get someone else. She is also terribly low in energy. Tells me twice an hour how lonely she is. I pity that poor Buffman. Kate, Val, Alka, Lisa (Rowe-Beddoe) all here at one time. K. unhappy I think. She and Lisa stayed for dinner. [...]

Wednesday 16th [...] ET one hour late today. Two veganin stuck in her throat and in trying to shift them (with Fernet Branca) she vomited. Then her car wouldn't start so mine was sent for her.

Thursday 17th ET had phoned earlier in her ‘lolo little voice’ full of brave self-pity to say she was very very sick and had the trots and vomits and she was very sorry but couldn't come to work. Sally and I exchanged looks directed at heaven. Anyway I worked ‘til 4.30 straight. Without the book for the most part. [...]

Sunday 20th [...] Went to ET's for brunch. Eggs Benedict, chips, peas. All had Mimosas (Buck's Fizz) except me. Brook with us. Ran through second act with ET abysmal. She was quite crocked by this time and couldn't even read the lines let alone remember them.

Sally spent her time in the next room with Chen Sam – also fried – and told Sally she is dying of leukemia. What a frightful liar she is. Among other fairy tales she told Sally of she'd nursed me through a bad bout of malaria in Botswana. I've never had malaria. ET gave me the terrors again. She is such a mess.

Tuesday 22nd ET impossibly sloshed all day long. So much so she couldn't even read the lines. Same at dinner with the Sime Hornbys who are over on a flying visit. They both sloshed and silly too – long and silly arguments over pronunciations of words. I won every one in the end – words in the play I mean. .... ET in hating and hatable mood – Buffman – an iron mouse. God were we glad to get home. Sally mentioned that Simon the Satyr did come on a bit strong.

Thursday 24th Usual day struggling with ET who is slowly getting the part in some sort of shambling shape. [...] I am still the only one without a book. I am immensely surprised at the lack of preparation but still we have four weeks before Broadway. Very sunny.

Sunday 27th ET tremendously better in first act – still rocky in second and reads third. For the first time in this piece I enjoyed rehearsals. Hope it continues. Home to the Sunday Times crostic. Did it quickly. Sally watching Thorn-Birds. OK she says

Monday 28th Kate here for dinner and is staying the night. Little sweetheart is suffering from pangs of disprised love. I could kill the man. He's a stage-manager or something. Rehearsals from 12–7. [...] Sally looking very tired tonight, though she bravely kept a good front up. I keep worrying that she's lost too much weight. She says it has plateau'd out. Hope so. 11.30 start tomorrow. [...]

Tuesday 29th [...] Katie and Sally to lunch together. ET's lethargy disappearing fast. She will be good I hope. So will I, I hope. Milton doesn't understand Coward. Suppose he's happier with American writers. [...]

Thursday 31st ......Thank God ET understands enough Welsh to know when I'm telling her to control her temper. He stopped us every two lines or four sometimes one word. I nearly went mad.

On top of all which ET lost a cap off her teeth. That means four teeth lost in the last five-six months in Sally's and my presence

Friday 1st Started . Mr Katselas the director made the mistake of insulting Kathryn first and ET second whereupon I turned on the heat. I blistered and blasted him. Theoni (dress designer) told me that director was almost certainly high on Scientology. So ignorant am I that I didn't know what it meant. I'm still not quite sure. Anyway, end result was – so far – we did it our way and not his. Result: we went through it like whipped cream. He was very quiet for the rest of the day though ET continued to be sullen.

Saturday 2nd Two runs-through today and the difference in performances was sensational in comparison with a mere 11/2 days ago. The play and players began to invent. J. Cullum now spot on. Odd man out is me at the moment. I suspect I'm too dangerous to play Noel. My bloody voice is too rich or something. Well, I'll see what I can do.

April 1983 – August 1984

Richard Burton ceased keeping his 1983 diary in early April. This was the last diary he compiled. On 8 May Private Lives opened on Broadway, and ran (in Philadelphia, Washington and Los Angeles) until October. It was not a success.

On 3 July Richard and Sally married at the Frontier Hotel, Las Vegas. In late November Richard appeared in a televised event paying tribute to Frank Sinatra. On New Year's Eve 1983 Richard and Sally were amongst the guests of President Duvalier at his palace on Haiti.

In May 1984 Burton played the role of O'Brien in the film 1984, based on the novel by George Orwell. This involved filming in London and in Wiltshire. Shortly after this Richard worked alongside daughter Kate in the TV mini-series Ellis Island, also filmed in England. Thereafter Sally and Richard returned to Céligny.

On 3 August they entertained John Hurt who had taken the lead role of Winston Smith in 1984. The following morning Hurt left Burton reading the poetry of William Blake. On the morning of 5 August Richard, though breathing, did not awake. He had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and died at 1.15p.m. in hospital in Geneva.

Regarding Liz's marriage to Warner, don't overlook that in those days he was considered a possible republican presidential candidate. Liz had first lady aspirations.

[quote] I recall Peter O'Toole saying in an interview something to the effect that actors who are all about acting-- like Olivier-- who don't cultivate any other interests were rather pitiable hollow figures.

Well you can't say o'Toole and Burton didn't cultivate interests. At least if you believe o'Toole when he described how the two of them did a threeway with Ava Gardener during the making of that movie in Mexico.

Elizabeth helped destroying Richard Burton

After the lengthy hiatus in writing, when he resumes in 1980, Richard refers to Elizabeth no longer as "E" but as "ET."

And of COURSE she was drunk in "Private Lives" rehearsals! She had her heart broken every day, seeing Burton with Sally!

"On top of all which ET lost a cap off her teeth. That means four teeth lost in the last five-six months in Sally's and my presence"

LOL

After reading Burton diaries 1975 and then 1980s...it's obvious he had MOVED ON with his own life Unlike what Elizabeth tried to paint all these years that they would have married again had Burton lived! It's clear Richard just felt pity for Elizabeth in his last years.

The owner of the Find-A-Death website seems to hate Liz Taylor...why is that?

The stage manager Michael Ritchie, romantically troubling daughter Kate at r357, became her husband and now is the Executive Director of the Center Theater Group in LA and they are still married. They have one grown son Morgan Ritchie who is an actor.

"Elizabeth helped destroying Richard Burton"

OH puleeeze. Burton was a grown man - he destroyed himself.

What's all this shock about striped pants? It was the late-sixties/early seventies:

Do you think Eddie Fisher screamed when Burton buggered him? Taking him from behind, with the stink of fine whisky on his breath?

R364 - I know him, and that's just not true. It's just his sense of humor, if you will.

R271

When THE SANDPIPER came out there was promotion for a line of leisure clothes 'inspired' by those worn by ELIZABETH TAYLOR in the movie. One female film critic (KAEL ?) suggested that LANE BRYANT have exclusive rights to the line suggesting that LIZ was no longer the svelte femme fatale of a few years earlier.

Dig this, guess who was TAYLOR'S stand-in on the production ? RAQUEL WELCH.

R368

I've never gotten that impression of MICHAELS.

R284 R285

The fact that KENNETH TYNAN was heterosexual is one for the ages !

Go to 2:50, watch TYNAN. Maybe it's just the British thing; I had to watch ARE YOU BEING SERVED ? 3x to figure out who the gay character was.

[quote]"Elizabeth helped destroying Richard Burton"

That's what MARLENE DIETRICH noted about her; that being that she (ET) basically ruined every man with whom she became involved.

R371, my gaydar (which autocorrect types as 'gay dad'! LOL) inevitably goes haywire in the U.K. I've met some very camp characters who turn out to be skirt-chasers. Despite appearances Tynan was a dedicated heterosexual albeit a kinky one. (He was really into spanking and corporal punishment.)

I wonder if Burton's proposition was an attempt at getting Ken into a threesome. In any event it's a strange story, especially given what Burton discloses in his diary regarding his almost pathological jealousy of any other male paying attention to Elizabeth.

R373 And who wouldn't want to be in a 3-way with KENNETH TYNAN ?

R211 When they were making THE SANDPIPER in 1964, ELIZABETH TAYLOR had unknown SHARON TATE removed from the production. BURTON had taken a shine to her and allegedly TAYLOR didn't want any temptations around her newlywed husband.

I watched [italic]The Sandpiper[/italic] last night on TCM and I actually liked Elizabeth's bright red poncho or caftan or whatever the hell it was. She looks great in red. Having said that, not for one minute did I buy Liz as a bohemian free spirit painter nor Burton as a repressed Episcopalian minister. She's living on prime waterfront property with no visible means of support, and he seems to have plenty of time to devote to shagging her despite being the headmaster of a pricey prep school. The movie is basically glossy big budget trash.

The only thing anyone remembers about it is the theme tune.

Those diary entries right before their second marriage....apparently Burton was lacking any self-awareness. What did he need? A lightning strike?

R2882, I'm also reading Berle's autobiography based on your post. Do you or any poster know who the actress was who was pregnant by Berle but married a studio head and claimed the baby was fathered by the studio head?

Many years ago (circa 1996?) there was an article in the late lamented Movieline. One of the writers had been assigned by Movieline, or another magazine, to do a story on a legendary actress. The writer decided against doing the story, but wrote about the experience of going to meet her without mentioning her name. I thought it was fairly obvious that it was Elizabeth Taylor, because he describes her as no longer looking like her old self, but "those famous eyes" were still the same.

I'm not sure I have all these details right, but I think he described something sadder than Norma Desmond. Dogs running around crapping everywhere. She ate junk food, and snorted cocaine, some of which she offered to the writer, who claims to have declined (yeah, right). This woman came off and very lonely, very shallow, and not too bright.

Anyone remember this piece? If someone finds it and posts it, don't be surprised if I got some details wrong. The only things I for sure remember is the comment about her eyes, and the cocaine.

Post R378 was supposed to be for R282. Sorry for the confusion.

"Mike Todd physically abused her, [R343]. Like beat her up."

Maybe they got physical with each other on occasion (she and Burton did also) but I doubt it constituted physical abuse. But I've never heard anywhere that Mike Todd beat her up. She was his prize, his trophy; it's hard to believe he would do anything like that. They were crazy about each other.

You must be under 40, R381.

What is that supposed to mean r382?

It means how men used to 'control' women, with physical force - and it was legal. If you're under a certain age and/or ignorant, you may not know this. Love had nothing to do with it.

I read somewhere that Elizabeth and Mike Todd had a highly volatile relationship characterized by blazing rows during which she would goad him to hit her. It sounded very fucked up.

" she would goad him to hit her"

So she DESERVED it. Yeah.

My god, Taylor in those white hot pants. Did this woman own a full length mirror. How could she think she looked like anything but a joke in that. I mean seriously, could she have actually thought she looked good? Even her facial looks were shot by that time.

Gorgeous face, legendary eyes, great tits when she was young but let's face it, she always had atrocious taste.

No mention of Raquel Welch in his diaries? There were rumors of an affair.

Liz and Rocky

Queen of the caftans.

from X, Y & Zee (1971)

more hot pants

Saw the off-broadway play "Georgie" tonight. Funny line attributed to Olivier (or maybe Gielgud) "Richard Burton would fuck a snake if he could keep it's mouth open".

Tits & tits

I'm reading the Kindle edition of Burton's diaries now; whoever did the footnotes really thinks their readers are idiots. So far I've seen them define "Dior" and "fag."

'Fag' used to mean something else in the U.K., R395, so maybe that explains the footnote. Are you perchance reading about the problems Burton and Taylor had with Franco Zeffirelli? Costume designer Irene Sharaff (who did Taylor's costumes for The Taming of the Shrew as well as The Sandpiper) accosted FZ thus: "You are nothing but a fuckng fag."

i think the "nothing but" was unfair. FZ has had a long, storied, and illustrious career fag fucking, from being Visconti's boy toy to (if DL gossip is to be believed) inviting the young and fetching Tom Cruise onto the casting couch to land his part in Endless Love

FZ assaulted Bruce Robinson, who played Malvolio in Romeo and Juliet.

so it is alleged. and Robinson was Benvolio, in R&J. Malvolio is 12th night

[quote]On 3 August they entertained John Hurt who had taken the lead role of Winston Smith in 1984. The following morning Hurt left Burton reading the poetry of William Blake. On the morning of 5 August Richard, though breathing, did not awake. He had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and died at 1.15p.m. in hospital in Geneva.

After reading these diary excerpts, watching his movies this week on TCM, seeing his Dick Cavett interview, when I read these words posted at r358, I felt like I lost a friend...

1969:

My chief worry for the New Year among the usual worries about children etc is E's health. It is getting no better and she does maddeningly little to help it. [...] If she survives this film she is not going to work for a long time. And if she continues to be in trouble with sciatica I'll insist that she never works again.

It's not fair to her and certainly not to the film companies who employ her. I stayed in bed all day yesterday for instance while she spent the entire day until well after midnight sitting in the main room gossiping etc. And of course inevitably sipping away at the drinks. I dread it at night when she has had her shots etc. of drugs and is only semi articulate.

In addition to all this she is being given cortisone which apparently bloats you up and therefore you have to go on a fairly stringent salt free diet to combat it. She lasted two days on the diet. [...] The most frightening thing is that as a result of E's total self-indulgence that when she moans and groans in agony I simply become bored. And what is more frightening is she has become bored with everything in life.

She never reads a book, at least not more than a couple of pages at a time. It took her over a month to read a cheap thriller by Carter Brown that I could have read in an hour.199 She hasn't asked to read this diary, to which she has free access and which normally gave her a giggle, for nearly two months.

I have always been a heavy drinker but now as a result of this half-life we're leading I am drinking twice as much. The upshot will be that I'll die of drink while she'll go blithely on in her half world.

Don't be so depressed Rich, the World will be new tomorrow. I am just praying now that she gets through this film relatively easily. After this one, and if by chance it turns out to be only moderately successful, she'll find it very hard for anybody to pay her a $million a picture again. [...]

[quote] The upshot will be that I'll die of drink while she'll go blithely on in her half world.

And, that is what happened.

Self indulgent, silly woman leaving destruction in her wake.

"I'll die of drink while she'll go blithely on in her half world."

Um....that's kind of what actually happened, isn't it?

He seems to have some insight into his drinking problem. It's sad that he never sought serious treatment; of course, that was not very prevalent back then, esp for public figures. In the book FURIOUS LOVE, the amount they both drank was ASTONISHING. And they both were smokers too.

"And what is more frightening is she has become bored with everything in life." What a deeply sad line. All that fame, all that money, all that jet setting lifestyle and that's where they end up. It reminds we of that TWILIGHT ZONE episode in which Larry Blyden, playing a small time criminal, gets fatally shot by cops and wakes up in what he thinks is Heaven. It has everything" beautiful women, luxurious decor, a roulette wheel and gaming tables where he never loses. He becomes bored and angry, and tells his angel/companion that he'd rather "go to the other place" - to which the great Sebastian Cabot intones, "This IS the other place!" and begins laughing.

Yes, constant partying and traveling and having everything you want all the time eventually does come to be meaningless...and boring. I think that's why so many people who live lives like that turn to drink and drugs. Their existence is kind of a trap and they use booze and drugs to escape it.

Wednesday 2nd What a dreadful and terrible day and good too. All my pettiness and resentment and idiocy all rolled up into one day. I'll blame it on Rome. All the bad things that have happened to me have almost always happened in Rome. Something to do with its elevation perhaps. It is too near sea-level. [...]

When I returned to the hotel with the two M's and their wives we had some drinks and Merrill and his wife took us out to dinner. Elizabeth was at the bar like a real broad and a two-fisted one.

In the middle of the early night Elizabeth and I exchanged insults in which I said that she was not ‘a woman but a man’ and in which she called me ‘little girl’. A lovely charming decadent hopeless couple

I am stupendously disappointed in myself. Something went wrong in my head at the wrong time. Anyway ... something went wrong. And will never be put right.

This is the BEST of all the Celebrity Diary/Bio threads, perhaps because it is so well written.

To his last wife Sally Hay

10 Feb 83

Dear Sally,

Or dearest Sally or most beloved Sally or undo-without-able Sally or lovely Sally especially with a minimum of clothes on, or clever Sally or sexy Sally, dress up for me this evening or rather dress down and let's see what happens for I love you and adore you to the point of weakness sometimes - sometimes abjectly - sometimes with a species of pain. So after dinner you and me and then back to that beastly Coward. I warrant I'll sleep too!

This is the first time I've touched a typewriter for two years or more and my first exercise in it or on it is directed to you. My use of the machine - like me - has detiorated in speed but not much in accuracy. Who knows that I may not start writing again. For money I mean. Or even for my own enjoyment or yours.

So it shall be an early dinner and an early night for you and possibly not too late a night for me.

See you later.

Love and hugs and other things.

My arms, so far, are not hurting. Good. No?

I like Burton, he's a thinker and a reader. I wonder how many actors today you could say that about. He is bitchy about a lot of people but he doesn't spare himself from criticism, either.

Great thread, one of the many reasons to subscribe to this site...

wait until the anti trans/muslim/semitic trolls discovers we have a nice thing going....that'll be the end of it

R407 R408 Elizabeth would have went crazy if she had read this letter. It's clear Richard was very content/happy with his last wife and walked away from Elizabeth crazy' world. but it was too late!

still pissed she was too young to audition for "went with the wind"

[quote] The whole wealthy gentleman farmer thing about Warner is crap. He married that Mellon heiress and got a HUGE divorce settlement. That's where "his" wealth came from.

Two things I remember about Warner. One of his college friends remembers him poring over those books that give family wealth or whatever looking for girls to court. Allegedly, when Connie Mellon balked at his divorce settlement demands he blackmailed her with sensitive material about her personal life.

And fags in England are cigarettes. Still are.

March 1983 [Burton and his ex-wife ET are rehearsing Private Lives]

Wednesday 23rd. Worked from 12 noon 'til 7pm without ceasing. ET had an eternal costume fitting (2 1/2 hours) so worked without her. Less sloshed but didn't know a single word of second act which Brook and I went over with her endlessly on Sunday last. Have been forced to promise to go to a memorial service (as 'one of the stars') for Tennessee Williams. Did two films of his-- both goodish I believe. I didn't even like the chap. As a matter of fact I hardly ever saw him sober though we were together for months. A self-pitying pain in the neck. Also he made a pass at my Chris when Chris was eight.

[Burton is referring to his stepson Christopher Wilding]

R415 So Tennessee Williams was a pedophile?! This industry WAS/IS full of pedos!

R410 Funny, I just made similar comment over in the Eddie Fisher thread before seeing your post. Posts like this are are very cool. We get to read Burton's thoughts, and we all give our opinions and also contribute some perspective to what he said. I really appreciate this place for threads like this, and the contributors.

To paraphrase Bette's words to Joan in Feud, when Data Lounge is good, it's *good*.

June 1970

There is no difference basically in humanity now than there was 5000 years ago. The same cruelty, the same vices and virtues as ever. The same stupidity and intelligence and in the same proportion. Who can possibly take seriously a student who says 'down with Nixon and Mao for ever' or vice versa. Both are clowns. The 'thoughts of Mao Tse Tung' are a laugh a thought. Nothing can happen overnight. The betterment of mankind will be a triumph of the inevitability of gradualness as the Baron of Passfield said in another context. That is if there's to be a triumph at all. So far the gradualness has been so minutely graded that it is invisible to the naked eye. There must be a holocaust one day soon. All the practical man's hope can be is that he is not at its centre, that he is peripheral and do his duty to survive and if possible see that his family survives with him. Here is one man who firmly believes the world to be a delightful place nicely balanced by its horrors. Without sorrow there can be no joy. True happiness is as transient and as ephemeral as true misery, thank god. Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose.

The French, American and Russian revolutions changed nothing. Privilege and money still dominate mankind. 'The Great Experiment' in the USA is a whacking great spiritual and material failure. A handful of men own the country and millions and millions are servants as near to automatons as you can get in a 'free' society. And nothing, but nothing at all can change that great amorphous mass, that limited sprawl, that defined shapelessness. It is not even influenced by the last argument it ever heard. It remains the same. This great anonymous multi-headed mob cannot be moved to a new idea. It is impossible to persuade a southern redneck that a Negro is a human being. They are uneducatable. You can only hope to change this atrophying muscle and make it limber by catching its offspring young. Keep a thing for seven years and you may find a use for it, as the proverb has it. Or the jesuitry 'Give me a child until it is seven', or is it 12, 'and he is mine for life.' But even starting now today this minute the process of re-education will take a long time. Only a small percentage of the dumb will be taught to speak and the blind to see and the deaf to hear, therefore the process of re-education will take aeons and aeons. The very system of education must be torn out by the roots and made different, but that itself is so deeply ingrained that it seems impervious to surgery, or transplant. I am convinced that in any group of a hundred people less than a half dozen are capable of fundamental change. They can be easily swayed en masse-- I've done it to myself and been swayed-- but they are impervious to radical new thoughts. By 'new thoughts' I don't mean new in the sense of original-- there is no new thought under the sun-- but new in the sense of being new to them, to what they've grown up knowing or not knowing, believing or not believing. [. . .]

Too bad the diaries skip the period when he was filming "Candy". That had to be a crazy film shoot!

R410, you don't have to "subscribe" to the site to read this.

Sad to read that about Tennessee Williams but men in general get more perverted as they get old. The usual, normal things don't do it for them anymore. Add alcoholism and drug use to that and anything can happen. The old sickos would screw a house cat.

Good Friday, 4th Yesterday was a funny day. It went splendidly for the first half and degenerated into bickering around 3.30 in the p.m. It was largely my fault. I suddenly became testy for no very good reason and remained so for the rest of the day though I tried to get myself better around five but to no avail. E of course was no help at all and bickered back with almost masculine pride. This was some of the dialogue, roughly speaking:

Me: (having gone to read upstairs in the bedroom about 8pm. ‘Is the bathroom still smelling?’

She: ‘Yes.’

Me: ‘I can't smell anything in there. Perhaps it's you.’

She: ‘Fuck off.’ (She leaves bedroom and goes downstairs, while me remains reading on bed)

She: (having come back upstairs twenty minutes or so later standing at the door with a look of real loathing on her face): ‘I dislike you and hate you’ (It may have been ‘loathe')

Me: (Getting into a dressing gown.) ‘Goodnight, have a good sleep.’

She: ‘You too.’

Me exits, and goes to Chris’ room where me lies on bed and reads.

The rest of the dialogue which was perfunctory and consisted of similar equally boring exchanges, which took place at four hour silent intervals, culminated in my going back upstairs to finish my detective story in bed. To sleep at 4.30 approx.

The exchanges this morning have been polite but mid-distant. E is now making a ‘salty dog’ so presumably things will warm up after that. One of E's typically strong-woman-feminine traits is that she's incapable of apologizing unless I apologize first. [...] I hated yesterday. I wasn't even drunk and in fact had only had two drinks, one before lunch and one before dinner, all day. Perhaps I should get sloshed.

James Baldwin : kleptomaniac

As we arrived back at the house we were hailed by a negro. It turned out to be James Baldwin and a French boy who spoke no English. He was down here escaping from Hollywood he said. We discussed Black Power, Black Panthers, Black is best, Black is beautiful and Black and White. He said quite openly and not at all sneakily: ‘Richard, can you let me have 20 dollars?’ (‘Let me have,’ mark you, not ‘lend’.)

I was rather surprised, as I would have thought he was fairly affluent and said: ‘Twenty dollars?’ ‘I mean 200 dollars,’ he said. I said certainly and Jim is going to give it to him today. We are seeing him again tomorrow

We think that James Baldwin is a thief! Val had $220 or so stolen from her purse when J. Baldwin came to lunch on Monday, and after several reductios ad absurdum have decided that the guilty feller is Baldwin. It may be his French ‘friend’ but then that's the same thing. [...]

Thursday 10th Well, we decided that J. Baldwin had stolen Val's money for the following, mostly psychological, reasons: The servants have not stolen anything in 7 years, despite my habit of leaving money all over the place in trouser pockets etc. and E leaving baubles all over her dressing table and other locations. The children have never stolen anything in their lives. James and George could have robbed us of thousands if they had wished to in the last many years. It's inconceivable that the Collingwoods would have, and anyway they had no opportunity. Neither E nor I did.

I have already recorded in this diary that Baldwin had asked me for 20, no 200 dollars. Two days later he asked Jim for a further 50. Then a further hundred. Some couple of years ago he had borrowed $10 from Jim (while travelling 1st class on La France) and has never paid him back.

He was sitting at the table with us over lunch when he saw me give the money to Jim to give to Val (I had been holding it for her) who put it in her handbag. She had later taken it to her room in the lower house and James had made a tour of the houses alone. We shall never be able to prove it and the money doesn't matter, but why does he do it?

Does he also steal from blackmen or does he think that the white man owes him a living? I must find out from others if James has a reputation as a kleptomaniac.

At the same lunch a somewhat sozzled and belligerent Chas said something like how could I continue to do a job as degrading and despicable as being an actor. I said I'd prefer to play Hamlet than read the news. He had prefaced his whole attack on my profession by saying what great potential I had as a writer, and how I was wasting my time on acting etc. His wife later on, so E tells me, embarked on an attack on E. Her back was worse than E's. Liza (E's blood) was sullen while Maria (adopted) was delightful. [...] Envy was out in force that day.

Baldwin on the other hand was kind and generous about all and is very intelligent. So he can steal some more if he wishes. [..

Sunday 25th ..What an extraordinary world it is. How do you live with one person for 13 years, and another for 8 and find both as alien as strangers.

Elizabeth is an eternal one night stand. She is my private and personal bought mistress. And lascivious with it. It is impossible to tell you what is consisted in the act of love. Well I'll tell you, E is a receiver, a perpetual returner of the ball! I don't write about sex very often, because it embarrasses me, but, but, for some reason who knows why, whatever, is spared, original, strange. Counter......

Sunday 8th [...]

I had the frights again yesterday – the second weekend in a row, God Blast It! E and I were going to make love in the afternoon and while cleaning herself on the bidet, she began to bleed from her bumsie. And I mean BLEED.

Not your pale pink variety but thick clots of blood that had to be fingered into disappearing down the drain. I sat with her and stroked her and tried to comfort her as best as I could. It finally stopped but I nightmared a great deal. In fact, after two weekends of torment on the yacht, I have mentally re-named the place ‘Nightmare Stairs’ and not Princes.

I searched E's bumsy very often to check up on its progress. It is an extraordinary thing to look up somebody's ass-hole, and a beautiful ass it is, and to do it not with lust or sex in mind, but with love.

And a little fear. I mean a great deal of fear. She is better this morning and the excrescences have receded a considerable amount, but I shall not feel safe until she's seen a Doctor though, under no circumstances, is the knife to be employed. There are other ways.

Thursday 31st, Dorchester It's a cool grey dawn and E and I have just had a quarrel about who knows what. [...] If she'd only do some movement of some kind she could cure herself. But she slugs and slows and shrugs the world away. And she firmly believes in doctors rather than herself. Shots, shots, shots and pain-killers.

And though she is not a Jewess by birth, she has acquired at second-hand, not only their brilliance but their mass masochism. [...]

As for me, the day and the days stretch before me like a vast steppe. I have mentioned many times that what kills me is boredom. I am perfectly happy to be alone with E or Liza, oddly enough I can't say that about anybody else except Kate – (note that they are all women) but the pity of me is that I pity everybody else. I cannot bear, and I have to bear it, members of the human race, who don't know where to turn or where to go.

I have, despite my background, never lacked for money, and when I am confronted with a Tony Quayle or a Robert Beatty who cannot either separately or together afford the fare to Gibraltar or the Canary Islands I am suitably astounded. I bet you that if the worst came to the worst and inevitably to the vast unknown, I could find a job that would feed and clothe my family. As long as I am alive, Ivor used to say, nobody shall go short.

This day is going to be a rough one but I shall be gentle. Liza is coming with me which is always a blessing. I love this child. I hope to Christ that she knows that I do. She must. She must. When this creature says something nice to me, un-asked for, I blossom like a cherry-tree. In spring. I mean Spring. And now the child-monster has arrived and is kissing her mother and it's time go to work.

Much love Elizabeth, and I'm sorry

Friday 1st, Dorchester E was going to go away for the weekend [...] but I persuaded her not to. After all we both know we would be in agony without each other around.

Little Liza behaved superbly with her mother and (on the telephone) with me, trying to reconcile us. She ordered E around. She made her eat breakfast. She made me ring up and apologize to E. She was everybody's minute mother. Instant wisdom. She is a hell of a child and I may be forced to keep her. Also she is going to be, and indeed already is, a knock-out as a beauty.

She is a bloody ‘Bramah’ as we say at home.Her teeth will have to be fixed one of these days otherwise she might become a little chinny and she walks like a duck but all those things can be corrected.’ But her eyes, oh God, her eyes, fresh fire-coal etc. ...‘

I suppose that deep down, though I hate to admit it, I am a proper actor and the parts I play do affect me slightly. There is always one part of me that is looking on and I am aware that I have become authoritative. Nobody is allowed to buy anything except me. I must give the drinks. I must pay for the lunch. My car, or one of them, must take you home. Mind, I've always been like that but playing a King, especially a man as demonic as Henry, has accentuated my natural assumption of superior means

R412, it does seem like he was happy with Sally. At least he had that at the end of his life. Sally was Sybil #2, a caretaker and someone he didn't have to compete with and someone he could impress.

....Liza is quite hopelessly slap-dash. She has spent only two nights in the spare bedroom and where we share the bathroom and this morning it looked as if a tornado had hit it.

Two pairs of under pants on the bathroom floor, her dress, shoes and socks in various corners of the bedroom, innumerable ‘Charlie Brown’ books scattered to the four winds. What is this disease of sluttishness that possesses our children, boys and all? Well they are all past the age of curing so bugger it.

But nobody shares the spare room with me again. I remember Simmy's room at Gstaad – the smell and chaos was so revolting that I couldn't go into it.

Monday 4th [...] I'm at my wit's end as to where to send Liza to school. She has the education of a child of 10 and is 12 years old. And she is very bright but wouldn't stand a chance of getting into any school where they demand the 11-Plus. I suppose we'll work something out.

Thursday 2nd ..Afterwards we went to the hospital to see Rossier.... they were worried about Ivor's heart. He covered it up pretty quickly by saying what a remarkable recovery Ivor had made and how ‘phenomenal’ it was and so on but the knife had already gone deep into my stomach.

When we came out of the Beaux Arts the cab-driver had vanished, but he returned in a few minutes having very sweetly bought a single rose for Elizabeth. Somewhere between the hospital and dinner brooding set in. Between long silences deadly insults were hurled about.

At one point E, knowing I was in a state of nastiness, said to me at the lousy Italian restaurant we went to: Come on Richard, hold my hand. Me: I do not wish to touch your hands. They are large and ugly and red and masculine. Or words to that effect.

After that my mind was like a malignant cancer – I was incurable. I either remained stupidly silent or, if I did speak, managed an insult a second.

What the hell's the matter with me. I love milady more than my life and I adore Brook. Why do I hurt them so much and spoil the day?

I am very contrite this morning but one of these days it's going to be too late cock, too late. E has just said that I really must get her the carat ring to make her ugly big hands look smaller and less ugly! Nobody turns insults to her advantage more swiftly or more cleverly than Lady Elizabeth. That insult last night is going to cost me. Betcha! [...]

Saturday 28th....There was an outburst at lunch today. Norma said how marvellous I was looking since I gave up booze – it's only been a fortnight for God's sake – and that when she arrived I looked so awful that she burst into tears (which she didn't) and I am reputed to have said to her ‘It's only the booze love – I shall stop it.’

..... Elizabeth was busily making one of Ray's specials which consists of iced coffee and milk or cream or ice-cream and some mild (55 proof) sweet Kalua – a dash of – and some rum to titch it up, because it was Norma's birthday. And I said ‘there's someone who could never give up drink’ pointing at E.

Whereupon she said she (E) hated my guts and further more disliked me savagely. ‘Ah,’ said little stirrer-up Norma, ‘but you do love him don't you? ‘No,’ said E, ‘and I wish to Christ he'd get out of my life. It's been growing on me for a long time.’ ‘Piss off out of my sight,’ she added.

So like the Arab I picked up my tent and stole silently away up here – my tent being the type-writer, my sombrero and Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish. She has said all those things before and I to her, but never before, as I recall, when sober and in front of people. If, of course she was sober.

Can someone with access to a copy of the diary find that passage about a famous magician at a party doing seemingly impossible card tricks? The description is very eerie.

It's exhausting reading these journals

Then don't read them r432. Problem solved.

Everyone who's enjoyed this thread needs to watch the documentary at the link. Don't miss the staggering cuntiness of DataLounge favorite Lauren Bacall, who unlike most of the other people interviewed rears her gorgonesque head to trash Burton. I wonder what he did to piss her off so much while he was alive that she went on record to insult him after his death. The evil that men do lives after them...

"Something went wrong in my head at the wrong time. Anyway ... something went wrong. And will never be put right." (Post r405)

Burton was prescient, was he not?

Re R424: 'Elizabeth is an eternal one night stand. She is my private and personal bought mistress. And lascivious with it. It is impossible to tell you what is consisted in the act of love. Well I'll tell you, E is a receiver, a perpetual returner of the ball! I don't write about sex very often, because it embarrasses me, but, but, for some reason who knows why, whatever, is spared, original, strange. Counter...... "

Any takes on what Burton meant here? OTOH, he seems happy that E is 'a perpetual returner of the ball,' which I take to mean responsive. OTOH, his describing her as an eternal one night stand sounds like he didn't care about having a second night, though he then goes on to describe her as a private and bought mistress. Confusing.

[quote]his describing her as an eternal one night stand sounds like he didn't care about having a second night,

That's not what he meant. People have one-night stands because it's exciting and thrilling. It is the forbidden. And it's also an ego trip--to hook up and score with new partners is a confidence booster. ET's sexual prowess makes him feel like each sexual encounter is a new experience.

I expect Anna Kafashi's mother had an affair with or was raped by an Indian.

Way back, r177 asked why they had no children. When married to Mike Todd, Elizabeth Taylor gave birth to their daughter, Liza. ET went into premature labor and had a c-section. Because labor had been so difficult, Todd asked the surgeon to sterilize ET to protect her health. So, no more pregnancies.

Does he talk about his raging alcoholism and drug addiction?

He definitely writes about the drinking and Antabuse, r440.

R108 it is Welsh.

My understanding of the language is sparse, but that phrase loosely translates to English as 'thanks to you, today', by which I assume Burton means a quality of humility in remembering one's origins and all the support one receives throughout life to facilitate person success.

It's not a common idiom as far as I know, or at least I've never heard it before having lived in Wales and on the border my entire life. That said, I am not a fluent speaker nor am I full-blood Welsh, so take that with a pinch of salt.

I recall reading that either just Elizabeth, or both she and Richard, enjoyed addressing or referring to Lucille as "Auntie Cunty" on the set of their famous "Here's Lucy" TV show episode appearance.