The Richard Burton Diaries (272 page)

65
Cathleen Nesbitt (1888–1982) played the part of Harry's mother (Burton being Harry) in
Staircase
. She would also act in
Villain
.

66
The Great White Hope
began a run of 546 performances on Broadway on 3 October 1968.

67
Howard Sackler (1929–82), screenwriter and playwright.

68
Jones (born 1931) was in fact in his late thirties.

69
Smith drew on this for a column that appeared in the
New York Times
on 26 January 1969.

70
Joan Crosby (1934—), journalist and actor.

71
A Flea in Her Ear
(Twentieth Century-Fox, 1968), directed by Jacques Charon (1920–75), starring Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts.

72
Geneviève Bujold (1942—), was to play the part of Anne Boleyn in
Anne of the Thousand Days
.

73
Arne Lindroth (1910–85), a marine expert, was advising Burton on the seaworthiness of the
Kalizma
.

74
The film was
Krasnaya Palatka
(1969: US title
The Red Tent
), which starred Sean Connery (1930—) as Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) the Norwegian explorer, and first man to reach the South Pole.

75
Elizabeth Harris (1936—), daughter of David Rees-Williams, Baron Ogmore, and at this time married to the actor Richard Harris. She and Rex Harrison would marry in 1971 and divorce in 1976.

76
Burton means the Vatican newspaper the
Osservatore della Domenica
, which in 1962 had condemned Taylor for ‘erotic vagrancy’.

77
George Orwell,
The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell
, edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (4 vols, 1968).

78
Ingrid Bergman (1915–82), actor.

79
Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo flight, had launched on 11 October and would splash down on 22 October. The three astronauts were Walter Schirra (1923–2007), Donn Eisele (1930–87) and Walter Cunningham (1932—).

80
Robert Sargent Shriver (1915–2011), American Ambassador to France (1968–70), and husband of Eunice Kennedy (1921–2009), thus brother-in-law to both John F. and Robert F. Kennedy.

81
‘In the dead vast and middle of the night’ is a line from
Hamlet
, Act I, scene ii, although it is often rendered ‘dead waste and middle of the night’.

82
Burton must mean Hubert Humphrey (1911–78), Vice-President of the USA and the Democratic Party candidate for the presidency in the 1968 election.

83
Charles Braswell (1924–74) played the part of Thomas J. Lockwood in
The Only Game in Town
.

84
Lucille Ball (1911–89), actor, television star. Angela Lansbury (1925—), actor. ETB: Elizabeth Taylor Burton.

85
This was Braswell's first major film role.

86
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1899–1977), novelist, poet, literary scholar.

87
Rosemary Harris (1925—), who had appeared in
A Flea in Her Ear
, and who had played alongside Burton in the Old Vic production of
Othello
.

88
Maurice Chevalier (1888–1972), actor and singer, lived at Marnes-la-Coquette in the western suburbs of Paris, close to the Forest of Fausses-Reposes and to the Parc de Saint-Cloud.

89
Restaurant de la Tête Noire, Place Mairie, Marnes-la-Coquette.

90
Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia (1936—), later to enjoy a brief engagement to Burton.

91
Burton is referring here to the clenched fist salutes given on the podium by Black American sprinters Tommie Smith (1944—) and John Carlos (1945—), who had won gold and bronze medals respectively in the men's 200m at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.

92
Fouquet's on the Champs-Elysées.

93
There were anti-war demonstrations outside the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London on 27 October. ‘Bobby’ is a British term for a police officer.

94
Francis Warner, tutor in English Literature at St Peter's College, Oxford, and a friend of Burton.

95
John Donne (1572–1631), Thomas Traherne (1637–94), Henry Vaughan (1621–95) and George Herbert (1593–1633), poets. The poem quoted (first two verses) is Herbert's ‘Virtue’. The third verse includes the line ‘A box where sweets compacted lie’.

96
A reference to the poem ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’, by Rupert Brooke (1887–1915), which includes the line ‘Green as a dream and deep as death’.

97
Peter Finch played the part of General Umberto Nobile (1885–1978), Arctic explorer.

98
Roderick Mann,
The Headliner
(1968). ‘Burton Broadside’,
Evening Standard
, 23 October 1968. Burton's mixed metaphor is quoted thus: ‘Yet these particular rats, like the worms that Noah forgot to put on the Ark, are necessary. When, as it were, the chips are down, the rats can turn into Rajahs.’

99
A reference to the starvation crisis and civil war in Biafra, Nigeria that was taking place at the time.

100
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), poet, dramatist, novelist, wit.

101
All Saints’ Day (1 November) is a national holiday in France.

102
Secret Ceremony
, the film starring Taylor, Mia Farrow and Robert Mitchum (1917–97) which had appeared earlier in the year.

103
The Train Bleu ran between Paris and Vintimille in Italy.

104
Cannes, city and port on the French Riviera, to the west of Monaco and Saint Jean Cap Ferrat.

105
Ramón Novarro (1899–1968), actor, had been murdered at his home in Laurel Canyon, Hollywood.
Nice-Matin
: the Nice daily paper.

106
Gordon Waller (1945–2009), formerly combined with Peter Asher in the pop duo ‘Peter and Gordon’.

107
La Colombe d'Or, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, inland from Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean coast.

108
Fernet Branca is an Italian brand of the spirit Fernet, often used for hangovers.

109
E. W. (Jim) Swanton (1907–2000), cricket writer and commentator. His
Cricket from All Angles
appeared in 1968.

110
Neville Cardus (1888–1975) and John Arlott (1914–91), both writers on cricket.

111
A reference to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 in which an attempt was made by a number of conspirators including Guy Fawkes (1570–1606) to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London.

112
The Republican candidate Richard Nixon won 43.4% of the popular vote, 32 states, and 301 votes in the electoral college, as against 42.7% of the vote, 13 states (plus the District of Columbia) and 191 votes for the Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey. George Wallace, running as an Independent, won 13.5% of the vote, 5 states and 46 votes.

113
Robinson Jeffers's (1887–1962) adaptation of the Greek tragedy of Medea for the stage (1947) and the 1797 opera
Médée
by Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842).

114
Robert Browning (1812–89),
Pippa Passes
(1841), includes the lines ‘The lark's on the wing; / The snail's on the thorn; / God's in his Heaven – / All's right with the world!’

115
John Bunyan (1628–88),
Pilgrim's Progress
(1678–84).

116
Geoffrey Warner (1937—),
Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France
(1968). Alexander Werth (1901–69),
De Gaulle: A Political Biography
(1966).

117
Sir Oswald Mosley (1896–1980)
My Life
(1968).

118
A reference to Michael Foot (1913–2010), Labour Party politician and Member of Parliament for the South Wales constituency of Ebbw Vale at this time.

119
Shirley MacLaine (1934—), actor, sister of Warren Beatty.

120
Molière, pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622–73), playwright.

121
A conflict in the air between the German Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force in the summer of 1940 over the UK.

122
A reference to the Zanuck suit against Burton and Taylor in the wake of
Cleopatra
.

123
Café Le Coq Hardy, Rue Notre Dame de Lorette, Paris.

124
Daniel C. Blum,
A Pictorial History of the Silent Screen
(1953).

125
James D. Watson,
The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA
(1968).

126
Charles Percy (C. P.) Snow, Baron Snow of Leicester (1905–80), novelist.

127
Otto Christian Archibald von Bismarck (1897–1975), Prince of Bismarck from 1904 to his death. His wife Anne-Marie (1907–99).

128
A reference to Germany's ‘Iron Chancellor’, Otto Christian's grandfather, Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck (1815–98). Burton may also be referring to the 1940 novel from
Iron in the Soul
by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80).

129
‘Toto and Nanette’ were chalkware figurines popular in the 1930s.

130
Hamlet
, Act IV, scene v, when the King speaks the line: ‘There's such divinity doth hedge a king’.

131
Suzy Nickerbocker, the pen name of columnist Aileen Mehle (1921—).

132
A reference to the first line of the poem ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ (1888) by William Butler Yeats (1865–1939): ‘I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree.’

133
Cathleen Nesbitt and Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) had been engaged to be married prior to his death. Brooke had written sonnets to Nesbitt. John Lennon (1940–80) of The Beatles had published
In His Own Write
in 1964.

134
Ipepacuana: a liquid used to induce vomiting.

135
James Wishart, a chartered accountant with the London firm of W. H. Jack & Co, an authority on tax issues, who had been advising Burton since the 1950s. James Bacon (1914—), journalist and actor, who wrote for the
Hollywood Reporter
and the
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
.

136
Stephen Lewis (1936—) played the part of Jack in
Staircase
. He had been a merchant seaman.

137
Julie Christie (1941—), most famous at this point for her roles in
Billy Liar
(1963) and
Doctor Zhivago
(1965). She had turned down the role of Anne Boleyn in
Anne of the Thousand Days
. Her relationship with Warren Beatty would last until 1974.

138
Princess Elizabeth would marry Neil Balfour (1944—), merchant banker and Conservative Party candidate in 1969.

139
Bonnie and Clyde
(Warner Brothers, 1967), had starred Beatty and Faye Dunaway (1941—).

140
Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727), scientist, mathematician, astronomer, who is credited with saying that: ‘I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.’

141
David René de Rothschild (1942—), Guy de Rothschild's son by his first marriage.

142
Philippe Sereys de Rothschild (1963—).

143
Lili Krahmer (1930–96), Guy de Rothschild's stepdaughter by his first marriage.

144
Lili's husband was Maurice Rheims (1910—2003), photographer.

145
Alberto de Rossi (d. 1975), make-up artist, who worked on
Cleopatra, The Taming of the Shrew
and
Staircase
and who would work on
Divorce His, Divorce Hers
, and on the Taylor film
Ash Wednesday
.

146
Raymond Marcellin (1914–2004) was Minister of the Interior from May 1968 to February 1974.

147
Claude Pompidou (1912–2007), wife of Georges Pompidou (1911–74), who had been Prime Minister of France from 1962 to July 1968 and would become President in June 1969. De Gaulle resigned the presidency in April 1969 and died in November 1970.

148
A very popular Welsh song, roughly translating as ‘Beside the sea red roses growing’.

149
Stanley Flink, journalist.

150
Lyndon Johnson (1908–73), President of the United States (1963–8), and his wife Lady Bird Johnson (1912–2007).

151
Ferndale, a mining village in the Rhondda Fach in South Wales, adjacent to Tylorstown, birthplace of Richard's first wife Sybil.

152
Dulcis Imperatrix: charming consort of the emperor. According to the traditional rhyme, ‘Sunday's child is full of grace’.

153
Poor Richard's Almanack
(1733–58), published by Benjamin Franklin (1706–90).

154
Hebe Dorsey (1925–87), fashion editor of the
International Herald Tribune
. ‘Dwyer’ may refer to Paul O'Dwyer (1907–98), unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the Senate for New York, 1968 and 1970. His brother, William (1890–1964), had been Mayor of New York from 1946 to 1950.

155
Samuel Pisar (1929—).

156
Vice versa: the other way around.

157
Beverly Hills Hotel, Sunset Boulevard, Beverly Hills, California.

158
Director Tony Richardson had sacked Burton from the production of
Laughter in the Dark
for being in breach of contract.

159
A reference to the poem ‘Ring Out, Wild Bells’, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92).

160
A reference to the role of Professor Henry Higgins which Rex Harrison had played in
My Fair Lady
.

161
Edie Goetz (1905–87), daughter of Louis B. Mayer (1884–1957), and wife of William Goetz (1903–69), film producer. Frank Sinatra had divorced Mia Farrow earlier in 1968.

162
A reference to the comic strip
Peanuts
by Charles Schulz (1922–2000).

163
Howard Young (1878–1972), art dealer and partner in business with Francis Taylor. In his will he bequeathed a sum in the region of $20m for the establishment of the Howard Young Medical Center, Wisconsin.