The Richard Burton Diaries (54 page)

We lunched in a restaurant which was very Roman and cold of course, flagged floors and damp. It was pouring outside and the traffic was choked. Nauseous fumes from buses. We were stuck for minutes on end between two
diesel-waste-vomiting species of them. The smell of petrol cities is becoming intolerable to me – and especially the diesel smell which is particularly foul. [...]

I don't know quite what I shall do on the Sunday Show – it all seems so band waggoning – the poor people have already had £800,000 and are embarrassed. We can only add to it. The Mayor seems to be the only one who enjoys it.

Went home with Ron Berkeley and B. Wilson, had some drinks and ate some food sole with croquettes and Fontana Candida. Became furious, nerves nerves nerves, because of what I considered to be over packing. For
two
nights in London we have
two
large suitcases. But that wasn't the reason really. It was nerves from a hard day and nerves about flying and nerves about the Aberfan show.

Smoked myself furiously to sleep and before doing told E She was not to come with me to London. Leave me alone I screamed as I slammed doors. Give me some peace! What nerves and booze will do. I couldn't go without her.

JANUARY

Monday 9th, Cotonou
¹
Last night we went to Glenville's for cocktails.
²
Most of the people stood outside on the asphalt. It was warm but not oppressive. Alec was there playing the part either of a sweet saint or a great actor charming but removed from the ordinary run of common human beings.
³
We arrived (deliberately) late and left after about an hour. We dined on cold ham, spring onions, radishes, cheese, bread (lovely long loaf) tomatoes.

Gaston works like a dog. He charges around shopping answering telephones, preparing salad, filling thermoses, defleaing the dogs and watching us wherever we go, and all with the greatest good humour. He really is indispensable and, tho’ it sounds disloyal, a far better helper than Bob Wilson. There are certain things that are beneath Bob's dignity. Nothing is beneath Gaston's. [...]

Today we're off to be officially welcomed by the President of the Republic – events which I dread.
⁴

E is looking gorgeous – she blooms in hot climates. It must be that Italian blood. I didn't drink a single drop yesterday and consequently had profound ‘shakes’. I must take it easy with the booze.

Tuesday 10th
Yesterday we went to the Palace to be received by the President called by all his staff ‘Mon General.’ He is very black (married though to a white wife and has seven children) about 5'8" tall, slightly bow-legged, stockily built. His clothes were ill made though his cabinet members were impeccably dressed.
⁵
I understand that coups d'états are the thing here, as in most of the new African states, so that he may not be the boss for long. At the moment it is something of a dictatorship – when I asked him how many deputés there were in Congress he said ‘aucune.‘
⁶
Whoops! I thought. He obviously likes women and was forever taking E by the arm. She of course was charming and very feminine. We both found the experience oddly moving. Here was this huge mosaiced palace, only completed 3 years ago, and outside the immense Salle de Reception, capable of receiving 3000 people at one time, there was washing on the line.

He showed us with great pride the ‘chinese’ room which was so cluttered with furniture and bric a brac from, he said proudly, ‘Mon grand ami Chiang Kai Shek’ that we could barely move between the furniture.
⁷
With equal pride he showed us his own and his family's living quarters which were poky and small. He showed us his wife's clothes closet and brought a lump to E's throat when with a flourish he opened a cupboard to show a perfectly ordinary rack for shoes.

He asked E to step on to a mat on the way out and chuckled with delight as two wall lights automatically came on. E simulated astonishment and he was very pleased. By this time I was sweating like a bull and was glad to leave.

The English are a cold lot. We had lunch afterwards with Guinness and Glenville and I'm sure that had we not said immediately how impressed and moved we were they were ready to send the whole thing up.

E says that Peter Glenville [...] is a right ‘bitch.’ ‘I have yet,’ she said, ‘to catch him saying a good word about anybody.’ She's right I think.

I am madly ‘in love’ with her at the moment, as distinct from always loving her, and want to make love to her every minute but alas it is not possible for a couple of days. She'll have trouble walking in a couple or three days.

[...] Both of us had a hell of a time getting to sleep. The bedroom though air conditioned is the least cold room in the house and there seemed to be scores of minute mosquitoes which even if they didn't bother you made you feel itchy. [...]

Wednesday 11th
Like all films the first day seems to be the worst. We slept a little last night, perhaps 5–6 hours, and woke unrefreshed. We had Bloody
Marys for breakfast. There was a mist or fog which hung around for some time. Eventually we shot the first shot at 10.30 approx. Very Hot. We did 3 takes – one of which was my fault. Then we shot 3 close-ups of the same thing. [...] Then the President arrived with his wife and entourage. I searched for E. because he quite clearly wanted to see her and not anybody else, though he might strongly deny such a terrible imputation. He was as engaging as ever and wicked. At one time, after a particularly salacious remark he kissed his wife (white) and was given a round of applause by the assembled hangers-on. His wife, who should be used to it, looked perplexed. E adores him. He looks to me like my brother Verdun after a hard day in the pits and before he's washed. He called Christian – our principal servant, one might call him a butler – ‘mon petit’. So far it seems that he is beloved. There was a beautiful negro girl, whose name I've forgotten, who never smiled, very chic, who never took her eyes off Elizabeth. There was admiration, envy, malice, hatred and love in her every reaction to my silly old girl.

[...] Later we sat at home with the publicity man who is, so far, a bore, and Gaston and Ron and F. La Rue and after the aforesaid pub man had left started talking very seriously and equally very drunkenly of the obligation one has to one's fellow beings. Should one have a child if one has a history of insanity in the family. Should Ron take off with Vicky or stay with his wife Leah. All this laced with profound lectures from me and Elizabeth. Stupendously Smug.

We had lunch with Ron, Claudye, Raymond St Jaques – the latter anxious to prove that he is essentially a stage actor in the Shakespearean tradition.
⁸
Very American.

MARCH

Good Friday, 24th, Saint Jean Cap Ferrat
⁹
What a huge lapse. We spent some more weeks in Dahomey getting hotter and hotter with most people getting sicker and sicker. E won the NY Critics award for
VW
. (I was runner-up to P. Scofield) and cabled M. Brando, who was staying in Gstaad at our house, to ask if he would pick the award up for her.
¹⁰
He did and then, if you please, flew to Dahomey to deliver it personally! He apparently made a speech attacking the assembled critics for not acknowledging E before and not giving me the award now. Funny fellow.

[...] We still retain a certain amount of nostalgia for Dahomey. The house, the lizards, the palm trees, the unit intrigues, the arrogance of the American negroes with the West Africans, the dangerous fascinating sea only a couple of sand tumps away from the house, the mad palace, the President and his dowdy provincial wife. The Palace receptions and the fetes.

We persuaded PG not to fire an actor called George Stanford Brown – a very beautiful sluggish lethargic negro boy.
¹¹
He always wears tight jeans and sits sprawled with his legs wide open. Gives me a pain but am told to be nice to him by E. And also he's a pupil of PHB's [Philip Burton]. I hope we were right to keep him on – not that it matters, it's only a film.

The food in the two restaurants we went to was good at first and then, through over-familiarity perhaps or boredom or something, became atrocious. We ate mostly at home afterwards. [...]

A. Guinness walked around looking very white and pink and read a little note-book which contained his lines for the film. He looks remarkable as a negress.
¹²
Quite deceived me at first.

P. Ustinov gave a turn at the huge charity benefit for lepers and TB.
¹³
He is a very good sort but his invention is running out. He is doing the same turns now as he was 10–15 years ago. They are brilliant to the uninitiated. He is very serious when alone with one but must clown with an audience of two. In some vague way, because he seems disturbed, I feel sorry for him. Jack of all trades.

Friday 31st
We have been at this house – it's a famous one called ‘La Fiorentina’ – for 2
¹
/
₂
weeks, and for the last 12 days have shot at night, which after the initial adjustment I don't mind.
¹⁴
It means a certain amount of sunshine during the day and a game or two of tennis. It has however been quite cold at night
and the night before last in the mountains above St Michel it was bitter. We had a soup in St Michel which is well known locally as Potage au Pistou.
¹⁵
I think. Very good.

Last Monday night we had drinks at the Palace at Monaco and then went on to the Hotel de Paris to a banquet in aid of the British American Hospital, at which we were the guests of honour.
¹⁶
I enjoyed but don't remember too much about it. He was tubby and smiled kindly and seemed nice. She was pretty and young looking and very short-sighted. Her eyes indeed are terribly weak and at the end of the evening were shot bright with blood.
¹⁷

Last night I worked with James Earl Jones – a retake – and then with A. Guinness.
¹⁸
We finished by 02.45 – very early for us. A hot bath when I arrived home, a read in bed and asleep by 5.30.

We were roughly 3 weeks in Paris before coming here. We stayed at the Plaza Athenée.
¹⁹
So far it's the best hotel we've stayed at in Paris with a splendid restaurant. Things that stick out:

We were both nominated for Oscars for
VW
– the film itself getting 13 nominations.
²⁰

We had dinner with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor who came back afterwards to our apartment in the Plaza.
²¹
We all got on famously.

We went to London for the opening night of
Shrew
. A huge success almost totally spoiled by Frank Flanagan's sudden death on the morning of the opening night, which incidentally was E's birthday.
²²
He died quickly thank God of a heart attack.

A couple of weeks later Sally Wilson died in NY of leukaemia or a sinister relation.
²³

Bob (Wilson) and Agnes (Flanagan) are both with us here in the house at Saint Jean Cap Ferrat recovering from the terrible shock. Bob is strong and suffers in relative silence. Agnes, poor dab, drinks and drinks and drinks.

With the Duke of Windsor in Paris. We went back to our apartment after dinner and the Duke and I sang the Welsh National Anthem in atrocious harmony. I referred disloyally to the Queen as ‘her dumpy majesty’ and neither the Duke or Duchess seemed to mind.

APRIL

Saturday 1st
Went into Nice in the afternoon yesterday to buy books. There wasn't much selection but we bought a lot of thrillers. Afterwards we had cocktails at the Negresco where we ran into Bob Hall (stuntman) and John Lee. Mike (our M.) came with us. I wrote to his headmaster yesterday to try and get him reinstated at Le Rosey from which he has been expelled. Poor boy. Otherwise I'll try and get both boys into Millfield.
²⁴

[...] Wrote to Kate and enclosed $10. She hopes Syb's baby is a boy. He will be called Colin if a boy, Amy if a girl.
²⁵
[...]

Telegraphed Franco Z. that he can show
Shrew
at Cannes if he wishes but warned him that he may get royally shrewed! They're a nasty lot around here. [...]