This week I’ve noticed quite a few items about Richard Burton on the BBC iPlayer. I wasn’t sure why at first but it turns out that this year, 2025, is the centenary of Burton’s birth. He was born Richard Jenkins on November 10th 1925.
Why did he change his name to Burton? Well one answer on the iPlayer was given in a wonderful film called Mr Burton. Harry Lawtey plays the young Burton and Toby Jones plays his mentor, Philip Burton. Burton came from a poor mining family in Pontrhydyfen in Wales. He had thoughts of becoming a teacher but things were not working in his favour. His mother died when he was young and his father was an alcoholic. Richard went to live with his sister and her husband but financial circumstances forced him to leave school and take up a job in the local Co-op. Enter teacher Philip Burton who urged Richard to rejoin school after promising to help with his finances.
The return to school caused some resentment from his brother in law and so with the consent of his father, Richard became Philip Burton’s legal ward and just aged eighteen, changed his surname on 26 November 1943 to Burton by means of a deed poll. Richard joined the Air Cadets and was able, with Burton’s help, to study at Oxford after applying for a six month RAF scholarship.
Philip Burton made Richard work on his voice and gradually the wonderful speaking voice we are familiar with today began to appear.
Mr Burton was an excellent film and full marks go to Harry Lawtey for his portrayal. In the early part of the film I did wonder how this youthful boy with the very Welsh accent could progress to the young confident actor but Harry’s performance and the way his own voice echoes that of the real Richard Burton was outstanding.
Another programme on iPlayer was a made for TV film called Burton and Taylor and it’s about, as if you hadn’t already guessed, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
Back in 1983 when this film is set, Burton and Taylor were probably the most famous celebrity couple in the world. The only other couple of a similar status that I can think of are Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, a couple from a completely different era. Let me see who else comes to mind; Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Posh and Becks. Hardly in the same class are they?
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor met on the set of the film Cleopatra in 1961, a movie that went down in history as one of the most expensive ever made. Taylor didn’t want to make the picture so decided to ask for a ridiculous amount of money, confident that 20th Century Fox would never pay it. However, pay it they did and the troubled movie went into production.
The Burton/Taylor TV film focusses on the later years of the pair when they had been married and divorced twice and for some reason decided to star together in a stage revival of Noël Coward’s witty play, Private Lives.
In the film, Taylor is played by Helena Bonham-Carter and Burton by Dominic West. West doesn’t really look much like Burton but captures his voice and persona well. Bonham-Carter as Liz Taylor does look surprisingly like the original and together they make a good reproduction of the famous couple.
The writer seems to believe, and whether it is true or not I don’t claim to know, that Liz Taylor engineered the theatre production of Private Lives as a way of bringing her and Burton back together again. As I mentioned earlier, they had already been married and divorced twice and the movie revealed that Liz clearly still had feelings towards Burton. On the first day of rehearsals she is surprised that Burton will not be lunching with her but spending time with his new girlfriend, Sally. Burton in turn is shocked that on the first read through it is clear that Taylor has not previously read the play. Burton of course knows it off by heart. He is the consummate professional actor and Taylor the consummate professional movie star. During the run when Taylor calls in sick, the production is halted rather than carry on with an understudy, as it becomes clear from the public reaction that the audience are not interested in the play without superstar Liz.
Burton and Taylor were clearly in love but love must have been difficult in the face of their superstar status, just as it was for Fairbanks and Pickford. I can imagine Burton’s upbringing in a mining community and Taylor, having been a star since childhood, were not personalities that could bend much for the other.
The film is interesting, enjoyable and gives the viewer a fascinating peek into the private lives of these two superstars of the past.
The Richard Burton Diaries edited by Chris Williams
Some years ago I read Melvyn Bragg’s biography of Richard Burton and that book was based partly on these diaries which have now been published and are available to everyone.
There is a lot I like about this book and a lot that I don’t like. I tend to prefer paperbacks but I bought this one from the internet and it’s a big heavy hardback and as I took the book to France to read on holiday it became a little more battered every day.
Moving on to the text and I see a lot of the big events in Burton’s life are missing as sometimes he stops writing for days and even months at a time. We don’t hear about the making of Cleopatra and his meeting and affair with Elizabeth Taylor but he does mention some of those events in retrospect.
The book starts with his schoolboy diaries which are rather like mine, brief and to the point. Later, the main diary starts in 1965 when Burton begins to write in more detail. He tells us of his immense love for Taylor and how he has given up womanising to be faithful to her but sometimes I get the feeling he isn’t being totally honest, after all Liz has free access to his diary and she frequently jots down her own comments too. Burton was rumoured to have had an affair with Genevieve Bujold during the filming of Anne of a Thousand Days but of course, gives no mention of that in his journal.
He does talk a lot about food and having lunch in places like Paris and Rome. He enjoys having money and delights in spending it on jewels for Liz, a new private jet plane and a yacht which he thinks might actually save him money as he can stay on the yacht rather than use hotels. Even so, he continues to use hotels. At one point he considers buying a barge, modernising it and touring the canals of France.
He doesn’t seem to enjoy his acting and in fact rather looks down on it as a profession, although unlike an actor like Brando who had similar thoughts, he did take pride in what he did, learning his part and his lines whereas Brando couldn’t even be bothered to learn the script for the film of Superman despite his million dollar fee.
Surprisingly there is also quite a lot of professional jealousy in the text, for instance he gives Robert Shaw a bit of a slagging off for his performance as Henry VIII in A Man for all Seasons which I thought was rather good, better or at least the equal of Burton’s Henry VIII in Anne of a Thousand Days.
A screengrab from the BBC iPlayer
Burton drinks a lot and frequently argues with Liz, sometimes he is banished to the spare bedroom and usually he regrets his drunken words and wonders why he did what he did or said what he said.
He was though a man who loved reading, devouring anything from the classics to detective novels. He even had ambitions of being a writer himself. His entries are peppered with quotations from authors and poets and of course Shakespeare.
I was really looking forward to reading this book but after the first few pages I thought it a little uninteresting. As the narrative moved from 1968 into 1970, Burton seemed to be putting more effort into his journalling and consequently it became more enjoyable to read. Later large gaps appear in the diaries and he doesn’t appear to have written anything about his breakup with Liz Taylor. The entries become less frequent and to be honest, I ended up skipping quite a few pages.
Verdict: A book that promised a lot but failed to deliver.
Still with the BBC iPlayer, there’s a great documentary about Burton titled Richard Burton: Wild Genius which is rather good and perhaps unlike the above post gives a good overall look at the great actor’s life. Burton died on 5 August 1984 at his home in Céligny, Switzerland, aged only 58. He was buried at the Old Cemetery in Céligny and his widow Sally placed a copy of Dylan Thomas’ collected poems in his coffin.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 