The Richard Burton Diaries (157 page)

Saturday 9th, Kupari
¹¹⁸
[...] Am going into Dubrovnik to buy things. Don't quite know what. Lighters and lighter fluid and a book or two peut etre. [...]

Walked for an hour in Dubrovnik looking for a bacco shop. Finally found one and bought a gas lighter, cheap, and a pen-and-pencil case for E as an encouragement for her sudden letter-writing. Doubt if it will be used much but you never know.

Dubrovnik is made ugly by all its tourists. There are always thousands and I had an audience the whole time swelling to a hundred or so when I stopped to buy the lighter. I with Maria got out fast. Went in the mini-moke which is made for these narrow winding roads. I wish it had a little more power however. When I came back I saw John Heyman who stayed for a couple of hours chatting of this business and that business finally ending up chatting of cricket in the old days – i.e. the thirties. I told him of the enormous excitement of the ‘bodyline’ tour of my childhood when cricket made headlines not only on the sports pages but on the front pages and was the subject of editorials in solemn journals.
¹¹⁹
We shall never look upon its like again. Bradman and Larwood, Macabe and Voce, Ponsford and Hammond and Gubby Allen and Bowes bowling Bradman middle stump. And the imperturbable Jardine.
¹²⁰

Everybody, which means E principally, in a foul mood about going to Niš this afternoon for the bloody actors’ do when we are presented with awards etc. and have to meet mayors and presidents of republics and cocktail parties and supposed to see a film in Serbo-Croat yet which we are determinedly holding out against seeing. And another cocktail party tomorrow morning at 10am if you please before flying back here. All the things in fact that we loathe most in this world but which have to be done. Sometimes.

If it were anything but a communist country, especially a nice one like this, they would be told in no uncertain fashion where to stuff their awards and cocktail parties and mayors and presidents. But we are being fixed-smile-diplomats. Shit.

Found about three books by unknown authors which will plough through if things get bad.

Heyman told me that everyone is agreed that The Burtons are as easy as pie to handle but that The Burtons’ Entourage is a pain in the ass and every producer, when they are mentioned, hopes fervently that they will all die in the night of galloping heart attacks. Too bad, I said, though I agree about some. The great exception is of course Ron and though I like the others I don't think that any of them are necessary to me. I like Bob Wilson to be around and
be barman and man of distinction and Jim is useful with mail but lacks the charm so essential when handling so many different kinds of people. He's no Dick Hanley. Raymond, Claudye and Gianni actively bore me if they are around for any length of time. Brook is intelligent but is now so circumscribed by something, possibly E's and my hidden but perhaps not hidden enough distaste, that all his wit and humour seem to have fled except sporadically. He used to be very amusing.

Saturday 11th, Niš
Same day and late at night – about 11.30 – and I've changed the date on the heading above as everybody assures me that it's not the 9th but the 11th. That means that all the dates for the last several days must be skew-whiff also. Probably came from making two entries on the same day – as today – and getting distracted or something.

Any road [...] the dreaded visit here didn't go too badly. At least we're home and safe. [...] there was the time-honoured conglomerate of stick mikes and TV cameras. They pounced and preyed on us of course immediately but we went straight into our car and then watched with astonishment the almost ludicrously old-fashioned posing of the German actor Hardy Krüger who really and truly struck dramatic attitudes – looking up at the sky and showing now this profile now the other. I could hardly credit my eyes while E had some very
XYZ
remarks to make re that particular kraut. When my baby don’ take no fancy to somepoorbody she sure don’ take no fancy. And the poor-spirited son of envy compounds his lack of charm at every opportunity. He can barely speak to or look at either of us. He reminds me oddly enough of a chap called Raymond St Jacques. A very handsome and some say homosexual American Negro actor who said in Cotonou that the waiters (all coal black) in the Hotel Croix de Sud were discriminating against black clients as for instance ‘whenever the Burtons appear we might as well not exist even though we might have been sitting and waiting for 10 or 15 minutes.’ ‘Ah my friend,’ said the delicious Roscoe Lee Browne, also a blackman, and who speaks as pedantically as a professor, ‘Royalty itself has been known to wait when the Burtons are around. It is a fact of nature this attraction, like the moon's effect on the tide.’

Sunday 12th
[...] After watching Krüger baring his profile, we left the airport, a military one by the look of it with no flare path and a dozen helicopters, we roared through the traffic with a police car leading us with its light flashing and its hooter going (the roof-top light being blue not red) and with a cop leaning out of one door with a round object on a stick waving all traffic to the side we swept into the oddest looking hotel that I'd ever seen. It was peculiar only in that it wasn't the hotel but a totally unannounced halt where we were made a speech to by a nervous and at the same time pompous manager about ‘workers wanting to see other workers like ourselves even though the two workers her with them were a little better known than Jasha in the canteen’ etc.
He gave us some presents and the factory workers presented E with lots of flowers and they pressed in on us from all sides feeling our faces and smoothing our hair, particularly E's. It was all terribly embarrassing as the factory had arranged a table with drinks, including Scotch, on it and there were canapés and cigs in boxes etc. all ready for a little cocktail party. All this time the TV cameras were going and the mikes and before we could attempt to make any sort of thank yous and how delighted we were to be one with the people we were whisked away [...] without giving us a chance to show something other than startled and bewildered shock. [...] From there we went to the hotel which was another mad-house, the police not being able to control the crowds at all. [...] After 45 minutes or so we were summoned down to the cocktail floor where the crowd outside in the square chanted our names. We stood there for some time on the balcony with E bravely and regally waving and me like some dumb Prince Albert giving an occasional half-hearted waggle myself.
¹²¹
We met the Mayor and I think two governors and other people who were never explained and then totally without warning there was a sort of native nightclub act. A horrible boy said into a mike that he represented the children of the world and proceeded to beat a funny little drum and hop around. There was no applause when he finished. Then a fat girl sang a couple of songs accompanied by a sort of flautist, a concertina, the boy on the small drum and a guitar. [...] After that [...] we went down to dinner. There was a long table seating about forty. We sat next to each other. E had the organizer of the Festival on her right and I had an actress-judge who spoke reasonable French on my left. Next to the actress, who seemed a nice woman there was a critic who spoke English. He was a crasher and talked about British theatre all the time. Since I've only seen two plays in England in 10 years I wasn't able to make much contribution. [...]

Airplane
Sitting in the plane [...] having had yet another encounter with TV and radio and all its appurtenances. To my delight the Heavy Luger is late.
¹²²
Presumably he wasn't informed. Have just been told that Luger has now got a snapper with him too just like Burtons have G. Bozzacchi. Am beginning to enjoy this. The poor sod has no chance of winning this somewhat unequal battle. Others have tried and failed. I learn now from E that the snapper is here to do the film, including me tomorrow he hopes, and not just the Bertha Krupp. They just happen to be all Germans together. The Panzer leutenant duly arrived and greeted everyone with a broad gesture and a ‘Hi there’. There was no apology of any kind according to Radie Louella Hedda Taylor Burton.
¹²³
[...]

After the dinner [...] we set off for the award-giving. I had also said that the best plan would be for us to arrive, be announced, and go straight onto the stage to take our bows and accept our awards which are called ‘Constantines’ the male award being called the Czar and the female the Czarina. And then, complete again with escort, bugger off back to the Hotel Ambassador and faint a lot.
¹²⁴
[...] We were announced by the Festival's director and went on stage to a standing ovation. There were two microphones and the poor bloody Mayor read a speech of welcome to the great world renowned couple and then I was invited to give them a few deathless words. I was thinking of a few words rather on the lines of the Gettysburg Address but settled for ‘Comrades, I am very nervous at the idea of my playing the greatest Jugoslavian (ovation) and probably the greatest Jugoslavian who ever lived. (Ovation) Especially as, if my work is not good today, he can have me deported tomorrow. (Laughter and applause) Thank you.‘
¹²⁵
Then came Female Lib herself, the Mrs Pankhurst of Culver City, who said: ‘I love your country and your people.
¹²⁶
(tumultuous rapture) I love your president and his lady (ecstasy) and would like to live here forever, if you would accept us.’ (End of speech partially drowned by the ultimate in cosmic approval and the music of the spheres.) There goes, we both thought, our American visas! Quite genuinely though the audience were really moved. We then received our awards – E from a very good actor who had won the Grand Prix that night and I got mine from the actress equivalent. [...]

Monday 13th,
Kalizma [...] Yesterday received a long and incoherent letter from Larry Olivier re the National Theatre.
¹²⁷
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.
¹²⁸
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
.
¹²⁹
Well, what sort of National Theatre is that? Those Old Etonians etc. would drive me mad in five months.
¹³⁰
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.
¹³¹
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.
¹³²
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.
¹³³
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.
¹³⁴
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.

Evening

Sitting on the poop deck with my infinitely beloved wife who has acquired an even greater weight of love. I keep on mentally looking around to make sure she's there. For why this new and massive re-affirmation of adoration and worship and a promise to myself that I shall never be nasty to her ever again? I will tell you for why. For because for about three minutes this afternoon I thought that I was about to be killed instantaneously and at once, without time to re-tell her how much I love her, to apologize for breaking my contract to look after her forever, for letting her down with a bang (hysterical pun intended), and for having no time to tell her the million things yet to be told and for not realizing and demonstrating my full potential as husband, provider, lover and all.

I did not work today which is rapidly becoming the norm for this piece [...] finally and of course inevitably word came that work was over for the day and that it was ‘a wrap’ and so we set off back to the copter and Kupari. I settled in on the port side right behind the pilot while Vessna, the interpreter, sat beside me with Brook on her other side. Ron sat in the rear row with Gianni. And off we went. There was a low cloud ceiling which we went into immediately we'd gained some height and, as so many times before, we threaded our way through the vicious peaks to right and left. Suddenly and without warning we were completely blacked-out though I believe the technical description is ‘whited out’. There was nothing to be seen outside the cabin of the chopper except nothing. A white nothing. On top of this it began to rain torrentially and the windscreen wipers whipped back and fore like insane crickets sharpening their legs. The co-pilot frantically tried to turn himself into a human demister. We flew like this for perhaps half a minute though it seemed like half an hour when there it was! We were going at an angle of about 45 degrees into a peak. The pilot, god bless his marvellous reflexes, flung the copter to the right and there appallingly was another rock face. The co-pilot slapped the pilot on the arm and we pulled away again to the left. I don't know how close we actually were but it seemed to be the length of a rotor-arm and six feet. Whatever the distance it must have been very very close otherwise we wouldn't have seen the two peaks at all. Still we ploughed on with everyone except Gianni and I – and the pilots of course – with their eyes closed tight. Ron I saw curl himself into a ball and cover his head and ears, with his knees on the floor waiting in what they say is the classical position for a plane crash. I stared to the side with hand ready poised to warn the pilot if anything appeared on our side. The pilot was straining his eyes forward. The co-pilot was rubbing his side window with hand also poised to warn the pilot. Gianni just stared over Ron's semi-kneeling position like a man who saw nothing except eternity. Apart from my saying Holy Shit in a strangled whisper nobody uttered a sound. No sound, at least, that could be heard. So we continued to fly blind for another aeon (possibly a minute, possibly two, who knows?) dreading the head-on how-de-do from which there would be [no] way of turning. Then, the machine began to lose height pretty quickly. I could feel it though I daren't take my eyes away from the window to check the altimeter. I thought the pilot had gone mad. Later I found out why and how right he was. We dropped and dropped until there suddenly and miraculously was the much maligned road curling around the mountains. Rarely have I ever seen such a beautiful road, a masterpiece of the roadmaker's art, an example to the Romans of ancient time, I could not think how I had ever said that the road was a fucking nightmare and an elongated version of a shit-house, a ruined shit-house. I could have gladly apologized to every kilometre of its lovely length. The pilot had lost height, he said, to be able to see, to try and go above the clouds was certain suicide because in order to gain height quickly he would have had to circle and he knew, as indeed we all knew, that there were a hundred peaks of a different height width [
sic
] and also there was no knowing how high the cloud was. He was however fairly sure that the cloud base would not cover the bed of the valley. What is nightmarish on recollection is how many close shaves we must have had during those two or three minutes. Glimpses of eternity we have never seen.