The Richard Burton Diaries (154 page)

Everybody means well but we shall quietly move back to live on the yacht. It is cooler and there is no language problem for E when I'm not around and the beloved books are ambient.

The yacht is parked very precariously near the steps leading up to the house and is potentially dangerous in case of a sudden sirocco so on local advice we are moving today to a little harbour about three miles away. Since leaving the yacht here is inviting everybody, and there are many many people around, to a perpetual ‘open house’, it is a good idea to get away. Yesterday we had Hardy Krüger and wife and children and the nanny and a Jug actress very young and a bit ‘cute’ called Neddy pronounced Naydee and probably written Nedj or something.
⁸⁴
Krüger and wife are very German and very serious and determinedly intellectual. Somebody mentioned Visconti's
Death in Venice
and I said I hadn't seen it and – politely and totally without interest – asked if Mrs Krüger had seen it.
⁸⁵
She had. What did she think of it? I said like a fool. Foolish, because then she proceeded to tell me and at length with a wealth of perfectly predictable criticisms of it because I too had read a few of the notices by accident, and saw them all coming like a Teutonic juggernaut. Phwew! Krüger himself who is one of those measured mental pipe-smoking meerschaums went on for an equally long time about the vast problem of whether E should or should not play a small part in the film of a partisan lady-doctor who is conventionally brave and loses her legs in a battle and suitably dies heroically and so on. I said that I wouldn't dream of asking a major star like E or Loren or A. Hepburn to play such a minute and conventional role and that it demanded nothing of her while she, being a professional, would demand a great deal of them.
⁸⁶
Well, Mr Krüger went on, now Stanislavski (There are no small parts. Want a bet Stan?) Freud and Stephen Haggard (I would rather play a bad part in a good play than a good part in a bad play) and charity, as ‘twere, her, E's contribution to the heroism of the Slav peoples by playing a
small part for nothing.
⁸⁷
My syntax is all to hell as I am sitting on the poop and am continually distracted by Liza, Kate and E and Raymond.

I awoke this morning [...] and went downstairs to read the ‘new’ script. It is as far as I can remember the same as the previous one with the addition of a few large extracts from Tito's memoirs or speeches which read like memoirs or speeches and which I will change myself into believable jargon. As for the rest of it I have suggested that they employ a standard and inexpensive writer of English to put the translation into speakable terms. Example: young Partisan girl shouting to her companions in the midst of battle ‘Remember the Dalmatians’ which conjures up an image of a frenzied pack of Disney hounds.
⁸⁸
I read out E's part to her as it came up. She is in 14 out of 214 which we have decided is not a dominating role especially as she is never mentioned throughout the other 200 pages. We have just heard from Ron that they are terribly disappointed but will search immediately for somebody else. Who do they have in mind, they were asked? Oh people like Jane Fonda, Simone Signoret, Vanessa Redgrave etc. They are breathtakingly unrealistic. But their innocence is so total that they might surprise us all by actually getting someone like that.

Anyway, and perfectly selfishly, if the film is a bust they have only one of us to blame because they always blame us for the failures and praise the director for our successes. I have lost count of the number of times I've read that ‘Director X managed to wrest a brilliant performance out of Elizabeth Taylor.’ This is particularly surprising to us because E and I in our combined careers don't recollect more than a dozen lines of direction all told from all directors. And specifically, since I reached my majority, so to speak, as an actor I don't remember any particular direction at all. The only people I remember actually evoking something in me as an actor which I didn't know was there are Phil, Emlyn and John Gielgud. All of which invaluable stuff I learned before I was 23 or so. Since, and sometimes with sad results, I have directed myself. The last man to give me direction which I found interesting and followable and sometimes enthrallingly brilliant was Mike Nichols and that was in the comedy sequences in
Woolf
. A lot of people have said that my very long speech in that same film under the tree and on the swing outside the house is one of the best pieces of acting etc. I did it, I remember, in one take and without direction from Mike apart from things like ‘maybe you should move from the swing to the tree’. And as for other ‘great directors’ like Marty Ritt, Mankiewicz, Babblin’ Tony Richardson etc. I don't remember anything they said except idiocies which I ignored.

Saturday 21st
Beautiful morning as indeed all the mornings are here so far. Am sitting in a very smelly very noisy helicopter which is our transport to work in the mountains. The journey takes approx 45 minutes and unlike the many copters I have flown in hitherto there are only tiny little windows so there is – without a lot of contortion – no way of watching the lovely land underneath. Looking at it from above I wonder again at the tenacity of the Germans in being able to fight at all in these dreadful places. Crag and crevice, precipice and ravine, choked pass after choked pass, natural ambushes by the thousands and a people of murderous courage, and no victory to show for it as the Slavs would never face them in straightforward battle – hit and run, sabotage and hide, in and out of these endless hills. And what an admirable people the Jugoslavians are. Loveable and naive and quite clearly very different from the Latin and Anglo-Saxon. There is a lot of Asiatic fatalism combined with an almost Italian élan. I would guess.

[...] When I arrived in the mountains, a place called Zablijia pronounced Jabla (French ‘J'), there were about a hundred press people, perhaps more.
⁸⁹
This seemed odd as the copter landed in a field – actually it was a grass runway for light planes – and a scene one normally associates with big international airports took place on farm land. There were endless questions and only one which I'd never been asked before on this trip. To my carefully hidden astonishment a very sharp lady asked me how I felt playing Tito and was I also nervous because I was working with a director who'd never directed a film before. Since the Popovi
had given me the impression that Deli
, the metteur, had done about 50 films and was the number one in Jugoslavia I was a little taken aback. I pointed out quite rightly that I had made three or four films with previously unknown directors and all those films had been successful:
Woolf
with Nichols,
Shrew
with Zeffirelli,
Anne
with Charles Jarrott and now
Villain
with whassisname.
⁹⁰
Received a cable, incidentally, from Nat Cohen saying the notices for latter superb and great box-office, and another cable said we expect a million pounds from UK alone. That means about $
¹
/
₂
m for me if I remember correctly.

There is no accounting for the differing tastes of Yanks and English critics.
Villain
was received badly in the US and with rapture in the UK. I know it is cockney and therefore difficult for Yanks to follow but one would have thought the critics to be of sufficiently wide education to take it in their stride. The English critics, after all, are not embarrassed when they see a film made in Brooklynese. Anyway I am so delighted that it is doing well in UK. Otherwise I would have doubted E's and my judgement in such matters. I thought it was good and she said she knew it was good. The American reaction was therefore a surprise.

22nd, Zablja
Came up last night in a helicopter to stay in a small house in this village. We have worked here for three days though me only for two as I have Sundays off. E [...] asked Gianni and Claudye to say with us though, thankfully they are going to the hotel today. Apart from the house being very small and despite the fact that they are nice people, neither of them are readers and E and I are. Also it means four people, all of whom get up at the same time, sharing one minute bathroom. [...] On Friday, I mean Saturday I spent my time apart from one tiny scene which contained dialogue narrowly escaping being blown up. Don't know what they'll look like on the screen but they – the explosions – looked bloody effective in reality. They had real planes too, trying to look like stukas – about 20 of them. Must have cost a fortune. And will look no better I suspect than an old Anglo-Saxon mock-up. At least to the ordinary public. [...]

It is magnificent country up here in the mountains – the famed Montenegrin mountains – and I could live here a long time if asked to. It is apparently cut off from the rest of the world completely in the depths of winter. I would like that. [...]

To my astonishment the actor with whom I have most to do in the film doesn't speak a word of English and was prepared to speak all his dialogue in Serbo-Croat. I refused to do this saying it would give the dubber into English an impossible task and ruin the film for distribution in the Western world. As it is, I don't see it having a chance even with them speaking all the dialogue in broken English with me speaking in perfect Oxford. We can, I think write this film off before we start. The Jugs are also particularly thick when one tries to explain this to them and I have almost given up. Even the Englishmen, Deakin, Stewart et al. are Serbs. It's hair-tearing. I plead with them that Deakin and Stewart are upper class British, one of them, Deakin, being an actual Oxford professor. But to no avail. Actually, assuming that they speak the English lines reasonably well they could be dubbable without it being too obvious but it will still look cheap.

I would willingly have learned my part in Serbo-Croat if they'd given me time but I cannot do it at short notice. I am in with a bunch of child-amateurs and must settle for it.

However it is lovely up here and the people are charming and willing and I must regard the whole thing as a working holiday. I'll do my best and hope for the best. [...]

23rd, Zablja
[...] Have given up the film as a film and will now concentrate on doing my bit as well as possible. [...] If I'm not happy in a film it affects my whole attitude to everything. I am beginning to dislike this place and can't wait to get away from it though it is unquestionably delightful. There was a party given, I suppose, in honour of the film company which was friendly enough but my sour reaction was that all the actors there should be home learning
their lines in English. Why the hell didn't they do it all in Serbo-Croat including an Yugoslav actor playing Tito instead of this half-assed thing that will appeal to neither the Slavs or the English audience? [...] I left the party early, unable to stand any longer the false bonhomie induced by showing off to the foreigners and the drunkenness. Being sober among a horde of drunks is exquisite torture. I slid quietly home and talked with Claudye for a while who had been as bored as I was and then tucked myself into bed with, surprisingly, a bad book by John D. Macdonald who usually can be relied on in his mock-tough-sentimental holier-than-thou way to be readable. [...]

24th, Cavtat-Stefani
We are on the
Kalizma
en route to Stefani (I believe) where, we understand, Carlo Ponti and Sophia have a house.
⁹¹
It's supposed – the island I mean, not the Pontis’ place – to be a location of staggering beauty. It is typical of us to be sailing in the dark to anchor at Stefani when we haven't yet seen the world-famous Dubrovnik which is a spit and a yard away from where we're living in Kupari.
⁹²

When we arrived at the
Kalizma
which is, was, moored at Cavtat there were a couple of hundred people standing on the pavement simply staring at the boat. They were delighted when we arrived and we were applauded royally. I was feeling terrible and for a second I had a feeling of panic but the crowd were so nice and friendly that I was alright immediately. E was very touched. We talked to Pedro who consulted the harbour pilot who told us that Stefani was about 3 hours away. We untied and left as soon as we could. The people waved and shouted us away as we stood beside the bridge. It was a good moment and we were both in a mood of divine content. [...] E is a magnificent midwife for the birth of the blues – it was her idea to go to the yacht as soon as we came down from the mountains. She didn't even consult me. And I was at bursting point. I had been very cruel to Liza this morning – viciously so. She had said that I ought to keep the film dog with me at all times while I was doing the work.
⁹³
I said the bloody dog was so infatuated by his master that he would whine and scratch all night and in any case I said the bloody master was reluctant even to have me tickle his ears. Liza said ‘But he's your dog.’ And out of that cesspool of cold cruelty which some people call a brain came ‘Don't be bloody stupid. He's no more my dog than you are my daughter.’ Liza was as brave as hell and said with a strained little laugh ‘That was very nice.’ E was quite rightly livid and I wanted to cry or slit my jugular. I did neither except compound the crime by snarling at E upstairs that Liza was so insensitive that she was probably impervious to such an insult. I am so
ashamed of myself for saying such a terrible thing to a creature that I love so blindingly and love her in a crazily compounded fashion. I love her for being Elizabeth's alter ego, for being lovely and so loving, for her pretty ruthless determination to get what she can get away with, for her genuine and occasionally staggering beauty and for the fact that though like me she cannot express it in so many words from some inborn refusal to give herself away I am pretty certain that she loves me. I could have cut out my vile tongue with a blunt razor. From what twisted root did that bastard tree grow? I do it again and again. In most cases where I maul and savage a victim I can generally account for it in some way. How can I attack myself so unbelievably – it is I who insists that she be Liza Todd Burton. It is I who boast about her beauty, her horsemanship, her good reports at school and even her bad ones. ‘Her spelling is sometimes amusingly phonetic.’ Just like her bloody mother to the T.