Richard Burton Parkinson: The Interviews

Evening. Tonight we'll recall an interview I did with Richard Burton in 1974.

I never met anyone who was so effortlessly a star and only one or two who possessed his presence.

He was, like all of us, the sum of his contradictions, though his were more public than most.

While the purists tried to fathom why such a great actor turned his back on his gifts,

Burton and his famous wife kept the world's media in a lather

with their lavish lifestyle and their tempestuous love affair.

BRYAN FERRY: "These Foolish Things".

# These foolish things

# Remind me of you

# I know that this

# Was bound to be

# These things have haunted me

# For you've entirely enchanted me

# The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations... #

£49,000... £50,000...

Mrs Richard Burton. >

# Oh, how the ghost of you clings

# These foolish things Remind me of you

# The smile of Garbo And the scent of roses

# The waiters whistling As the last bar closes

# The song that Crosby sings

# These foolish things Remind me of you

# How strange, how sweet To find you still

# These things are dear to me That seem to bring you so near to me

# The scent of smouldering leaves The wail of steamers... #

'What did SHE think of HIS acting abilities?'

One of the finest actors...

-"ONE of the finest"?!

-Sorry!

-LAUGHTER

Twenty years ago, when I interviewed Richard Burton,

he was embarking upon another chapter in his remarkable life.

His marriage to Liz Taylor was over, he'd just spent six weeks in hospital fighting the booze,

yet through it all, he managed to appear...grand.

We did the interview in the morning before the pubs opened, kidnapping the audience from the BBC kitchens.

So Burton faced sixty men in white coats. "I thought I was back in that bloody clinic!" he said.

APPLAUSE

Evening. My guest tonight was born Richard Jenkins, son of a miner in South Wales.

From the humblest of beginnings, he became one of the world's best actors AND one of the richest.

His life almost seems to have been written by a best-selling novelist with an eye on the film market

and if they ever DO make the movie, they should offer the part to the man himself - Richard Burton.

APPLAUSE

Richard, welcome. Let's talk about that background of yours.

The path you've come has been quite extraordinary, as if some novelist had written it.

Indeed, if a novelist DID write it, he'd be accused of exaggeration.

Anyway, a humble background - comparatively so. What, in fact, did it give you?

I think a tremendous sense of...

..strength, I suppose,

because I presume that if you survive such a background,

you must have come from an extraordinary...race of people.

I'm enormously proud of being Welsh.

Did you ever...? When you embarked on a career as an actor,

did your mates ever think they'd been mixing with a wrong 'un?

-You know what I mean?

-Not quite, no.

-LAUGHTER

-Well, that there's something pansyish in acting,

-as compared to mining. See what I'm getting at?

-Yes, I do. I've got the message now.

Um, the last thing that you can say about me is that I'm a pansy.

-And I'm not a sissy.

-Let's...

-I apologise for being so intensely nervous.

I don't do this very often, unlike Mr Parkinson who's done it a lot...

Done WHAT a lot?!

Now, let's get back to Wales and the business of acting.

Your extraordinary voice - is it, in fact, a Welsh voice?

Oh, yes, it's the deep, dark answer from the valleys to everybody. LAUGHTER

I can't help the voice. It's part of me and I didn't cultivate it or anything. It was given to me.

I'm lucky to possess it, I suppose.

-Can we go back to something you mentioned...?

-"Can we go back to...?"

-You can mimic most people, can't you?

-No, though I CAN do SOME!

-I might do YOU by the end of the day!

-Who can you do?

-I can do...Laurence Olivier.

-Could you?

-Yes, now?

-Please.

Now, I have to pitch my voice up a bit because his voice is higher than mine, so...

-I have to do it physically. D'you mind?

-No.

-Can you put the camera up?

-Absolutely.

-Here he comes.

Richard III, right? BURSTS OF LAUGHTER

MIMICKING OLIVIER: "Now is the winter of our discontent

"Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

"And all the clouds that lour'd about our house

"In the deep bosom of the ocean buried." APPLAUSE

Who else, Richard?

I don't think I'll do anyone else in case I get into trouble.

Over lunch you did that marvellous Lee Marvin one, didn't you? That must be the other extreme.

Well, yes. Lee Marvin's a very strange man and very beautiful and very extraordinary,

but he becomes, when he's had a few drinks, he becomes...

incoherent... in the most splendid possible way.

He makes a series of nou...

sounds...that really takes one's breath away.

Sorry, I'm now getting incoherent the way Lee Marvin does... occasionally. And he says to, um...

We just did a film together in the USA...

And he said to OJ Simpson, who is probably the greatest athlete in the world -

an enormous, fantastic, splendid black man.

And Lee was trying to explain to him how to act.

He started off all right. He started off perfectly well.

Then his language degenerated into kind of noises and he said to OJ...

GRUFF, LEE MARVIN VOICE: You know what acting's about? It's kinda...shhhht...

swhish...vruum...crrrrr...!

S'way we do it, baby, huh?!

APPLAUSE AND LAUGHTER

You mentioned earlier Dylan Thomas. He had a remarkable voice, didn't he?

What struck me was that it was rather a posh voice, wasn't it?

Yes, he used to call himself "plus fours and no breakfast".

Here's an example of what he was like. We all had to go to a poetry reading. I was there and Dylan...

and Dame Edith Sitwell and Dame Edith Evans...

It was at the Lyric, Hammersmith - I remember that.

And John Geilgud was the director of the whole thing.

And I said, "Can you get Dylan...?" I said in my subtlest way...

"..to speak Tennyson? Because I know he hates Tennyson."

So John arranged it so that Dylan spoke Tennyson. And the poem was -

"The splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story:

"The light shakes across the lakes And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

"Blow, bugle, blow...something... Answer echoes, dying, dying, dying."

And so it goes on. And the envoi is always "dying, dying, dying..."

So Dylan was suddenly forced to speak this poem and so...

I can only do things physically. I have to do it.

So he gets up...

"The splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story:"

And an eternal Woodbine in his mouth.

"The light shakes across the lakes And the wild cataracts leap in glory.

"Blow, bugles, blow set the wild echoes flying,

"Answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying."

Then he gets to the last verse and I wondered what he'd do to show his absolute hatred of Tennyson.

He's got to show it somehow. So he says,

"O love, they die in yon rich sky,

"They faint on hill or field or river:

"And echoes roll from soul to soul, and grow for ever and for ever.

"Blow, bugles, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

"Answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying..."

Oh! "..dying!"

APPLAUSE

-He was ultimately a very tragic man, wasn't he?

-I suppose so. He sought his own death and found it.

He certainly...wrote, of course, the most magical things...

-And he's alive.

-Yes.

-I mean, he's alive.

One gets a sense of waste, though. Sure, he left behind him stuff that WILL live forever,

-but he might've left more behind.

-I don't think so. He's...

Well, "sense of waste" I wouldn't quarrel with that.

But I think he probably burned himself out.

He fulfilled the notion a lot of people have about the Welsh,

about the sort of death wish among the creative people.

Do you accept that they have this kind of...

..headlong rush towards the edge?

Yes, I think that we rather love precipices.

We go towards them and withdraw now and again.

-Sometimes we go over the edge.

-D'you ever feel that way yourself?

-Going towards the precipice then pulling back?

-Yes, I have. I think we all do, we Celts.

-Um...

-Would you care to tell me how?

-In what circumstance?

-Well...

There was a second or two, I think,

perhaps about a year ago,

when I didn't fancy much... staying alive.

Really? You comtemplated suicide?

Oh, no! No...! No, I wouldn't kill myself - in the ordinary sense of the word.

I wouldn't take pills or drugs or... anything, really, in that sense.

But I did suddenly wake up one morning and found how splendidly rich and extraordinary the world was

and that I couldn't bear its richness and its beauty.

And in order to obviate the idea of the richness

and extraordinary beauty of the world, I thought it best to leave it.

-How do you leave it if you don't top yourself?

-You can kill yourself any second. Not by...

..any obvious means, but you can, of course, drink yourself to death.

That's rather pleasant!

It's better than falling on a sword! That's for sure!

-Yes.

-So did you try to drink yourself to death?

-I had a go, yes.

How acute did this become? What...?

Oh, pretty bad, because the doctor in California - I was in California -

said that if I kept on as I was going,

I only had two weeks to live. This was fascinating because when you examine the idea of two weeks -

every second, every minute, every hour, every day... I was absolutely fascinated.

I wasn't frightened at all. So I thought, "Here we go again, boys.

"We're on the edge of a terrible precipice!"

Anyway, I decided to withdraw from the precipice, which I have done.

-How difficult was it, having embarked on this path? How heavily did you drink?

-I was the champion!

-Were you?

-If you'll pardon my using a Yorkshire word!

I was up to... Well, you don't remember if you drink that much.

-I was up to about two and a half to three bottles of hard liquor a day - which is a lot.

-S'truth!

I like drinking, but one day of that might blow my head off!

That would mean, to have drunk that amount, you must've started in the morning at breakfast.

Oh, you start at midnight!

And you keep on through midnight and you go on and on. You don't eat.

You don't do anything very much except drink.

A fascinating idea, of course,

the idea of drink on that scale.

It's rather nice to have gone through it and to have survived. We're all...

We all know that we're going towards an inevitable...doom.

It's rather interesting to deliberately go towards it and then withdraw.

Because nobody else has been there and withdrawn.

But I'VE been there, I've seen that dark wood.

I know how terrible it is, how frightful and frightening it is.

But I went there and came back.

-What did you see when you were there?

-Oh, I don't know...

Difficult to say because if you're that blind drunk, you don't know what's happening!

All kinds of monstrosities! I mean, trying to get some...

..some food into my mouth was an extraordinary business.

I was in a Roman Catholic hospital called St John's...in Santa Monica.

They said, "You must eat" and I said, "Don't want to eat."

"You must eat!" "Don't want to!" "You MUST!"

"OK, give me the food - some jello." That's American for jelly.

So, it was very soft... and it was an RC hospital and I insisted that I fed myself.

I got the spoon and, with careful application into this thing...

Shall we say it was like this? This, by the way, is water!

I can testify to that! BBC water!

So, I get the thing in and I'm about to take it to my mouth,

but my hands won't obey me - they fly all over the place!

And a friend who was there said, "I know you're in an RC hospital,

"but there's no need to do the sign of the cross every time you eat!"

What, in fact, brought you back, took you back from the edge?

I think a kind of defiance. I refused to die.

-I may drop dead this second, but at least I'm not inviting it.

-No.

Can we talk a little about the circumstances that led up to that?

I don't want to pry into your private life at all because I wouldn't like mine inspected,

-but you led such a public private life...

-Indeed.

-..when you were married to Liz Taylor.

That, I take it, is the point that caused this problem in your life.

Can we go back to that, um, marriage that you had?

It always seemed to me to be an extraordinarily unlikely liaison.

Well, it obviously WAS...

..because we divorced.

No, it was nothing to do with Elizabeth, who's a very sweet and gentle and generous person.

It would've happened anyway. I mean, my particular...driving myself...

Nothing to do with her at all.

Of course, she was, er...

You don't marry people easily.

As you know, it's always difficult.

And indeed, my life with Elizabeth, was a very public one.

You could hardly, um, belch without the world knowing about it...

and we belched quite frequently!

Actually, she's one of the champion belchers in the world! LAUGHTER

No, I'm very fond of her... Anyway, it was all nothing to do with her.

-No?

-No.

-Can you explain how unprivate your life was?

I mean, how much you became a prisoner

because of the incredible publicity that followed you wherever you went.

Well, it's... It was...

..very difficult, I suppose, in many ways, except that I never paid much attention to the publicity.

It really is boring when you get up in the morning and go for a walk

and there are three photographers or one, or none - which is even worse!

If they're not there, you scream, and if they're there, you scream!

Of course, it gives you a great many other things.

You're a very privileged person, you have riches and wealth,

you have the best seat in a restaurant, the best seat on a plane...

You're treated like a kind of demi-god,

which is not a bad idea...

..for me, anyway.

But, er, certainly not a good idea for your own ego.

But she was a very different animal to you, having had, since a tender age, this kind of star treatment.

And your origins were entirely, absolutely different.

Therefore, wouldn't she be more able to cope with this than you?

I'm not sure.

Elizabeth used to have a kind of private veil that she put on in public.

She didn't seem to notice...

..photographers or journalists or whatever. She walked through them all as if through a vacuum.

-And

-I

-saw the private person as well, but the public one certainly was aloof

and enormously difficult to, um...

..to break.

She was absolutely...

a strange kind of...

I don't know how to describe her. I never do that too long. Thirteen years is a long time.

Yes. What about the... what some people might regard as the ostentatious show of wealth

that went with your relationship? It was as if the boy from Wales had found the world's biggest diamond

-and said, "It's mine!" Was there a childlike side to it?

-I'm afraid so.

The diamond that you talk about, once I heard it was the largest,

most flawless...

..diamond in the world,

naturally, I had to buy it - if I could.

Took me a long time to buy it, but I got it.

I don't know WHY I got it, not absolutely, but I HAD to get it. So...

in a sense I may have been extraordinarily corrupted by my background

and the things that happened to me afterwards.

But I think everybody is,

regardless of how self-slighting they may be.

I think that, er,

-the world was possibly too much with me.

-Too much with you?

Too much, surrounded by too much. Ever since I can remember.

First of all, my brothers and sisters were all extraordinarily nice to me and...

Also, I think I looked at the world in a very oblique way.

Certainly, that kind of ostentation, private aeroplanes, diamonds,

pearls...

..women, was obviously, er,

not the kind of thing that one would expect from somebody like me.

-But it happened. I don't know why, but it happened.

-Did you like Hollywood?

Um, yes. It's a very nice place. I'm going there in a minute. Tonight.

I have to say "tonight", don't I? LAUGHTER

It's a fantastic suburb. It has no centre, no root.

It goes on and on and on. Nothing but swimming pools and tennis courts

and very rich people - very nice people too, at least to me.

But not... It doesn't have any kind of, um, root.

Now, when you went there you met an actor who, I assume, might've been a hero of yours - Bogart.

-Oh, yes!

-You share my admiration for him?

-Very much.

Great friend of mine and...

I'd loved to have interviewed him.

-You never met him?

-No, never.

-Oh, what a shame.

-Mind you, you'd have had trouble with him. He wasn't easy.

-Was he not?

No, a very difficult man but,

if you understood him, if you liked him, if you loved him - as I did - enchanting.

But he frightened people to death.

-Did you ever have the urge to do something outrageous when you were in Hollywood?

-Yes, frequently!

I did do all kinds of extraordinary things there.

Of course, I've been back and forward for twenty-five, thirty years.

No, I did some very extraordinary things.

-I kicked a set down one day.

-A set?

Yes, a whole set. Olivia de Havilland was on top of it!

-Was that just out of a paddy?

-I couldn't remember my lines in a particular speech.

I had to climb up a wall and she was at the top and I forget what I had to say. Well, I'd forgotten THEN!

And I had to climb up this sort of drainpipe and everything...

and I could NOT remember the lines. There's always ONE scene,

in any picture you do, where you forget the words.

So I climbed up once and slithered down in a temper because I'd forgotten the lines.

Went up again, slithered down. Went up again, slithered down... I must've gone up about ten times.

Finally I went RAVING mad and started to kick the set and the whole thing started to fall in!

I cleverly got out of the way but Miss de Havilland didn't forgive me for a long time!

Julie Andrews recently talked to me about the boredom of a long run.

And she said you used to play the same line in different ways.

One night you'd play it for laughs, the next, for tears. And the audience reacted to you.

I do remember doing some very peculiar things on the stage.

For instance, I was playing Hamlet once in New York, and I have a daughter, Maria Burton.

At that time... She's German. She's adopted by Elizabeth and myself.

But the Germans being very, er...

..proper and legal and so on, wanted to make sure that I was a suitable father for the child.

So they all came to New York to see me, see where I lived - I lived in a hotel.

Don't know why they'd want to see the hotel but, anyway. All six or seven of them had seats at the front

and I came on to speak, "To be or not to be:"

And Elizabeth had warned me to be nice to the Germans. And I said, "Of course, I will be."

But, you know, there's a slight kind of...tiny ache in the bones about the Germans...

-You sound like Churchill!

-MIMICKING CHURCHILL: "And when I think..."

Anyway, I came on and instead of "To be or not to be:" I said,

"Sein oder nicht sein: das ist die Frage..."

And so on with "To be or not to be:"

And the Germans were delighted!

But Polonius and Claudius, standing behind an arras, went raving mad, as they thought I'D gone raving mad!

Did you find that, when you look back on your career in films and on stage,

you got your most self-rewarding sense from stage rather than film?

Um, in my case, I see absolutely no difference between the two.

There IS a quieter technique,

which is easy for anybody to get, assuming that you can act.

That, as a matter of fact, Elizabeth taught me -

not by telling me, but simply by doing it.

-I think she's one of the world's greatest screen actors.

-Really?

-Yes, I think she's magnificent.

But she, um... I did a scene with her one day in, um...

I've forgotten the film.

And I said, "She doesn't DO anything! What's she doing?!"

And a friend said, "Go and see her tomorrow on the rushes." So I did and she was doing everything.

-Quality of stillness?

-Yes... But things are happening behind those eyes, happening in the brain.

So, you have to try and catch that, yourself, I mean - after all, I get paid for it!

So you try to find out how to get that same quality.

-I doubt

-I

-ever will - I'm too loud, too strong.

There's a great story about you in Hamlet and Churchill in the audience.

O'Toole said that the trouble with doing "To be or not to be:" is that everybody joins in.

Well, for me this was true in Sir Winston's case because, um,

he came to Hamlet and he sat in the front row of the Old Vic...

because there's no royal box there.

And he sat with his wife and detectives, or whatever they were,

and I came on the stage feeling absolutely diabolical.

And I was told, "The old man's in front" and there was only one old man and I started to speak,

"A little more than kin, and less than kind."

Then I heard this extraordinary rumble from the front row and I thought, "Have I got a hangover?!"

And it was Sir Winston, or Winston, as he was then, speaking the lines with me!

I could not shake him off whatever I did! In "To be or not to be:" he was with me to the death! Every word!

I don't know quite what he was trying to do. I suppose he was upset that HE wasn't on stage!

And...it was quite extraordinary.

"O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I:" with Sir Winston joining you in a duet is NOT the easiest thing!

"Bloody, bawdy villain! Lecherous, treacherous, remorseless, villain! O! vengeance!" and "Bwaaaaa...!"

-Did he come backstage to see you?

-Yes, at the interval, then he went back to see the rest.

I thought he'd gone home, cos I watched through the spyhole

and it seemed... I said, "We've lost him. He's gone."

So I thought, "Might as well have a drink, then, since he's gone. Get sloshed."

So I sat in the dressing room and was just about to put a whisky and soda to my mouth

when suddenly in the doorway was Sir Winston... and he bowed very graciously

and very courteously said, "My Lord Hamlet, may I use your lavatory?"

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Which of the films you made are you proudest of, do you like best?

I don't know, really. I think there are about six or seven that I made,

which is pretty bad batting average...

-But there are...half a dozen that I think are rather good.

-What about Becket?

I think that's all right, yeah.

We've got a clip, actually, which I'd like to show to you, if you can roll through to that...

It sums up what you were talking about - this sort of stillness.

-It's the final scene, where Becket...

-Must I watch it?

-Can't you bear to?

-I'll try.

Your Grace, there are men at the doors. I bolted them but...

-Does one bolt the doors during vespers?

-Your Grace...

Open them. Everything must be as it should be for divine service.

KNOCK ON DOOR >

# Deus in adiutorium...

# ..meum intende. #

CHANTING IN LATIN >

DOORS OPENING >

One does not carry arms into God's house.

What do you want?

Your death.

APPLAUSE

Fairly powerful stuff that, wasn't it?

Yeah...

-Very badly acted.

-Do you think so?

-Oh, yes. I could do it much better now, but I won't.

What was wrong with it?

Mmm... I could hear one word that was absolutely, terribly wrong.

-One word?

-One word, yes.

"Nobody comes into the house of God during DIVINE service."

Why did I say "DIVINE" and not "divine" service?

That's where I overacted. Nevertheless, I got away with it. Nobody noticed.

No, people weren't standing up in cinemas screaming, "Why did he say DIVINE?!"

-Well, they should!

-Really?!

-Yes!

Nevill Coghill said he'd only taught two people of genius - you and WH Auden.

-Do you think you've lived up to his expectations?

-No, I'm afraid not.

-Was it an impossible one to live up to?

-It was nice of him to say that, but whether I've lived up to his...

..prognostication - or whatever the word is -

I certainly don't know. I shan't know for a long time.

But I WILL try to be what he asked me to be.

-There's time left?

-Oh, yes! A good thirty years, I should fancy!

I'll be back on this show endlessly!

When you look back at this extraordinary life that you've had,

can you really believe it? Are you filled with a sense of wonder?

Well, that I never lose. A sense of wonder is really... If one loses that, one loses everything.

So, everything is a slight miracle.

Richard Burton died in 1984 of a cerebral haemorrhage. He was 58.

The actor, Anthony Quayle said of him, "He wasn't that concerned in contributing to great art.

"He was concerned with the Odyssey of Richard Burton and that's what made him such a fascinating man."

Next week, I review meetings with Frankie Howerd and Tommy Cooper.

I leave you with Richard Burton's party piece from 1974. Goodnight.

IMITATING CHURCHILL: "We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind.

"I will say to the House...

"I have nothing to offer

"but blood, toil,

"tears,

"and sweat.

"You ask, 'What is our policy?'

"I will say

"it is to wage WAR.

"To wage war by sea, land, air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us.

"To wage WAR against a monstrous tyranny with a lamentable catalogue of human crime.

"That is our policy.

"You ask, 'What is our aim?'

"I can answer in one word.

"Victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror,

"however hard or long the road may be, for without victory, there is no survival.

"We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi machine.

"From this nothing will turn us. We will never negotiate with Hitler or the gang that feeds his wicked will.

"We shall fight him by sea and in the air until, with God's help,

"we have rid the earth of his shadow."

Subtitles by Lois Brooks BBC Scotland 1995