Richard Burton would have been 100 years old a few days ago. My book Poisoned Chalice: How Fame Ruined Richard Burton, is published by Bear Manor Media. It celebrates his life and career while taking time to point out that both were seriously compromised by what he called his “Faustian” pact with the devil, i.e. his embrace of the finer things of life to the detriment of his talent.
“Films are all about the lure of the zeroes,” he said once, referring to the enormous salaries he was proferred at the height of his fame. It was these that funded his sybaritic lifestyle, making him look like a member of the royalty as he cavorted across continents in his private jet, buying the most expensive jewellery he could find for his wife Elizabeth Taylor.
I visited his native village of Pontrhydyfen during the summer. The Welsh Tourist Board was running events there to commemorate his centenary. Our first pit-stop was The Miner’s Arms, the pub where his father Dic met his mother, a 15-year-old barmaid. A mural the size of a house graces the gable.
“The marriage certificate was falsified,” the tour guide informed us, “because she was too young to marry.” Dic forged a friend’s name on it instead. The friend was male, but nobody seemed to notice. Dic reportedly drank 13 pints a night in the pub. His son would go on to beat that record by some margin.
Our next port of call was the house where he was born as Richard Jenkins, the 12th of 13 children. It was located on a bend at the bottom of a hill. We couldn’t leave the tour bus to see it close up. It would have been too dangerous, the guide said. How careless of Richard to be born at such an inconvenient spot.
His mother died shortly after her (unlucky) 13th child came into the world. Richard was raised by his 16-year-old sister. We were brought to her house too, to the place where he gave his first stage performance, and finally to the house of Philip Burton, whose name he took after Philip adopted him.
It brought his story alive to ramble around such places. We saw how his humble origins perhaps gave rise to his thirst for their opposite in the gilded cages of affluence.
Readers of The Irish Catholic might be interested to know that Richard played a priest in The Night of the Iguana, Exorcist II and Absolution, and that he played St Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in Becket.
Most of you probably know he married Elizabeth Taylor twice. She herself was married eight times in all. When a judge asked her to name her previous spouses at one of her weddings, she snapped, “What is this – a memory test?”
Her last marriage was to the lorry driver Larry Fortensky. He was younger than her first wedding dress.
She must have liked rice.
