Richard Burton, CBE (November
10 1925 – August 5 1984) was
a Welsh actor. He was at one time the highest-paid actor in
Hollywood.[1] Known for his distinctive voice, he was nominated seven times for Academy Awards for acting, yet never won.
Background and education
He was born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr. in the village of Pontrhydyfen,
Wales, near Port Talbot and grew up in a poor,
Welsh-speaking household, the twelfth of thirteen children.[2] His father was a coalminer, and his mother died after the last birth, before he
was two years old; thenceforth a sister in Port Talbot took him into her family[2][3] where he was
raised a Presbyterian.
He showed a talent for English literature at grammar school, though his consuming
interest was sports.[4] With the
assistance of his inspirational schoolmaster, Philip H. Burton (who mentored him), he excelled in school productions. Philip
could not legally adopt Burton because their ages were too close together.[5] It was at this time that he began to develop the distinctive speaking voice that became his hallmark,
having been encouraged by Philip (who sidelined as a BBC radio producer) to "lose his Welsh accent". To this day, many aspiring
actors study Burton's style of elocution which has been hailed by critics worldwide. His official website claims that he was the
highest paid actor in Hollywood during his heyday of on-screen and off-screen collaborations with fellow icon Liz Taylor, and he is often ranked among the greatest actors of all time.
There is a widespread myth (perhaps encouraged or even believed by some members of his stoutly working-class family) that
Richard Burton "won a scholarship to Oxford at the age of sixteen" but left after six months. The facts, as recorded by Burton
himself in his autobiography and in Richard and Philip, which he co-wrote, are as follows: At the age of sixteen, he was
forced to leave school and find work as a shop assistant. His former teacher, Philip Burton, recognising his talent, adopted him
and enabled him to return to school. In 1943, at the age of eighteen, Richard Burton (who had now taken his teacher's surname),
was allowed into Exeter College, Oxford, for a term of six months study. This was
made possible only because it was wartime and he was an air force cadet.
He subsequently served in the RAF (1944-1947) as a navigator. His eyesight was too
poor for him to be considered pilot material.[4]
Early acting career
In the 1940s and early 1950s Burton worked on stage and in cinema in the United Kingdom. Before his war service with the RAF,
he had made his professional debut in Liverpool, appearing in a play called Druid's
Rest, but his career was interrupted by conscription in 1944. While making his first film, The
Last Days of Dolwyn in 1947, he met his future wife, the young actress Sybil Williams,
and they married in February 1949. They had two daughters, but divorced in 1963, after Burton hit the big time. In the year of
his marriage to Sybil, Burton appeared in the West End in a highly successful
production of The Lady's Not For Burning, alongside Sir
John Gielgud. He had small parts in various British films: Now
Barabbas Was A Robber; Waterfront (1950) with Robert Newton; The Woman With No Name (1951); and a bigger part as
a smuggler in Green Grow The Rushes, a B-movie. In the
1951 season at Stratford , he gave a critically acclaimed performance as Prince Hal. This prompted Alexander Korda to try to get Burton to sign a contract with him, and in 1952 Burton signed a five year
contract with Korda at £100 a week.
Hollywood and later career
In 1952, Burton successfully made the transition to a Hollywood
star; on the recommendation of Daphne du Maurier, he was given the leading role in
My Cousin Rachel opposite Olivia de
Havilland. 20th century Fox negotiated with Korda to borrow him for this film
and a further two at $50,000 a film. The film was a critical success, established Burton as a Hollywood leading man, and won him
his first Academy Award nomination. The following year he created a sensation by starring
in The Robe, the first film to be shot in the wide-screen process
Cinemascope, winning another Oscar nomination. In
1954, he took his most famous radio role, as the narrator in the original production of Dylan
Thomas' Under Milk Wood, a role he would reprise in the film version
twenty years later.
Stage career
Burton was still juggling theatre with film, playing Hamlet and Coriolanus at the Old Vic Theatre in 1953 and alternating the roles of
Iago and Othello with the Old Vic's other rising matinee idol
John Neville. He also appeared on Broadway, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Time Remembered (1958) and winning the award for playing King Arthur
in the musical Camelot (1960). He then put his stage career on the back burner
to concentrate on film, although he received a third Tony Award nomination when he reprised
his Hamlet under John Gielgud's direction in 1964 in a
production that holds the record for the longest run of the play in Broadway history.
After that his stage appearances were rare, although he made a memorable return to Broadway in 1976 in Equus, his performance as psychiatrist
Martin Dysart winning both a special Tony Award for his appearance as well as the role in the
1977 film version. Burton made only two more stage appearances after that, in a high-paying
touring production of Camelot in 1980 that he was forced to leave early in the
run due to a back injury (to be replaced by his friend Richard Harris), and in a
critically reviled production of Noël Coward's Private
Lives opposite his ex-wife Elizabeth Taylor in 1983. Most reviewers
dismissed the production as a transparent attempt to capitalize on the couple's celebrity, although they grudgingly praised
Burton as having the closest connection to Coward's play of anyone in the cast.
Hollywood career in the 1950s and 1960s
In terms of critical success, his Hollywood roles throughout the 1950s did not live up to the early promise of his debut. Then
in 1958, he was offered the part of Jimmy Porter in the film version of John Osborne's play
Look Back in Anger, a gritty drama about middle-class life in the British
Midlands. After playing King Arthur in Camelot on Broadway, he replaced
Stephen Boyd as Mark Antony in the troubled production Cleopatra (1963). This film proved to be the start of his most successful period in Hollywood;
he would remain among the top 10 box-office earners for the next four years. During the filming, Burton met and fell in love with
Elizabeth Taylor, although the two would not be free to marry until 1965, when their
respective divorces were complete. Their private lives turned out to be an endless source of curiosity for the media, and their
marriage was also the start of a series of on-screen collaborations.
Richard Burton as O'Brien in
1984
He played Taylor's tycoon husband in The V.I.P.s, an all-star film set in the
VIP lounge of London Airport which proved
to be a box-office hit. In 1964, Burton played defrocked Episcopal priest Dr. Lawrence T. Shannon in Tennessee Williams'
The Night of the Iguana directed by John Huston, a film which became
another critical and box office success. Richard Burton's performance in The Night of the Iguana may be his finest hour on the
screen, and in the process helped put the town of Puerto Vallarta on the map. After playing the archbishop martyred by Henry II
in the title role of Becket and British spy Alec Leamas in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, he and Taylor had a great success in
Mike Nichols's film of the Edward Albee play
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in which a bitter erudite couple
spend the evening trading vicious barbs in front of their horrified and fascinated guests, played by George Segal and Sandy Dennis. Although all four actors received
Oscar nominations for their roles in the film, only Taylor and Dennis went on to win.
Burton and Taylor continued making films together: The Sandpiper (1965) was
poorly received, but their lively version of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (1967) being a notable success, while later
collaborations The Comedians (1967), Boom
(1968), and the Burton-directed Dr. Faustus (1967) (which had its
genesis from a theatre production he staged and starred in at the Oxford
University Dramatic Society) being critical and commercial failures. He did enjoy a final commercial blockbuster with
Where Eagles Dare in 1968 but his last film of the decade, Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), was a commercial and critical disappointment. In spite
of those failures, it performed remarkably well at that year's Academy awards (receiving ten nominations, including one for
Burton's performance as Henry VIII), which many thought to be largely the result
of an expensive advertising campaign by Universal Studios[6].
Career decline
Burton's career went into decline after that, according to many critics who accused him of accepting roles in inferior
projects to collect a quick paycheck. Films he made during this period included Bluebeard (1972), Hammersmith Is Out (1972), The Klansman (1974), and Exorcist II: The
Heretic (1977). He did enjoy one major critical success in the 1970s in the film version of his stage hit
Equus, winning the Golden Globe Award as
well as an Academy Award nomination. Public sentiment towards his perennial frustration at
not winning an Oscar made many pundits consider him the favorite to finally win the award,
but on Oscar Night he lost to Richard Dreyfuss
in The Goodbye Girl.
He found success in 1978, when he narrated Jeff Wayne's musical version of
War of the Worlds. His distinctive performance
became a necessary part of the concept album - so much so that a hologram of Burton is used to narrate the live stage show
(touring in 2006 and 2007) of the musical.
He went back to appearing in critically reviled films like The Wild Geese
(1978), The Medusa Touch (1978), Circle of Two (1980), and Wagner (1983) after his
success in Equus, but his last movie performance as the villain O'Brien in the 1984
film adaptation of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was critically acclaimed.
Oscar frustration
He was nominated six times for an Academy Award for Best Actor and once
for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor - but he never
won. From 1982, he and Becket co-star Peter
O'Toole shared the record for the male actor with the most nominations (7) for a competitive acting Oscar without ever
winning. In 2007, Peter O'Toole was unsuccessfully nominated for an eighth time, for Venus.
Television
Burton rarely appeared on television, although he gave a memorable performance as Caliban in a televised production of The Tempest for The
Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1960. Later appearances included the TV movie
Divorce His - Divorce Hers (1973) opposite then-wife Elizabeth Taylor (a prophetic title, since their first marriage would be dissolved less than a year
later), a remake of the classic film Brief Encounter (1974) that was considered
vastly inferior to the 1946 original, and a critically applauded performance as Winston
Churchill in The Gathering Storm (1974). A critically panned film he
made about the life of Richard Wagner (noted only for having the only onscreen teaming of
Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and
Ralph Richardson in the same scene) was shown as a television miniseries in 1983 after
failing to achieve a theatrical release, but Burton enjoyed a personal triumph in the American television miniseries
Ellis Island in 1984, receiving an Emmy Award
nomination for his final television performance.
Television played an important part in the fate of his Broadway appearance in
Camelot. When the show's run was threatened by disappointing reviews, Burton
and costar Julie Andrews appeared on The Ed
Sullivan Show to perform the number What Do The Simple Folk Do?. The television appearance renewed public
interest in the production and extended its Broadway run.
Late in his career, he played himself in an episode of the Television Show The Fall
Guy, repeating a stunt he made in 1970 when he and then-wife Elizabeth
Taylor appeared as themselves on an episode of Here's Lucy as part of his
unsuccessful campaign to win the Oscar for his nominated performance in
Anne of the Thousand Days.
In 1997, archive footage of Burton was used in the first episode of the television series Conan.[7]
Personal life
Burton was married five times, first to Sybil Williams from 1949 to 1963, and had two children with Williams, actress
Kate Burton and Jessica Burton. He was married twice, consecutively, to
Elizabeth Taylor (15 March 1964 – 26 June 1974 and 10 October 1975 – 29 July 1976).
Their second marriage occurred sixteen months after their divorce, in the Chobe National
Park, Kasane, Botswana. The relationship between them
portrayed in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was popularly
likened to Burton and Taylor's real-life marriage.[8]
He was an insomniac and a notoriously heavy drinker. However, ongoing back pain and a dependence upon pain medications have
been suggested as the true cause of his misery.
His father (known as Dich Bach) also a heavy drinker, refused to acknowledge the son's talents, achievements and
acclaim.[3] In turn, Richard declined to attend
his funeral, in 1957.[4]
Burton was banned permanently from BBC productions in 1974 for questioning the sanity of
Winston Churchill and others in power during World War
II – Burton reported hating them "virulently" for the alleged promise to wipe out all Japanese people on the planet.
Ironically, Burton had got along well with Churchill when he met the former Prime Minister at a play in London, and kept a bust of the great wartime leader on his mantlepiece. Burton courted further
controversy in 1976 when he wrote a controversial article about his late friend and fellow Welsh thespian Sir Stanley Baker, who had recently died from lung cancer at the age of
48.
Death
Burton's fourth marriage was to Suzy Hunt, ex-wife of motor racing driver James Hunt,
(maiden name Suzy Millar, whose father was a judge in Kenya) and his fifth was to Sally Hay, a
make-up artist who later became a successful novelist. While married to Sally, he died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage at his home in Switzerland, where he is
buried. He was only 58 years old. Burton was buried in a red suit, a tribute to his Welsh roots.[9]
Awards and Nominations
Academy Award
BAFTA Award
Emmy Award
- Nominated: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or a Special, Ellis
Island (1985)
Golden Globe Award
Tony Award
- Nominated: Best Actor - Play, Time Remembered (1959)
- Won: Best Actor - Musical, Camelot (1961)
- Nominated: Best Actor - Play, Hamlet (1964)
- Won: Special Award (1976)
Filmography
-
Stage career
References
Further reading
- Shipman, D. The Great Movie Stars: The International Years, Angus & Robertson 1982. ISBN 0-207-14803-1
External links
