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Richard Burton with Elizabeth Taylor in The VIPs (1963) |
When Burton slugged it out with Sinatra
Gerald Isaaman recalls meeting Richard and Liz, the 1960s golden couple, walking up Heath Street
RICHARD Burton and Liz Taylor are walking up Heath Street,” cried the woman who popped into the Ham & High office.
It was lunchtime and the place was almost deserted. I grabbed a Rollie from the darkroom and ran up the road.
Yes, there were the two superstars, arm in arm. I took a quick picture as Burton growled an expletive. Then, as they passed, took one from the back. On that week’s front page, we ran the rear picture, asking: Who’s this walking up Heath Street? And on the back page Burton and Taylor on their Hampstead jaunt.
In today’s world of celebrity clutter, my coup may mean nothing. Yet the incident stays with me and is brought back by this bubbling new book about Burton and some truly boisterous moments in his momentous life.
It doesn’t mention that Burton lived for a while in Lyndhurst Road, Hampstead, in his early married days and could be heard declaiming in the garden. Occasionally too, he used his brother’s cottage in Squires Mount, opposite the Heath, and stayed there with his great love Liz Taylor.
But it is not that kind of fulsome biography, from Welsh cradle to Swiss grave, but more the intimate memoir of a writer who knew Burton at significant times in the life, from 1968 to his death in 1984, aged 58.
His revealing stories are remarkable, a rollercoaster ride through the life of a hugely talented actor who lived life at its raw and sophisticated edges, insisting that he never missed any of life’s romantic thrills and explosive dangers.
Burton declared that he didn’t squander his great abilities on Hollywood epics, despite what the sternest critics thought as he entertained millions. He virtually smashed his way through life, casting depression aside and enjoying his lust – and love – for beautiful women, as well as getting drunk.
He made love to Claire Bloom in Regent’s Park yet hated himself for going to bed with Marilyn Monroe. “I didn’t know it then but everybody had her,” Burton told Munn. “So when I had her, I didn’t want everyone knowing I’d had the girl who’d been with everyone else… it was an animal passion only. She had nothing much more than her body to offer me.
“And then I just started to feel like I really didn’t want to go where everyone who ran Hollywood had been, and felt a little sickened. May be I was the only man who was ever sickened by the thought of Marilyn Monroe.”
Then, in a chapter headed A Rich Socialist, Munn reveals Burton’s troubles by being political during his early years in Hollywood, being described by Ronald Reagan, long before his days as US president, as a “Red” and a “Commie”.
“A lot of people got upset with me,” Burton reveals. “I came in for a berating from Frank Sinatra. He was no right winger, but he didn’t like Hollywood being trashed. I bumped into him when I was back at Fox for Ranchipur (the film the Rains of Ranchipur), and he made it clear that he didn’t want to hear another word against Hollywood spoken by me.
“That, of course, made me say it. He went crazy. He almost tore off his jacket and came swinging at me with his firsts. But he was no boxer, and I am. I think he landed one or two punches on me but after that I side-stepped every blow.
“I kept saying to him, ‘Frankie, if you don’t stop trying to hit me, I’m going to have to hurt you.’ And he kept saying, ‘Hurt me! Hit me! See if you can!’ So I let loose a volley of punches – left and right, left and right – and he went sprawling on the floor.”
They ended up getting drunk together and the best of friends. That’s the untypical outcome of an extraordinarily complex and confused man who had no fear in fighting whatever demons confronted him, his haunting voice never far from your thoughts as you admire his compelling charisma.
It is an equally exciting and desperate story told with concern and compassion – and published by Jeremy Robson’s small, independent firm, based in Camden Town.
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