Richard Burton

I was eight and at primary school, we were doing a vocabulary test. It was one on one with the teacher and the words got increasingly more difficult and then you stopped. I think I was doing all right. I read a lot and so my vocabulary was generally fine. Towards the end as I began to falter Mr. Poole - my teacher and the headmaster - came up with 'oblivion' and was genuinely surprised that I knew it. I think it actually made him think of me as some kind of prodigy or at least not as thick as hitherto suspected. My parents came home from parents night proud because Mr. Poole mentioned my 'extensive' vocabulary. He'd been particularly impressed I knew the meaning of 'oblivion'. I didn't tell them that Richard Burton had taught me it.  

Richard Burton was the first actor I ever liked. I liked Richard Burton before I really understood what an actor was. When I thought in my head, the voice was always Richard Burton's. When I read books, the voice in my head, the ideal voice, was Richard Burton's. This blog post, if I am to be entirely honest, is written in Richard Burton's voice. Richard Burton taught me 'oblivion' via his narration of Jeff Wayne's prog-opera War of the Worlds: 'Now the guns spoke again but this time the Heat Ray sent them to oblivion.' 

I watched him in The Wild Geese, Where Eagles Dare, The Longest Day, The Medusa Touch and I listened to his voice again and again on the double album of H.G. Wells' book made orchestral rock: 'Few men considered the possibility of life coming from other planets...' Cleopatra was long and crazy and there was too much mush in it, but he was still fascinating to watch. I saw him on Parkinson and on the news. I practiced his voice 'Broadsword to Danny Boy'; 'Slowly but surely, they turned their plans against us'. 

And then he died. I was twelve. 

By that time I'd read The Wild Geese by Daniel Carney, Where Eagles Dare by Alastair McClean (the Robert Ludlum of his time) and The Medusa Touch by Peter Van Greenaway (not to be confused with British director Peter Greenway). Cinema and reading I always went hand in hand for me. I'd also read War of the Worlds, which to this day remains one of my favorite Science Fiction/War/political novels. I read a fairly pulpy biography of Burton as well and learned about him changing his name, having a drink problem, multiple marriages and remarriages and living in Switzerland. 

Years later I'd discover other technically better films: Equus, Look Back in Anger, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Night of the Iguana, Beckett, Anne of a Thousand Days as well as real oddities like Villain, Blue Beard and the brilliant Staircase (which I wrote about here). I have a genuine soft spot for his awful Exorcist II: The Heretic and Alexander the Great. Frankly, I can forgive Richard Burton anything. The fact that he is so often struggling with indifferent material is irrelevant. I don't like or dislike him as an actor. He's much deeper than that. 

Later still, I began to consciously seek out his films, trying to complete the filmography almost for the sake of it. I read Melvyn Bragg's biography apprehensively, waiting for my childhood hero to dissolve into a rancorous unpleasant fool. But Bragg seemed to be under the same hero-worship spell I was under and the book - Rich - is a celebration of the man and makes a good case for him being as good a writer as he was an actor. Bragg quotes lumps of Burton's diaries, at times giving way to the actor-writer whose voice is actually more ... well it's Richard Burton.  

Last year, I began to read his diaries, edited by Chris Williams with hilariously erudite and redundantly complete footnotes. It's a book I've read slowly. Whenever Burton is on the wagon we have reams of brilliant material; observations of his relationship with fellow actors and his ongoing love affair/marriages with Elizabeth Taylor; his work; his memories; the countries he visits - Mexico, Yugoslavia, France,Italy - and his occasional bouts of despair. When he starts drinking, there are a lot of one word entries: 'Booze' often followed by more days of 'Ditto'. 
I slowed down my reading. 
A couple of pages a time. 
The book has lasted almost a year now and I'm almost resolved not to end it ever. I don't want it to end. Perhaps, I'm just enjoying it too much. Perhaps it feels too close to letting go of something that is magically wrapped in my own childhood. Mainly because, when it comes down to it, this life force, this rich vitality, all those parties and private jets, the Booze, the performances and that voice, I simply don't want to get to the part where it is all consigned to oblivion.

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