‘The Richard Burton Diaries’

I sipped some Welsh whiskey and snacked on Welsh canopies the other night as a guest at the British Consul-General’s Los Angeles residence. It was nice of Dame Barbara Hay to have me. After all, I’m just a commoner.
To be honest, I wasn’t the only guest. There might have been as many as 40 others in attendance. We were there to celebrate Richard Burton and the first publication of “The Richard Burton Diaries” by Yale University Press.
Burton wrote the diaries between 1939 and April 2, 1983, 16 months before his death on Aug. 5, 1984.   Richard Burton had a great sense of humor and the ability to observe everything that was going on around him, but most people will remember him as an extraordinary actor and the off again, on again husband of Elizabeth Taylor.
The book is edited by Chris Williams, a professor of Welsh history at Wales’ Swansea University. Burton earned six Oscar nominations but never won, including 1969 for “Anne of the Thousand Days.” He lost that year to John Wayne in “True Grit.” “Anne of the Thousand Days” also was nominated for Best Picture but lost out to the X-rated “Midnight Cowboy.”
What I remember most at that 1970 awards ceremony was how stunning Elizabeth Taylor looked in her blue gown and $1.1 million “Cartier Diamond” necklace Burton purchased for her. I was a young sports editor for a couple of Copley Newspapers’ dailies in Burbank and Glendale at the time. I also covered the Academy Awards for Copley from 1969 to 1972.
During those years, the Oscars were held in downtown Los Angeles’ Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. I got on the elevator outside the press room with Taylor and Burton. Taylor sans necklace (in the hands of security, no doubt). She was the most beautiful woman this young kid from a small Connecticut town had ever seen. Tanned from a stay in Puerto Vallarta, Liz was beyond gorgeous.
As the elevator made its way down to North Grand, we talked about the night’s winners. When the elevator door opened to Grand Avenue, Liz was mobbed by autograph seekers. As she signed autographs, Richard and I walked together to their waiting limo. As we walked, Burton turned to me and said, “I knew I should have worn my strapless gown tonight.” That was 42 years ago last April 7 and the night I became a fan of Richard Burton.
In his diary dated the next day, April 8, 1970, Burton writes: “We went to the party afterwards and sat with George Cukor the Pecks and the Chandlers (owners of the LA times) but were surrounded by scores of photographers, who, to my delight, took very little notice of anybody else including the winners. Barbra Streisand who fancies herself a big star was completely eclipsed. And a whole queue of people, literally hundreds, passed the table to stare at E and tell me that I was robbed and after all these protestations we began to wonder who in the world voted for Wayne.”
The book is available at bookstores, through online booksellers, at yalebooks.com or by calling Triliteral Customer Service at (800) 405-1619.
What does this have to do with travel, you ask? You might want to visit some of the places where Burton called home over his lifetime —from his birth in Glamorgan, Wales to Switzerland to Puerto Vallarta. I love Wales and its many castles (both north and south) and places such as Swansea, Cardiff and Hay-on-Wye (better known as the bookshop capital of the world). It is the world’s largest repository of second-hand books, on sale in about 30 bookshops.
My favorite Welsh castle is Caerphilly Castle in southern Wales, with its series of moats. I once had a dinner in its banquet hall. It is the largest castle in Wales and the second largest in Britain after Windsor Castle. It was built between 1268 and 1271.