BURTON, Richard

Nationality: British. Born: Richard Walter Jenkins Jr. in Pontrhydyfen, Wales, 10 November 1925. Education: Attended Exeter College, Oxford. Military Service: Royal Air Force, 1944–47. Family: Married 1) the actress Sybil Williams, 1949 (divorced), daughters: Kate and Jessica; 2) the actress Elizabeth Taylor, 1964 (divorced 1974; remarried 1975, divorced 1976), child: adopted daughter Maria; 3) Susan Hunt, 1976 (divorced 1982); 4) Sally Hay, 1983. Career: 1943—changed name to Richard Burton, after schoolmaster Philip Burton who encouraged his acting career; stage debut in Liverpool in Druid's Rest; 1948—following military service, returned to stage in London; film debut in The Last Days of Dolwyn; 1949—Broadway debut in The Lady's Not for Burning; 1952—appeared in first American film, My Cousin Rachel; 1961–62—while making film Cleopatra, met and fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor; 1962–73—acted in series of films with Taylor; 1983—with Taylor on Broadway in revival of Nöel Coward's Private Lives; 1984—in TV mini-series Ellis Island. Awards: Best Actor, British Academy, for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1966; Commander of the British Empire, 1970; Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford, 1975. Died: Of a stroke, in Geneva, Switzerland, 5 August 1984.

Films as Actor:

1948

The Last Days of Dolwyn (Dolwyn) (Williams) (as Gareth)

1949

Now Barabbas Was a Robber . . . (Which Will You Have?) (Parry) (as Paddy)

1950

Waterfront (Waterfront Women) (Anderson) (as Ben Satterthwaite); The Woman with No Name (Her Panelled Door) (Vajda and O'Ferrall) (as Nick Chamerd)

1951

Green Grow the Rushes (Brandy Ashore) (Twist) (as Robert "Bob" Hammond)

1952

My Cousin Rachel (Koster) (as Philip Ashley)

1953

The Desert Rats (Wise) (as Capt. MacRoberts); The Robe (Koster) (as Marcellus Gallio); Thursday's Children (Anderson and Brenton) (as narrator)

1954

Demetrius and the Gladiators (Daves) (in film clip from The Robe); Prince of Players (Dunne) (as Edwin Booth)

1955

The Rains of Ranchipur (Negulesco) (as Dr. Safti); Alexander the Great (Rossen) (title role)

1957

Sea Wyf and Biscuit (Sea Wyf) (McNaught) (as Biscuit); Amère victoire (Bitter Victory) (Nicholas Ray) (as Capt. Leith)

1958

March to Aldermaston (as narrator)

1959

Look Back in Anger (Richardson) (as Jimmy Porter)

1960

The Bramble Bush (Petrie) (as Guy); Ice Palace (Vincent Sherman) (as Zeb Kennedy)

1961

Dylan Thomas (Howells—short); A Midsummer Night's Dream (Sackler); Sen noci svatojánské (Jiří Trnka) (as narrator of English-language version)

1962

The Longest Day (Annakin, Marton, Wicki, and Oswald) (as RAF pilot)

1963

Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz) (as Mark Antony); The V.I.P.s (Asquith) (as Paul Andros); Zulu (Endfield) (as narrator); Inheritance (Irvin—short) (as narrator)

1964

Becket (Glenville) (title role); The Night of the Iguana (Huston) (as the Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon); Hamlet (Colleran—for TV, filmed record of Gielgud's New York theater production) (title role)

1965

The Sandpiper (Minnelli) (as Dr. Edward Hewitt); What's New, Pussycat? (Clive Donner) (as man in bar); The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Ritt) (as Alec Leamas); Eulogy to 5.02 (Herschensohn—short) (as narrator); The Days of Wilfred Owen (produced by Lewine and Bach) (as narrator)

1966

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols) (as George); La Bisbetica Domata (The Taming of the Shrew) (Zeffirelli) (as Petruchio, + co-pr)

1967

The Comedians (Glenville) (as Brown); The Comedians in Africa (short)

1968

Boom! (Losey) (as Chris Flanders); Candy (Marquand) (as McPhisto); Where Eagles Dare (Hutton) (as John Smith); The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Queenan) (as narrator)

1969

Anne of the Thousand Days (Jarrott) (as King Henry VIII); Staircase (Donen) (as Harry Leeds)

1971

Villain (Tuchner) (as Vic Dakin); Raid on Rommel (Hathaway) (as Capt. Alec Foster)

1972

The Assassination of Trotsky (Losey) (title role); Hammersmith Is Out (Ustinov) (title role); Barbe-Bleue (Bluebeard) (Dmytryk) (as Baron Von Sepper/title role); A Wall in Jerusalem (Knobler and Rossif—English-language version of Un Mur à Jérusalem) (as narrator); Sutjeska (The Fifth Offensive) (Delic) (as Josip Broz Tito)

1973

Il viaggio (The Voyage; The Journey) (de Sica) (as Cesar Braggi); Under Milk Wood (Sinclair) (as narrator); Divorce: His/Divorce: Hers (Divorce) (Hussein—for TV); Rappresaglia (Massacre in Rome) (Cosmatos) (as Col. Kappler)

1974

The Klansman (Terence Young) (as Breck Stancill); Gathering Storm (Wise) (as Winston Churchill); Brief Encounter (Alan Bridges—for TV)

1976

Volcano (Brittain) (as narrator); Resistance (McMullen)

1977

Exorcist II: The Heretic (Boorman) (as Father Lamont); Equus (Lumet) (as Dr. Martin Dysart)

1978

The Wild Geese (McLaglen) (as Col. Allen Faulkner); Stars' War: The Flight of the Wild Geese (Johnstone—short); The Medusa Touch (Gold) (as John Morlar)

1979

Breakthrough (Sergeant Steiner) (McLaglen) (as Sgt. Steiner); Love Spell (Donovan)

1980

Circle of Two (Dassin) (as Ashley St. Clair)

1981

Absolution (Anthony Page) (as Fr. Goddard)

1983

Wagner (Palmer—for TV) (title role)

1984

1984 (Radford) (as O'Brien)

Film as Director:

1967

Doctor Faustus (co-d with Nevill Coghill, + title role, co-pr)

Publications

By BURTON: book—

A Christmas Story (novel), New York, 1964.

By BURTON: article—

Interview in Playboy (Chicago), September 1963.

On BURTON: books—

Cottrell, John, and Fergis Cashin, Richard Burton, Very Close Up, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1972.

Ferris, Paul, Richard Burton, New York, 1981.

Junor, Penny, Burton: The Man behind the Myth, London, 1985.

Alpert, Hollis, Burton, New York, 1986.

Bragg, Melvyn, Rich: A Biography of Richard Burton, London, 1988; as Richard Burton: A Life, New York, 1989.

Jenkins, Graham, with Barry Turner, Richard Burton: My Brother, London, 1988.

Bradanyi, Ivan, Richard es Elizabeth: Richard Burton es Elizabeth Taylor elete, Budapest, 1992.

Steverson, Tyrone, Richard Burton: A Bio-Bibliography, Westport, Connecticut, 1992.

On BURTON: articles—

Brinson, P., "Prince from Wales," in Films and Filming (London), May 1955.

Current Biography 1960, New York, 1960.

Dunne, Philip, "Richard Burton: A True Prince of Players," in Close-Up: The Movie Star Book, edited by Danny Peary, New York, 1978.

"Richard Burton," in Ecran (Paris), February 1978.

Obituary in New York Times, 6 August 1984.

Obituary in Variety (New York), 8 August 1984.

Baxter, Brian, "Richard Burton," in Films and Filming (London), October 1984.

Guérif, F., "Richard Burton," in Revue du Cinéma (Paris), November 1984.

Merkin, D., obituary in Film Comment (New York), November/December 1984.

Denby, David, "Requiem for a Heavyweight," in Premiere (New York), February 1991.

"Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor," in People Weekly (New York), 12 February 1996.

Diamond, Suzanne, "Who's Afraid of George and Martha's Parlour?," Literature/Film Quarterly, (Salisbury, Maryland), vol. 24, no. 4, October 1996.

Richard Burton's turbulent life overwhelmed the public perception of his vast talent. Born Richard Jenkins, the twelfth child of a hard-drinking Welsh miner, he was raised from the age of two by his eldest sister following the death of their mother. Love of language (exclusively Welsh until the age of five) and gift of gab influenced an early plan to enter the ministry, a notion extinguished in his teens when, anticipating his role as the minister defrocked for dallying with his underage parishioners in The Night of the Iguana, he realized he lacked all religious feeling. He turned instead to acting under the eventual tutelage of a secondary school teacher, Philip Henry Burton, who coached him to develop his remarkably resonant voice and, equally, to erase traces of his rough-hewn upbringing; he became Burton's ward at 18 and permanently assumed his name. Richard Burton made his film debut in The Last Days of Dolwyn opposite fellow Welshman Emlyn Williams, whose early life, as fictionalized in Williams's The Corn Is Green, remarkably mirrored Burton's own.

English stage and screen roles in the late 1940s and early 1950s led to plum Shakespearean parts with the Old Vic, most notably Hamlet in 1953, and a contract with Twentieth Century-Fox, for whom he played the brooding hero of Daphne du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel, his American film debut; the Roman officer Marcellus in The Robe, the first CinemaScope film; actor Edwin Booth in Prince of Players; and—forever changing his life and career—Mark Antony, opposite Elizabeth Taylor, in Cleopatra.

Burton and Taylor: each married to another when they co-starred in Cleopatra in 1963, their names became permanently linked, from initial banner-headlined scandal, through marriage, divorce, remarriage, and redivorce, to photographs of a grieving, feebly disguised Taylor retreating from the press near Burton's Swiss gravesite a week after his death in 1984. On the screen as well as off they wooed each other in a series of films usually featuring warring but emotionally bonded couples, roles calculated to obliterate any separation between life and art in the mind of the viewer. Of the 11 films they made together, 2 will stand the test of time—the superb Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in which the staged-trained Burton delivered one of his best film performances (though Taylor took home the Oscar), and Franco Zeffirelli's colorfully raucous adaptation of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.

It is commonplace to maintain that Burton squandered his talent, that he chose, in words attributed to Laurence Olivier, to become a "household word" instead of the great Shakespearean actor he promised to become. His unfulfilled plan to return to the theater as King Lear following a successful Broadway run in Equus was thwarted by intermittent bouts with the bottle and a serious spinal ailment that forced him out of a praised Camelot revival in 1980. His final stage appearance occurred in a Broadway revival of Private Lives, Nöel Coward's stylish comedy of divorce and reassignation, an attempt to resurrect the glitter of past associations with Elizabeth Taylor, who co-starred.

As revealed in Melvyn Bragg's 1988 biography Rich, cobbled together largely from Burton's own private diaries and letters, Burton was a highly intelligent, articulate man. He was at his best on screen capturing dispirited men at the end of their tether, cynical world-weary men such as Leamas in John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and George in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; burnt-out, self-destructive men such as the defrocked minister at war with his lack of faith, T. Lawrence Shannon, in John Huston's now-legendary adaptation of Tennessee Williams's Night of the Iguana; angry young men such as John Osborne's Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger; and—still overwhelmingly—Shakespeare's tortured Danish prince in the 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet (directed by John Gielgud), which was photographed for posterity in a now elusive film transcription, and recorded on vinyl, as well.

—Mark W. Estrin, updated by John McCarty

Richard Burton

Richard Burton (1925-1984) was known for his outstanding abilities as a Shakespearean actor, his commanding presence on Broadway, and his compelling screen portrayals. He was almost as famous for his romance with actress Elizabeth Taylor, to whom he was twice married.

Richard Burton was born on November 10, 1925, in the Welsh coal-mining town of Pontrhydfen. One of 13 children in the family of Thomas and Edith Jenkins, he was born Richard Jenkins. As a child, he was permitted a "normal" life, which included swimming and rugby. His father, a coal miner, wanted one of his sons to "live in sunshine," so he was sent to school rather than to the mines. He changed his last name upon becoming a professional actor to honor Philip Burton, his high school drama coach and mentor, who became his guardian. The young man spoke no English until the age of ten. His mentor taught him to speak English without a Welsh accent, to read the classics, and to hold a knife and fork.

Burton entered Exeter College, Oxford, on scholarship and, after one year, joined the Royal Air Force in 1944. Training as a navigator in Canada, he was discharged in 1947, after which he accepted a $30 weekly salary with a London theater company. In May 1949 Burton played at London's Globe Theatre in The Lady's Not For Burning. On February 5, 1949, he married actress Sybil Williams, and the couple subsequently had two daughters, Kate and Jessica.

Burton went to New York City in November 1950 to play in the Broadway production of The Lady's Not For Burning. He then went to Hollywood in 1952 and starred in My Cousin Rachel opposite Olivia de Havilland. For this film he received an Oscar nomination.

Between 1950 and 1960 Burton appeared in many stage productions, playing most of the great Shakespearean roles. In 1960 Burton's role of King Arthur in Camelot, then on Broadway, landed him a Twentieth Century Fox contract to play opposite Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra.

After divorcing his wife in April 1963, Richard Burton married Taylor on March 15, 1964. She had divorced actor Eddie Fisher, and so great was the scandal surrounding the Burton-Taylor romance that the U.S. State Department was requested to revoke Burton's visa on grounds that he was "detrimental to the morals of the youth of our nation."

Liz and Dick, as they were known, lived on a grand scale. He bought her jewels, including the 69-carat Cartier diamond. They bought a yacht for $500,000. On a more conventional note, they adopted a daughter, Maria.

Partly because Burton was a tempestuous alcoholic, he and Taylor divorced in 1974. So great was the pull between them, however, that on October 10, 1975, they remarried. Burton once said of Taylor, "Our love is so furious we burn each other out." As if to prove the point, the couple once more divorced, in July 1976. Burton then married former model Suzy Hunt.

Burton and Taylor appeared in almost a dozen films between 1962 and 1972. She won several Oscars. He never received any although he was nominated seven times, most notably for his role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966.

Troubled by a drinking problem that he kept under control for brief periods of time, Burton also suffered acute spinal pain. In 1980 he underwent neck surgery to alleviate the discomfort. In 1983 he and Taylor appeared together on Broadway in Noel Coward's Private Lives. Burton, divorced from Hunt, was married by then to Sally Hay.

On August 5, 1984, Richard Burton died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in Geneva, Switzerland.

Further Reading

Several biographies about Richard Burton have appeared. They include Richard Burton: A Biography (1971) by John Cottrell, and Richard Burton (1981) by Paul Ferris. There is also a substantial amount of information about Burton's life in Kitty Kelley's Elizabeth Taylor, The Last Star (1981) and in David Lester's Richard and Elizabeth (1977). A later, gossipy biography was Hollis Alpert's Burton (1986). □

Burton, Richard [né Jenkins] (1925–84), actor. The Welsh‐born performer first came to America to play Richard in The Lady's Not for Burning (1950), and thereafter played the Musician in Legend of Lovers (1952) and Prince Albert in Time Remembered (1957). His best‐known stage roles were King Arthur in the musical Camelot (1960) and Hamlet in a production staged by John Gielgud in 1964. In 1976 he was a replacement as Dr. Martin Dysart in Equus, and in 1981 he toured briefly in a revival of Camelot. Burton's last stage role was Elyot Chase, playing opposite his sometime wife Elizabeth Taylor, in a 1983 revival of Private Lives. One of the most gifted classical actors of his generation, his theatre career was curtailed by a celebrated film career, though he rarely lived up to his potential in either venue. Biography: Rich: The Life of Richard Burton, Melvyn Bragg, 1988.

Richard Burton 1925–84, British actor, b. Pontrhydfen, Wales; his original name was Richard Jenkins. A dark, introspective actor with a splendid speaking voice, Burton specialized in portraying conflicted, frequently tormented, men. He appeared with the Old Vic in Henry V and Othello and on Broadway in Camelot (1960) and Hamlet (1964). His tempestuous marriage to Elizabeth Taylor led to an acting partnership that vaulted Burton to the top rank of stardom. Together, they made Cleopatra (1963), The Taming of the Shrew (1967), and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). He chose his later roles less carefully, though he displayed undiminished power in such vehicles as Equus (1977), Wagner (1982), and 1984 (1984). In 1983, he teamed again with Taylor in Noel Coward 's Private Lives on Broadway.

Burton, Richard (1925–84) Welsh stage and film actor, remembered for his deep, passionate, and fiery voice. By the 1950s, he had a reputation as a leading Shakespearian actor. Burton made his film debut in The Last Days of Dolwyn (1948). From 1952 he concentrated on cinema, appearing in The Robe (1953), Look Back in Anger (1959), and Becket (1964). He made a number of films with Elizabeth Taylor, notably Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). The couple had a tempestuous relationship and married each other twice.