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Past Time: Richard Burton
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Past Time: Richard Burton
As an RAF cadet scholar at Exeter College, Oxford, Burton performed in Measure for Measure in front of an audience that included actor Sir John Gielgud, playwright Terence Rattigan and West End Producer Binkie Beaumont. After three years as an RAF navigator, Burton was discharged in 1947 and moved to London where Beaumont put him under contract. While filming his first role in 1949 The Last Days of Dolwyn, Burton met Sybil Williams who he married. Under the patronage of British film legend Alexander Korda, Burton was judged by The Observer as “having all the qualities of a leading man that the British film industry needs at this juncture: youth, good looks, a photogenic face, obviously alert intelligence and a trick of getting the maximum of effort with the minimum of fuss.”
An actor’s life
Comparisons with the great Olivier were made when Gielgud directed Burton in The Lady’s Not for Burning co-starring Claire Bloom in the West End and on Broadway. As Bloom wryly put it: “He was recognisably a star… a fact he didn’t question.” Performances as Prince Hal in Henry IV Part 1 and 2 at the Festival of Britain seemed to confirm Burton as a great Shakespearean actor. But, just as Olivier had found limited success in Hollywood and was eclipsed by his wife Vivien Leigh, so Burton would be eclipsed by Taylor.
Endless love
Taylor and Burton had met before he was cast as Antony in the 1961 epic Cleopatra that Twentieth Century Fox was hoping would save the ailing studio. She had thought him arrogant. Despite both being married (he to Sybil and she to Eddie Fisher), Taylor and Burton began an all-consuming, very public affair that would be played out in purchases of fabulous jewels through two marriages and two divorces finally ending in 1976. While still making Cleopatra, Taylor gifted Burton a yellow-gold, automatic Patek Philippe watch with a woven gold bracelet and champagne-coloured dial. It is inscribed on the back with the words “Rwy’n dy garu di” – “I love you” in Welsh – and was sold at Christie’s South Kensington in 2002 for £10,000.