Trivia of Richard Burton

Trivia of Richard Burton

*He was brought up in a Welsh-speaking home, like practically all the households in Pontrhydyfen. But all seven Oscar-nominated film performances he gave were delivered in English with no trace of a Welsh accent. His mentor Philip Burton had to train him out of his Welsh accent. He taught him to remove the long vowels of the Welsh accent and introduced received pronunciation.Soon became Burton’s stock-in-trade and his habitual tone (he also adopted Philip Burton's less Welsh-sounding surname as his own). Gwyneth Petty, a Welsh actress who appeared with him in the first performance of "Under Milk Wood" as a girl, said it wasn’t an inauthentic voice: "that was just how he sounded, all the time." Sian Phillips, who appeared with Burton many times, said she did wonder sometimes "whether he was occasionally sacrificing the meaning to the beauty of the sound. There weren’t that many Welsh actors on the world stage. People were simply captivated."

*An avid fan of Shakespeare, poetry and reading, he once said "home is where the books are". He received a scholarship to Oxford University to study acting and made his first stage appearance in 1944.During World War II, he was admitted to Exeter College, Oxford to take the "University Short Course" for six months as a Royal Air Force cadet. While at Oxford in 1943-1944, he was a member of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. Cadets were promised that they could return to Oxford to complete their education after the war, but he did not, instead becoming a professional actor after being demobilized in 1947. Almost thirty years later, he was invited back to Oxford to teach poetry to undergraduates for a semester.

*He was engaged to Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia (Serbia & Montenegro) between the time of his two marriages to Elizabeth Taylor. Princess Elizabeth is the mother of Catherine Oxenberg whom he later coached on acting.

*He and Elizabeth Taylor starred together in 11 movies: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966); The V.I.P.s (1963); Under Milk Wood (1971); The Taming of the Shrew (1967); The Sandpiper (1965); Hammersmith Is Out (1972); Doctor Faustus (1967); Divorce His - Divorce Hers (1973); The Comedians (1967); Cleopatra (1963) and Boom (1968).

*According to Burton's diaries, when he and Elizabeth Taylor appeared on the Here's Lucy (1968) (episode: "Lucy Meets the Burtons"), he was appalled by the tedium of shooting the show. He found Lucille Ball's meticulous professionalism to be ludicrous as he felt it was out of place on a TV show. Lucy was entirely focused on making the show work, and Burton -- who thought it would be a lark -- didn't have any fun on the set. He was quite impressed by Ball's co-star Gale Gordon, but was dismayed that Lucy, personally, directed him to play his "part" -- which was himself, after all -- very broad so that he was shouting. When he did shout, she told him that he was finally playing comedy as it should be played. The episode featured Lucy meeting Burton, who was fleeing the press and hid in her office, and then Liz, and putting on Liz's 69-carat, pear-shaped stone diamond, which became stuck to her finger.

*He had an excellent memory and had no difficulty remembering lines until he was fifty.Loved to do crossword puzzles and was dismayed that American newspapers' crosswords were more geared towards encyclopedic information rather than puns and wordplay.

*Good friend of Laurence Olivier. He was the best man at Laurence Olivier's marriage to Joan Plowright in New York City on March 17, 1961.Laurence Olivier tried to interest him in taking over the National Theatre after his imminent retirement from the post. He declined, feeling that the board of directors had treated the great Laurence Olivier shabbily...Though he was called "the natural successor to Olivier" by critic. Sadly, his heavy drinking added to his image as a great performer had wasted his talent.Burton passed away five years earlier before Olivier , at age 58.