The Voice: Richard Burton

The great Welsh actor, Richard Burton, died forty years ago today. I recall hearing his incredible, rich baritone speaking voice for the first time when I was about eight or nine years old, as he was playing the part of the narrator in Jeff Wayne's LP, The War of the Worlds. I can even remember asking my mum if she knew who he was as his voice did something to me, even back then. And I recall my mum's sense of pride when she replied to me, "That's Richard Burton, cariad. And do you know what? He's Welsh."

I have listened to The War of the Worlds album so many times since then that I could probably recite his lines, word for word. Some kind soul has edited the album so you can listen to all of his bits in one go. Here it is...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjWWs81QAYY

And even more fascinating is this collection of outtakes, which I am mesmerised by...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_Wpi2TWCVA

It may be a coincidence, although I'm pretty sure it isn't, that two of my all time favourite films, both of which I have so obsessed over that I could probably recite those word for word, also, Sydney Lumet's version of Peter Schaeffer's Equus (1977), and Mike Nichol's version of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), both star Richard Burton. He is magnificent in both, yet very different qualities stand out in each film. In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, as George, Burton is full of life and vigour, as he swings between total love and total war with his wife, Elizabeth's Taylor's Martha, a woman who is most definitely in touch with the chthonic elements of her femininity (to paraphrase Camille Paglia). In Equus, he is magnificent as the world weary, yet still hungry for life psychiatrist, Dr. Dysarth, who has his beliefs turned upside down when he encounters Alan Strang, a young man who has blinded six horses with a metal spike, is sent to him for analysis and treatment. This is one of my favourite scenes in the film...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDajCkGmXSU

His life has been quite an inspiration to me, also. His interviews are staggeringly honest and vulnerable when compared with the anaemic, "I'm only here because I have a new film to promote" interviews with actors today. Whereas Burton talks openly about his love for and struggles with alcohol, his guilt at the death of his younger brother, his passionate, fiery relationship with Elizabeth Taylor, and his belief that his enormous success as an actor wasn't just down to his talent and himself, but some mysterious kind of "diabolical luck", today's actors, in comparison, in the main are crashing bores. He was a socialist, talked of the Welsh miners as being the "princes of people," and even wore red socks (the colour of the Welsh rugby and footy teams) for luck.

There are other films of his that I adore, too. He is magnificent in The Medusa Touch, devastating in 1984, and compelling in the very odd production of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. But, most of all, he was a lover, and he and Elizabeth Taylor, As Antony and Cleopatra, in my eyes in real life and on a mythological level, too, reside with the immortals up there in the stars. 

gorffwys ymhlith y sêr (Rest among the stars).