Furious Love (22 page)

On February 28, 1967,
The Taming of the Shrew
premiered in London, selected for the Royal Command Performance for a screening at the Odeon, in Leicester Square. The Burtons checked into the Dorchester on Park Lane for the premiere, and Richard reserved fourteen suites for the weekend, to house his entire Welsh clan, whom he brought in by train from Port Talbot, South Wales. They all came—Burton's six brothers and his three surviving sisters. It was the first time they had come together since the death of Edith “Edie” Jenkins, who had died a few months earlier, at the age of forty-three, the first of Burton's grown siblings to pass away. She had been the youngest, and the most playful, of all of Burton's sisters. The rest of the Jenkins clan arrived with spouses and children, plus a handful of aunts and uncles, many of the women going to the premiere in gowns from the trunkfuls of cast-off clothes Elizabeth had sent to them. (Hilda Owen
wore a fuchsia-and-yellow caftan from Robinson's of Beverly Hills.) Rolls-Royces picked them up at Paddington Station and drove them to the Dorchester. The luxury was far beyond anything the Jenkinses could imagine—sumptuous flowers in every room, room service at their disposal.

For Burton, it was a triumph and a vindication. Four years earlier, he had slunk back from visiting his wife and children in Hampstead to take up his Dorchester penthouse suite to be with Elizabeth, to his family's utter disapproval. Now they were forgiven and embraced by all the living Jenkinses, and Burton savored the ability to shower his riches on his entire clan. On top of it all, it was Elizabeth's thirty-fifth birthday on February 27, adding to the mad festivities. Burton gave her—what else?—a diamond-and-emerald bracelet he'd bought at Bulgari for $320,000. The following night, he transported his family in chauffeured Daimlers to the Odeon, where he had set aside 150 premier seats for family and friends such as Emlyn Williams, Stanley Baker, Elizabeth's friend and costar in
BUtterfield 8,
Laurence Harvey, and royalty in the form of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon.

Before the curtain rose, Burton addressed the audience. “My real name, of course, is Richard Jenkins, and therefore my wife is Lizzie Jenkins,” acknowledging his Welsh family and bringing Elizabeth into the very heart of it.

After the crowd-pleasing premiere, all the Jenkinses returned to the Dorchester for a glittering ball celebrating Elizabeth's birthday. While champagne was passed around, Verdun Jenkins held forth with family stories, to Burton's great delight. At one point during the night, Richard and his six brothers found themselves standing next to each other at the marble urinals in the Dorchester's perfumed men's room. Elizabeth later shrieked with laughter when she heard Richard's description of the Jenkins men so arrayed, all “holding their Welsh cocks.”

Christopher Plummer, fresh from his success as Captain Von Trapp in
The Sound of Music
and ripely drunk, sang and played the piano while Hilda Owen offered up Welsh songs from their child
hood. Graham Jenkins sang his signature piece, “Sorrento,” in three languages. When Verdun was asked to join in, he yelled out, “As soon as that bloody Captain Von Trapp shuts his trap, I'll conduct the Jenkinses' hundred-voice choir, brought at enormous expense from South Wales, in a selection of hymns.” Several of the Jenkins men had vied for singing prizes in their youth, their gift for music nurtured by the vibrant tradition of Welsh choral societies, in which miners' sons fought for preference and attention in the highly competitive choirs throughout the dells and valleys of Wales. Cis raised her exquisite soprano voice; Verdun and Hilda sang, with Elizabeth and Richard joining in. They all rose to sing a song for their lost sister, Edie.

They stayed on, celebrating till the first shafts of light peered through the windows of the ballroom. By now, Elizabeth was dancing with the waiters, who'd peeled off their tuxedo jackets and were down to their suspenders. Hilda and her sisters, along with Richard, took turns serving the rest of the exhausted waitstaff, while Laurence Harvey, Christopher Plummer, and other guests stood behind the bar, serving drinks to the kitchen staff and washing glasses.

By morning, Elizabeth noticed, Richard didn't want them to leave. Bags were packed and limousines were lined up in Park Lane to whisk them back to Paddington Station. “They can take a later train,” he said, wanting to prolong the drinking, the reminiscing, the camaraderie. For the Burtons, such extravagant evenings would become almost routine. For the Jenkinses of Port Talbot and Pontrhydyfen, it was the celebration of a lifetime. But eventually, Richard had to let them go.

Richard never mentioned it, but his sister Hilda noted another absence among the clan that weekend. “We were only sad for one thing: my father would have been tickled pink to have been there,” she later said. It was the last time Richard would see his entire family brought together.

 

The next day, the Burtons left the Dorchester and headed for the South of France, for a well-earned vacation. By the summer, they
would find themselves in Sardinia. In September, they flew into Paris—Burton's favorite city—where they had a quiet dinner with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and the Rothschilds before attending the European premiere of
The Taming of the Shrew
. Once again, they took up residence in the beautiful Lancaster Hotel off the Champs-Élysées. Nothing could have prepared them for the premiere at the Paris Opera House, however. “We had as much, if not more, attention as we used to have in Rome, Paris, etc., during
Le Scandale
,” Burton wrote in his diary. Police barricades were set up to keep several thousand fans from storming the Opera House. Many had arrived the night before, just to stake out a spot from which to catch a glimpse of the Burtons as they emerged from their limousine. The evening turned out to be “sweet revenge,” Burton wrote, “for the social ostracism we endured such a relatively little time ago.” The film, and the gala that followed, was an enormous success, and the European press was out in full force. “E. wore a diadem,” Burton recorded, “specially created for her by the De Beers Company of Van Cleef and Arpels, designed by Alexandre, which cost $1,200,000. With her other jewelry, she wore a total of roughly $1,500,000.” When the Burtons left their hotel, it was with eight bodyguards parting the waves of hotel guests in the lobby on their way to the waiting limousine, while scores of flashcubes exploded all around them. And that was just getting into their car.

At the Opera House, another excited crowd awaited them. One of the government ministers in attendance presented Richard and Elizabeth with congratulations from President de Gaulle himself. Among the many luminaries present, “E. was unquestionably the queen of the evening,” Burton wrote proudly of his wife. “They hardly photographed anybody else.” Being Welsh and being Burton, the miner's son had to pinch himself until it hurt, on such magical evenings: “[T]he flattery we were subjected to was very rich and heady. It, however, I hope, has not gone to our heads.” Earlier that day, Burton bought Elizabeth the jet plane that had brought them to Paris, for $960,000. “Elizabeth was not displeased,” he recorded.

Richard with his father, Richard “Dic” Jenkins, in the mining town of Pontrhydyfen, South Wales, 1953. [Raymond Kleboe/Getty Images]

A playful moment between Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor while filming
A Place in the Sun,
1950. Elizabeth treasured the troubled actor's friendship, though Clift was critical of Richard. [Peter Stackpole/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images]

The happy marriage here was Elizabeth's to impresario Mike Todd
(far right)
, though it would end tragically with Todd's death in a plane crash fourteen months later. Eddie Fisher
(left)
and his wife, Debbie Reynolds,
(second from left)
were best man and matron of honor. [Ronnie Luster/mptvimages.com]

Precursor to a scandal: the marriage of Elizabeth to Eddie Fisher, after Todd's death, in May of 1959. [© Bettmann/Corbis]

Richard and his Welsh wife, Sybil Burton, arriving in London in November of 1954. She tolerated his affairs; he vowed he would never leave her. [Central Press/Getty Images]