Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings by Craig Brown Page A
Authors: Craig Brown
Tags: Humor, General, History, Biography & Autobiography, Cultural Heritage, Form, Rich & Famous, Anecdotes & Quotations
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Something you keep in the front room for Sundays only. Marred royalty. The awful majesty that doth hedge around a king is notably lacking in awfulness. Charming and feckless.’
Elizabeth notes that she and Richard are the only two people without titles in the entire room. She is offended that she has not been placed next to the Duke, and Richard is furious that he has not been placed next to the Duchess. Instead, he is between another Duchess and a Countess, both ‘hard-faced and youngish’.
One of them tells him that she saw him in Hamlet , and asks how he could possibly remember all those lines. Burton says that he doesn’t bother, that he improvises, that Shakespeare is lousy, that Hamlet’s character is so revolting that one could only say some of his lines when drunk. ‘I mean, the frantic self-pity of “How all occasions do inform against me, and spur my dull revenge”. You have to be sloshed to get around that. At least I have to be.’
He thinks he may have shocked her. Another lady, ‘not a day under seventy, whose face had been lifted so often that it was on top of her head’, asks him if it is true that all actors are queer. Yes, he replies, and that’s why he married Elizabeth, because she was queer too, but they have an arrangement.
‘What do you do?’
‘Well, she lives in one suite, and I in another, and we make love by telephone.’
After dinner, Taylor looks on in horror as Burton approaches the Duchess of Windsor and says, ‘You are without any question, the most vulgar woman I’ve ever met.’ Before long, he has picked up the seventy-two-year-old Duchess and is swinging her around ‘like a dancing singing dervish’. The room falls silent. Watching the event with the Duke, Taylor is terrified that Burton will drop her or fall down and kill her. Meanwhile, Burton, who has long suspected that his lifestyle is a betrayal of his origins, is overcome with self-pity and starts pining for the Welsh valleys. ‘Christ! I will arise and go now and go home to Welsh miners who understand drink and the idiocies that it arouses ... I shall die of drink and make-up.’
Arriving back at the Plaza Athénée, Taylor is furious, and locks Burton in the spare bedroom. He tries to kick the door down, ‘and nearly succeeded which meant that I spent some time on my hands and knees this morning picking up the battered plaster in the hope that the waiters wouldn’t notice that the hotel had nearly lost a door in the middle of the night’.
In the morning, Taylor berates him for his misbehaviour, complaining that they’ll never be invited again. ‘Thank God,’ he replies, adding, ‘Rarely have I been so stupendously bored.’
That weekend, he reluctantly agrees to accompany Taylor to a grand fancy-dress party at the Rothschilds’ château in the country. Also at the party is Cecil Beaton, who spots them across the room. ‘I have always loathed the Burtons for their vulgarity, commonness and crass bad taste,’ he writes in his diary the next day. ‘She combining the worst of US and English taste, he as butch and coarse as only a Welshman can be.’
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
UNNERVES
JAMES DEAN
Marfa, Texas
June 6th 1955
She is the former child star, now Queen of Hollywood. He is the up-and-coming method actor, surly and unpredictable. Though Elizabeth Taylor is a year younger than James Dean, she belongs to an earlier generation of old-fashioned, glamorous, self-confident, untouchable stars, whereas he heralds a new generation: scruffy, grunting, brooding, callow. They are to act together in Giant , Elizabeth Taylor as the wife of a Texas cattle baron, James Dean as the troublesome ranch-hand who strikes oil.
They are introduced a few days before filming begins. To everyone’s surprise, he charms her, and takes her for a ride in his brand-new Porsche. Taylor ends the day convinced that he is a perfect gentleman, and that others have tarred him with the wrong brush.
The following day, Taylor,
Elizabeth notes that she and Richard are the only two people without titles in the entire room. She is offended that she has not been placed next to the Duke, and Richard is furious that he has not been placed next to the Duchess. Instead, he is between another Duchess and a Countess, both ‘hard-faced and youngish’.
One of them tells him that she saw him in Hamlet , and asks how he could possibly remember all those lines. Burton says that he doesn’t bother, that he improvises, that Shakespeare is lousy, that Hamlet’s character is so revolting that one could only say some of his lines when drunk. ‘I mean, the frantic self-pity of “How all occasions do inform against me, and spur my dull revenge”. You have to be sloshed to get around that. At least I have to be.’
He thinks he may have shocked her. Another lady, ‘not a day under seventy, whose face had been lifted so often that it was on top of her head’, asks him if it is true that all actors are queer. Yes, he replies, and that’s why he married Elizabeth, because she was queer too, but they have an arrangement.
‘What do you do?’
‘Well, she lives in one suite, and I in another, and we make love by telephone.’
After dinner, Taylor looks on in horror as Burton approaches the Duchess of Windsor and says, ‘You are without any question, the most vulgar woman I’ve ever met.’ Before long, he has picked up the seventy-two-year-old Duchess and is swinging her around ‘like a dancing singing dervish’. The room falls silent. Watching the event with the Duke, Taylor is terrified that Burton will drop her or fall down and kill her. Meanwhile, Burton, who has long suspected that his lifestyle is a betrayal of his origins, is overcome with self-pity and starts pining for the Welsh valleys. ‘Christ! I will arise and go now and go home to Welsh miners who understand drink and the idiocies that it arouses ... I shall die of drink and make-up.’
Arriving back at the Plaza Athénée, Taylor is furious, and locks Burton in the spare bedroom. He tries to kick the door down, ‘and nearly succeeded which meant that I spent some time on my hands and knees this morning picking up the battered plaster in the hope that the waiters wouldn’t notice that the hotel had nearly lost a door in the middle of the night’.
In the morning, Taylor berates him for his misbehaviour, complaining that they’ll never be invited again. ‘Thank God,’ he replies, adding, ‘Rarely have I been so stupendously bored.’
That weekend, he reluctantly agrees to accompany Taylor to a grand fancy-dress party at the Rothschilds’ château in the country. Also at the party is Cecil Beaton, who spots them across the room. ‘I have always loathed the Burtons for their vulgarity, commonness and crass bad taste,’ he writes in his diary the next day. ‘She combining the worst of US and English taste, he as butch and coarse as only a Welshman can be.’
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
UNNERVES
JAMES DEAN
Marfa, Texas
June 6th 1955
She is the former child star, now Queen of Hollywood. He is the up-and-coming method actor, surly and unpredictable. Though Elizabeth Taylor is a year younger than James Dean, she belongs to an earlier generation of old-fashioned, glamorous, self-confident, untouchable stars, whereas he heralds a new generation: scruffy, grunting, brooding, callow. They are to act together in Giant , Elizabeth Taylor as the wife of a Texas cattle baron, James Dean as the troublesome ranch-hand who strikes oil.
They are introduced a few days before filming begins. To everyone’s surprise, he charms her, and takes her for a ride in his brand-new Porsche. Taylor ends the day convinced that he is a perfect gentleman, and that others have tarred him with the wrong brush.
The following day, Taylor,
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