Liz and Dick

FIVE

A close presence in Burton’s life was his brother, Ifor Jenkins, 20 years his senior. While Ifor works directly for Burton, he is also a surrogate father of sorts as well, and someone who deeply cares for Burton, and later, Taylor as well. To this day, mystery surrounds what happened to Ifor Jenkins the night of his accident, one that left him paralyzed and never able to walk again. In Monger’s script, Burton and Ifor travel to Céligny, Switzerland, in order to open up the house for the family to celebrate Christmas (Burton, Taylor, and their kids have been living on an enormous yacht at this point). At a local bar, the two brothers drink heavily and engage in a bitter argument. Ifor ends up traveling to the house on his own and falls down the basement stairs, breaking his neck. Burton, feeling guilty, is heartbroken by Ifor’s accident and begins drinking even more heavily.

Other accounts of the accident offer differing variations on Ifor’s fall. In Michael Munn’s biography, Richard Burton: Prince of Players, Burton confidante Brook “Brookie” Williams recounted that the two brothers were in Switzerland to attend the funeral of their Céligny estate gardener, André Besançon, who had committed suicide. “Ifor decided he’d go and open the house,” Williams told Munn. “But he was very drunk and he caught his foot in a grille. He tripped and fell against a window ledge and broke his neck. For the rest of his life he was confined to a wheelchair, and for the rest of his life Rich felt it was somehow his fault.”

A controversial December 2011 Welsh film, Burton: Y Gyfrinach (The Secret), meanwhile, accused Burton (Richard Harrington) of paralyzing Ifor (Dafydd Hywel) by throwing him to the floor after an epic drinking bout. “The film attempts to recreate the lost hours and get to the truth behind the secret,” the film’s director, Dylan Richards, told Wales Online. “It attempts to provide answers but it also raises more questions. We can only imagine what happened between the brothers that day.”

SIX

A drunk Burton throws a radio overboard when Taylor and her guests refuse to turn down the music as he reads a script for Bluebeard. When the two begin a nasty fight, Burton accuses Taylor of being a “witch” and murderously chases her around their yacht, threatening to drown or kill her. Liz hides in a closet and then locks Burton in a cabin until he sobers up. In portraying Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’s George and Martha, the acrimony in their own marriage came to the fore. At one point, Taylor throws a bottle of alcohol at Burton in a hotel room, narrowly missing him, which recalls a scene from the film. On another occasion, Burton expressed jealousy over the 18-year-old Italian photographer whom Taylor invited to stay on their boat. When Burton says that Taylor is fat (“You’d all but flatten him”), she threatens to kill him and punches him in the chest (“Feel my fat pudgy hands now!”). She then demands a big ring from Burton … to make her hands appear smaller.

SEVEN

Richard drunkenly flaunts his relationship with Nathalie Delon on the set of Bluebeard, leading Liz to engage in a fling with Aristotle Onassis, which makes the front page of the papers. They file for divorce, only to remarry in Botswana and then divorce again a year later. The Onassis connection grows deeper still: in the script, Burton pays $1,050,000 for a 69-carat pear-shaped diamond for Taylor, beating out bidder Aristotle Onassis at an auction.

EIGHT

Through out the script, Monger makes use of a narrative framework device he refers to as the “ethereal sound stage,” first introduced on Page 2. It’s here that a perpetually young Taylor and Burton (each said to be at their “peak”) work out their issues, share stories, argue, and make up… as well as speak directly to the audience, breaking the fourth wall. It’s odd and a little creepy, an empty space that’s filled with “ethereal light,” while Burton and Taylor sit in director’s chairs. It’s quite disconcerting to interpret this “not ‘real’” space as something approximating either heaven or an Inside the Actor’s Studio-themed purgatory. Or, perhaps even a private psychic space within Burton’s own mind. The last time the sound stage is seen is right before Burton’s death, as he tells Taylor, “I suddenly feel so very tired, would you mind if I lie down a moment.” Glancing at the Everyman’s Library books that Taylor had given him years before, he dies alone in his bedroom, his body discovered by his wife, Sally Hay.