RICHARD BURTON: Very Close Up

by John & Fergus Cashin Cottrell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 1972

A generous and generously inclined, perhaps it could not be otherwise, biography of the boy who was once called Richie Jenkins -- the 12th of 13 children in a depressed Welsh mining village who now claims to outspend Onassis. The Jenkins that was became the ward of his teacher Burton who recognized his talent however ungovernable his temperament and before long he went to work with Emlyn Williams, went up to Oxford, ""an absolute genius,"" did a three-year stint in the RAF, indulged his liking for rugby, beer, women and poetry. Burton has also been known to down 47 whiskies but prodigality aside, one cannot escape his deserved eminence -- at 25 Kenneth Tynan (the authors draw on most of the available criticism) said ""he commands repose and can make silence garrulous."" (He nonetheless gored him in The Tempest -- ""It's the first time I've ever seen Ferdinand played by the bull."") He is both a man and an actor of tremendous physical presence with a fine mind and fine literary taste. Personal material is here too of his first successful-until marriage to Sybil, his second to the ""little shrew"" he tamed and kept that way. When Elizabeth enters -- the authors as well as Burton lose their heads -- she's ""the perfect cocktail of beauty and fire, of tenderness and passion"" -- but perhaps it is difficult to write about the Burtons without effulgence. Particularly when she buys him 37 suits for $15,000 and he buys her that 69 carat diamond. As someone said, ""The world is literally a first act for Richard Burton"" and obviously he is a long way from that final curtain. The book will surely bask in all this directly reflected glory.

Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Prentice-Hall

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION