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##### August 6, 1984 OBITUARY ## Richard Burton, 58, is Dead; Rakish Stage and Screen Star ##### By MAUREEN DOWD Richard Burton, a Welsh coal miner's son whose celebrity was defined as much by his rakish personal life as his remarkable acting skills, died of a cerebral hemorrhage yesterday in Switzerland. He was 58 years old. His family said the British actor, staying at his villa in the village of Celigny outside Geneva, complained of feeling ill in the morning. He died late in the afternoon at a Geneva hospital. His wife, Sally Hay, was with him when he died. The death stunned the actor's family and friends, who reported that he had been looking tan and healthy and feeling sanguine about his busy work schedule. ''It was very sudden,'' said Mr. Burton's brother, Graham Jenkins, in London. ''He has been in tremendous form recently.'' One of Britain's greatest Shakespearean stage actors by the age of 27, Mr. Burton offered rugged good looks, a magnetic stage presence and an incomparable voice, as John McPhee once wrote in Time magazine, ''with a tympanic resonance so rich and overpowering that it could give an air of verse to a recipe for stewed hare.'' Even Mr. Burton himself was wont to refer to ''the Burton voice.'' He was remembered by friends as ''a monstrous perfectionist'' and a ''troubled spirit.'' Sir John Gielgud said that Mr. Burton should have been in the same rank as Laurence Olivier, ''but he was very wild and had a scandal around him all the time and I think in theater circles that would not be approved of.'' It was a note that was often struck in the reactions to Mr. Burton's death, and it was an albatross he had carried with him for two decades: his lost promise, or as was said about Hamlet, one of his most famous roles, ''what a falling-off was there.'' His career was dazzlingly erratic. He was the most nominated actor who never won an Oscar and the most famous British actor who was never knighted. He made more than 40 movies, ranging from such classics as ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,'' ''The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,'' and ''Becket'' to multimillion-dollar blockbusters like ''Cleopatra'' to a string of forgotten failures. He was nominated for seven Academy Awards. On Broadway, his performances in ''Hamlet'' and ''Camelot'' - each twice - and his ''Equus'' were greeted enthusiastically by critics. He was last seen on Broadway starring with Elizabeth Taylor in ''Private Lives,'' a play that many critics found too close to their own stormy romance for comfort. Miss Taylor, who was married to Mr. Burton twice and worked often with him in films and plays, was told the news in California, where she was staying with their adopted daughter, Maria Burton, age 23. ''They are extremely, extremely upset,'' said Miss Taylor's spokeswoman, Chen Sam, weeping. Sir John Gielgud, who last worked with Mr. Burton two years ago on the film ''Wagner,'' called him ''a born actor.'' ''He was serious, charming, with tremendous skill,'' he said. ''I feel nothing but sadness. He chose a rather mad way of throwing away his theater career but obviously he became very famous and a world figure through being a film star. He was awfully good to people and generous.'' Many in his profession felt that his tragedy was that he was one of the finest young actors of his generation who squandered his energy on second-rate films, five marriages and legendary bouts with the bottle. He boasted, earlier in his career, about being able to drink half-gallons of cognac or 100 proof vodka during stage performances, and he was renowned as a womanizer. ''He has a terrific way with women,'' Fredric March once said. ''I don't think he has missed more than half a dozen.'' Known for Humor and Wit A combination of peasant and poet, he was known for his brilliant conversation, punctuated with Shakespeare, bawdy humor and self-deprecating wit. ''If I had a chance for another life,'' he once said, ''I would certainly choose a better complexion.'' When he reached the age of 50, after a five-year career slump, he called his own life the best role he had ever played: ''I rather like my reputation, actually, that of a spoiled genuis from the Welsh gutter, a drunk, a womanizer; it's rather an attractive image.'' In an interview two years ago, Mr. Burton said he did not regret the roller- coaster route he had taken. ''I can only say with Edith Piaf, 'Je ne regrette rien.' '' he said. He said then he thought he was coming out of a slump. ''You reach the top of the heap, but it's a circle, and you slip on the down side; maybe for years. You get scared.'' Although he liked to say he was in semi-retirement, his work schedule was heavy. Mr. Burton recently played a small role as a rich congressman alongside his 26-year-old daughter Kate in the CBS television series ''Ellis Island.'' He was to go to Europe soon to work on a sequel to ''The Wild Geese,'' a film about mercenary soldiers, and then to India to star in a new film version of Graham Greene's Vietnam War novel, ''The Quiet American.'' 'A Fine Actor' Lord Olivier, one of Mr. Burton's idols who was also cast in ''The Wild Geese II,'' said from his home in Sussex: ''Richard was a very fine actor and his early death is a great tragedy to the theater world, the film world and the public.'' Mr. Burton was born Richard Jenkins on Nov. 10, 1925, the 12th of 13 children of a hard-drinking but charming coal miner in the village of Pontrhydfen, South Wales, whose chief possessions were a No. 6 shovel and a gift for words. His mother died when he was 2 years old, and the family borrowed $:10 pounds to pay for the funeral. A plump, roughshod primitive who spoke no English up to the age of 10, Mr. Burton was educated under the tutorship of a schoolmaster named Philip Burton. Mr. Burton became his guardian and young Richard took his name. Philip Burton taught the boy to speak, to hold a knife and fork and to study the classics. Philip Burton also spotted an advertisement for Welsh-speaking youngsters for an Emlyn Williams play, ''The Druid's Rest,'' and Richard won the role in which he made his London debut at age 18. ''In a wretched part, Richard Burton showed exceptional ability,'' wrote the weekly New Statesman, in a line that presaged later criticism. Scholarship to Oxford He won a scholarship to Oxford University, where he learned literature and how to drink a sconce of beer in 10 seconds. He joined the Royal Air Force and served as a wartime navigator. After his discharge in 1947, he quickly appeared in three plays and in his first motion picture as a Welsh shepherd boy in ''The Last Days of Dolwyn.'' In 1949, he first attracted serious attention from British critics who praised his performance in Christopher Fry's verse play, ''The Lady's Not for Burning.'' New York got its first look at Mr. Burton in that play, and the critics were beguiled. In 1949, Mr. Burton married Sybil Williams, a Welsh actress with whom he had two daughters with Shakespearean names, Kate and Jessica. In Hollywood, he starred with Olivia de Havilland in ''My Cousin Rachel'' and he was one of the stars in the first Cinemascope production, ''The Robe.'' Joined the Old Vic Back in England he joined the Old Vic Company. His ''Hamlet'' was considered second only to Sir John Gielgud's. He appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company in a notable series of roles. He repeated his ''Hamlet'' on Broadway and co-starred with Helen Hayes in ''Time Remembered.'' He appeared in the British film ''Look Back in Anger.'' But it was the 1960 production of ''Camelot'' that was the turning point of Mr. Burton's life. His performance as the king impressed 20th Century- Fox, which signed him for the movie ''Cleopatra'' opposite Miss Taylor. Soon after his first movie love scene with the glamorous actress, who was then married to the singer Eddie Fisher, rumors spread that the couple were not acting. Liz and Dick, as Hollywood's most famous on-again, off-again couple became known in sensational international headlines, returned to London in December 1962 to find a throng waiting at Victoria Station. No one had been there to see Mr. Burton off. But now the great actor had become a great celebrity, and Mr. Burton, who had been getting $150,000 a film, ascended to the million-dollar class enjoyed by Miss Taylor. Lord Olivier had once warned him: ''Make up your mind. Do you wish to be a household word or a great actor?'' Later, as his stage career atrophied, it seemed that Mr. Burton had decided in favor of being a household word. ''I'm so weak at saying no,'' he once said of a film career that careened between genius and junk, from ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf'' to ''Exorcist II.'' But he often mocked his image. Asked why he refused to see ''Cleopatra,'' he replied, ''Well, I don't want to kill myself.'' 'Sinatra of Shakespeare' Miss Taylor dubbed him ''the Frank Sinatra of Shakespeare.'' In April 1963, his wife, Sybil, got a divorce, and so did Miss Taylor. Mr. Burton and Miss Taylor were married on March 15, 1964, and the shock of their liaison became so epic that the chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee asked the State Department to revoke Mr. Burton's visa because he was ''detrimental to the morals of the youth of our nation.'' The couple lived extravagantly. They bought a yacht for $500,000. Mr. Burton bought his wife a 33-carat Krupp diamond for $305,000, the $1 million, 69-carat Cartier diamond, and the Peregrina Pearl that King Philip of Spain gave Henry VIII's daughter Mary Tudor in 1554. But the marriage was as tempestuous as it was public, scarred by Mr. Burton's drinking and womanizing, and it ended in 1974. But soon it was on again. They were married for the second time in Botswana Oct. 10, 1975, but divorced again in July 1976. He said he felt eternally bound to Miss Taylor. ''I might run from her for a thousand years and she is still my baby child,'' he said. ''Our love is so furious we burn each other out.'' The pair teamed for nearly a dozen films between 1962 and 1972, most memorably in 1966 in ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,'' the scalding Edward Albee drama that earned Oscar nominations for both as a boozing, brawling American couple. Miss Taylor won, but Mr. Burton lost. The Burtons then teamed up for another bawdy brawl in Shakespeare's ''Taming of the Shrew'' in 1967. Then came five movies that failed to attract the public, concluding with ''Hammersmith Is Out.'' Along the way, Mr. Burton nurtured a self-destructive streak that manifested itself in bouts of prolonged drinking. By 1981, when his career had revived with the film ''Equus'' and a triumphant stage revival of ''Camelot,'' he stopped drinking for a time, calling his affliction ''as bad as cancer.'' He was encouraged by Suzy Hunt, a former model whom he married in 1976. ''The learned doctors told me if I continued to booze I should be prepared to welcome the end,'' he said. In July 1980, Frank Rich, drama critic of The New York Times, confirmed that the Burton magic was still there when he opened in the revival of ''Camelot.'' ''The actor doesn't merely command the stage,'' Mr. Rich wrote, ''he seems to own it by divine right.'' But during another performance of ''Camelot'' in New York, in acute pain from his spinal problems, Mr. Burton took drugs that made him appear drunk on stage and he had to be replaced by an understudy. In Los Angeles, he dropped out of the successful play and underwent surgery on the vertebrae in his neck. On Broadway in 'Private Lives' He returned to Broadway in the spring of 1983 to costar in a revival of No"el Coward's ''Private Lives.'' During the run of this play, quashing rumors that his romance with Miss Taylor was going to have a third act, Mr. Burton married for the fifth time, taking Sally Hay as his bride. Despite his stiff gait from his injuries, Mr. Burton received better reviews than Miss Taylor, but both were castigated by the critics for titillating the public with their willingness to blur the line between the amours of the former Burtons and the amours of Coward's Elyot and Amanda. In 1982, he seized an opportunity to rehabilitate his film career with the starring role in ''Wagner,'' a film about the great composer that starred all three of his heroes: Sir Ralph Richardson, Sir John and Lord Olivier. In his most recent interview, in London in June, where he was finishing up a British production of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four,'' Mr. Burton spoke with dignity, and a touch of Weltschmerz: ''I don't have tremendous physical vitality since I had a neck operation, and I'm more aware than I used to be of the tedium of acting.'' Mr. Burton is survived by his wife, Sally, and three daughters, Kate, Jessica, and Maria.
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