Synopsis
"Believe me, you will never have read anything quite like this”
The Spectator—London
“With Richard Burton, I was living my own fabulous and passionate fantasy. Everyone bought tickets to watch Liz and Dick, and we gave them what they wanted.”—Elizabeth Taylor
“In all honesty, had he turned his considerable charms on me early in rehearsals, I do not know what my reaction would have been. He was that attractive.”—Julie Andrews
“If there were twelve elephants on a stage, you would look at Rich.”—Richard Harris
“They say best men are molded out of faults. And, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad.”—William Shakespeare
“I came to dread the moment before dawn when Richard had to dress and go back to his wife.”—Claire Bloom
In 1951, at the age of 26, an unknown British actor was signed by Richard Zanuck of 20th Century Fox on a three film deal worth $250,000. Very quickly, Richard Burton became Fox’s biggest star, culminating in the 1953 blockbuster The Robe, where he out acted and outshone Victor Mature. Zanuck doubled his salary to $500,000 and Burton never looked back, eventually starring in the most expensive film ever made at the time, Cleopatra, and then marrying the world’s biggest female star of the time, Elizabeth Taylor. Three times he was the toast of New York on the Broadway stage with performances in Camelot, Hamlet, and Equus, even today never bested for the box office takings or sheer strength of performance.
This is the story of Richard Burton, a sweeping saga spanning 1898 to 1984, a story more exciting than any novel about the most charismatic actor that ever walked the stage. Stretching from the coal mines of South Wales to the film sets of Hollywood, this far reaching 800-page biography reflects the entire life of one of the greatest Anglo-Americans of our time. In the process, he became as rich as Croesus; the first actor to be paid a million dollars a film, he outbid even Aristotle Onassis to buy the world’s greatest diamonds.
He loved and lost some of the world’s most beautiful women, including Elizabeth Taylor, Raquel Welch, Susan Stasberg and Claire Bloom. Reputedly bedding over 2,000 women, he was a lothario on a scale only equaled since by Warren Beatty. The book also reflects on his fatal flaws and how he spent almost every day of his adult life intoxicated with alcohol. He was the last of the hell raisers, a pack of actors that included Lee Marvin, Peter O’Toole, Oliver Reed and Richard Harris.
Supplemented by 64 pages of stunning photographs, many of which are published here for the first time.
About the Author
Tom Rubython is best known as the author of Life of Senna, the definitive biography of Brazilian race driver Ayrton Senna. Life of Senna has become the biggest-selling third party biography of a racing driver, with 100,000 copies sold. Six years after its publication, it still sells over 8,000 copies a year. Before beginning as a biographer, Rubython was well known in the world of magazine publishing, spanning the worlds of sport and business. Aside from his work in Formula One, he has been a specialist business writer for thirty years. In business, he is the former editor of BusinessAge, EuroBusiness and Spectator Business. In sport, he has edited F1 Magazine, BusinessF1 and SportsPro. Rubython now specialises in non-fiction storytelling. He is passionate and methodical about the process of writing and researching the definitive biography. Starting out with a determination to tell the full story of a person’s life, he emphasises what is important and de-emphasises what is not; the crucial tools of any biographer.
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