Press
Burton Tayloring
Bill Grundy
I have always liked the Fleet Street story of the famous wine writer who was the world's biggest bore. Like the Ancient Mariner he would stop one of three (the other two, being wiser, would make their excuses and leave) and would hold him with his skinny hand and glittering eye, and proceed to bore the pants off him. On one such occasion, after going on for an hour or so, with his pathetic victim crouched 'spinelessly in a corner, the wine man looked at his watch and stood up. "I must go," he announced, "I'm off to Bordeaux." Glassy-eyed, his victim stared at him, licked his dry lips, and spoke for the first time. "Who?" he asked weakly, "is Doe?" know the feeling. It comes over me everytime I hear certain things mentioned. Chief among them are the names of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. I do not mind their incredible vulgarity, their obscene wealth, their appalling ostentation. I do not care that Elizabeth Taylor, far from resembling a sex goddess, reminds me, with her dumpy little body, of Miss Hylda Baker. I do not care that, far from being handsome, Mr Burton has a complexion that makes Lee Marvin look like an advertisement kr Pears Soap. But I do mind their habit of living their life in public. I do not want to hear of their latest bloody row or treacly reconciliation. I want them to go away and leave me in peace. On reflection, I realise that I am being unfair to the unhappy couple. What I should be asking is why on earth do newspapers keep boring me with the Burtons? Don't they realise that everybody else is bored with them too?
Friday was the day when the Portuguese coup was seen to have succeeded. But what was the front page of the Mirror doing that day? Portugal occupied columns one and two. Fully two thirds of the Mirror's front page bore the predictable headline 'Divorce for Liz and Burton.' (If Liz, why not Dick, I wonc!.er?) There was a picture of the two of them cropped in such an unfortunate manner that it looked as if La Taylor had been served Salome fashion, with Burton's head on a platter. As well as knocking the world off the front page, the Mirror devoted all of page three to the odious pair. Donald Zec, "the man who knows them," served up another of his sub-acid accounts of show business behaviour. The style was fitting; "so it seems that last year's dress rehearsal of a broken marriage, followed by a short interval of reconciliation, is to have its final curtain after all. But how on earth do you write RIP on a marriage like the Burtons's and put so bland an inscription 'died of irreconcilable differences' on the tombstone: To misquote some eloquent genius of long ago — theirs was a magnificently bizarre marriage, as marriages go, and as marriages go, it went." (Saki on cooks, Mr Zec, just in case you haven't got the dictionary of quotations handy).
The Sun was just as bad. 'Liz and Burton to divorce' was splashed all over the front page, with a touching picture of the pair of them kissing as warily as though they were afraid of catching something from each other. Portugal was confined to about five column inches at the bottom of the page, and a bit of background on page four. The Express led with Portugal but still thought the Burtons front page material. And they, too, used the mysterious formula 'Burton and Liz.' The Mail confined them to page three — most of it — but with the inevitable headline 'It's all over this time say'—yes you've guessed it — 'Liz and Burton.' AntheaDisney's article was worth reading if only for the final paragraph which I have not been able to make head or tail of despite concentrating so hard that I very nearly stopped breathing. And the question Richard Burton asked just days before he signed into the Santa Monica Hospital seems particularly apt; 'I think we should abandon life. We have this abject attitude about it anyway, so why not?'" . . Yes, or no, as the case may be. Even the sedate Telegraph thought the boring pair were worth eight or nine column inches, plus a picture, although they did imply that perhaps some of us have had enough of the couple in the phrase "one of the theatrical world's most on again, off again marriages." The Guardian, with a most commendable reserve, gave the ghastly duo just one column inch and no picture. Which seems to me just about what the whole tedious affair was Worth.
Why do newspapers go on with stories like that for so long? I have heard newsmen groan before now and say things like "Not Ulster again. I can't stand it. I'm bored with the bloody story." Why can't they say the same about the Burtons? What stops them from noticing that the story ran out of legs a long time ago.
I have a theory that may explain it. It is that newspaper offices are full of elderly gentlemen who have never grown up. They experience an illicit thrill when they read about the sexual jinks of all those naughty actors and actresses. They suffer huge pangs of envy about the way these people live on a scale that doesn't happen much in Surbiton. They are still impressed by film actors, or film stars as they prefer to call them. I shouldn't be surprised if they get out their dirty raincoats at the mere mention of even a word like 'liberty bodice.' And they are getting on my nerves — all right, Liz and Burton then are going to be divorced. Good. Having reported that fact, will you now belt up?
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