Richard Burton, the temperamental Welshman who never accustomed to being a superstar’s spouse Forty years ago, the world bid adieu to one of Hollywood’s great performers who was, at the same time, an ambivalent man who wanted to be an actor, but wound up becoming the most scrutinized star of his time One summer night, when the singer Eddie Fisher found out that Elizabeth Taylor had just returned to Hollywood after finishing up the colossal shooting of her film Cleopatra (1963) in Italy, he rushed to the nearest telephone to welcome his spouse home. But the person who picked up on the other end wasn’t her — instead, a masculine voice answered the call. Fisher recognized it instantly: it was that of Richard Burton , who was born in Pontrhydyfen, Wales in 1925 and would die in Switzerland on a day like today in 1984, some 40 years ago.
Burton had been Taylor’s co-star and Fisher had met him in person on a recent trip to Rome. What the singer couldn’t understand was what the actor was doing in the home he shared with Taylor, but Burton didn’t leave much room for doubt when posed the question: “What do you think I’m doing? I’m fucking your wife.” Rumors of the romance that Burton so coolly confirmed had inspired an avalanche of tabloid magazine covers since the very beginning of the Cleopatra shoot.
But who listened to such accounts when they were with a star of Taylor’s magnitude? She had been the media’s favorite prey since childhood and just a few mont.