Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

Continued from page 16 as soon as the ball is put on the ground between the two rows. The scrum half is the one who puts the ball down. Looking rather loosely at his predicament in Paddington Station, one might visualize Burton as the ball — although he is hardly what you might call leathercovered and oval. Nevertheless, one of the “Teddy Boys” handled Richard with all the blandishment accorded the ball. “Somebody started lunging out,” Burton said with increasing feeling. “I was caught off-balance and felt my feet giving way. Then a really small boy got me on the ground. . . .” I sensed it was paining Richard considerably as he re-lived those delicate moments. “Did they ‘spin’ or ‘hook’ you?” I broke in. I was borrowing rugby jargon to spear jocularity into the tensing atmosphere abuilding in our trans-Atlantic telephone cables. “Hook me?” Burton groaned. “They bloody well kicked me! I was damned helpless . . . lying on the snow unable to move . . . helpless, I tell you. . . . “They just kicked and kicked me . . . all over.” I sympathized with Richard. I told him it was outrageous and I let out a primed gasp when he remarked that the onlookers made no attempt to break up the assault. I said: “Why I think those blokes in the queues are just as much to blame as the ‘Teddy Boys’ for perpetrating an assault with intent to cause bodily harm (that’s how they sling it at Old Bailey).” Burton grunted. I couldn’t tell if that was a nod of agreement — or something he ate. “I just don’t know what to make of it,” he commented after a brief moment of silence. I am afraid I cannot fathom it ... I am at a loss for an explanation, really.” There was another silence. Shocking to Liz I asked Richard what he did next. “Why, I picked myself up off the ground, of course,” he replied wryly. “And I took stock of my injuries ... I found I had a cut over my right eye.” “Did you go to the hospital?” 1 asked. “No, it wasn’t that critical,” Burton answered with a sigh of relief. “I went to my hotel and called my doctor.” “Tell me,” I put in curiously, “did you get your cab?” “Yes, damn it, finally!” I then inquired about Elizabeth Taylor’s reaction to the sight of Burton’s blinker. “Oh, well,” replied Richard, “it was rather shocking to her. You know we’re making ‘The Very Important Persons’ toP gether at Elstree. My injury forces me out of production for several days — unless the director should choose to incor porate the flavor of a black eye into the script. But I hardly think he shall. . . .” I wanted to know what Liz did when she got a gander at the dusky peeper. “I don’t really recall,” Burton said with a chivalrous air. “But she was quite disturbed, as I remember it.” However, reports from London indicated Liz hit high “C” when she saw Burton after his run-in with the “Teddy Boys.” I also tried to reach Liz at the Dorchester. But it was as if she had gone to Tanganyika. None of her coterie of secretaries, nurses and flunkies could say when she might come to the phone. Nevertheless, with dedicated scribes like Douglas Marlborough of the newspaper The London Daily Mail on the job, the momentous words of Liz Taylor remarking on the blinker those little London blighters hung on poor Richard shall not go unrecorded. Mr. Marlborough intercepted Burton and Liz at the stately gates of Lord Dynevor’s London home as they were going in for a meeting of the new Welsh National Theatre. Ordinarily, Mr. Marlborough might have chronicled the couple’s appearance at Lord Dynevor’s with a paragraph or two which would have been buried somewhere back in the paper. It must be realized that Liz and Burton are no longer an “item” in the newspaper offices of Fleet Street, Holburn Circus and the Embankment. They’ve been together so long and so often that the press, as one irreverent wag was heard to comment, has come to regard them as much a fixture of British legend as, say, the King’s African Rifles. But when Liz and Burton showed and Mr. Marlborough spotted the black patch covering Richard’s eye, it prompted the newsman to make some discreet inquiries. Burton readily volunteered the story of his encounter with the “Teddy Boys.” A man of considerable curiosity and sizeable determination to cover news incisively, Mr. Marlborough couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ask what Liz thought of the shiner. Liz regarded the question plaintively for a brief while, drew a deep breath finally, and said: “On my Nelly, I've never seen a black eye like that. Poor boy.” Then Liz and Richard disappeared into Lord Dynevor’s place at 76 Eaton Square. Oh, yes. I must report I was unable to obtain any remarks from Richard’s wife, Sybil Burton. Sybil hadn’t yet seen her husband’s eye. There also was some speculation as to whether she would. Black eyes heal quickly, as a matter of medical fact. If past recent history holds any lessons for us, the odds portend very little likelihood that Mrs. Burton will see her husband before the discoloration disappears. Feeling no pain Burton, you see, might be too busy staying at Liz’ side while she’s recovering from that “manipulated operation.” That’s what the doctors at London Clinic called it. It might sound like a serious bit of surgery, but it wasn’t. The fragile beauty who has experienced far greater crises in hospitals during her life, seemed to enjoy this hospitalization. “The trouble began,” Burton said, “on the set of ‘Very Important Persons.’ Seems Liz’ knee either twisted or turned somehow and she suffered a ‘locked cartilage.’ It was so painful she could barely walk.” The studio called the hospital at once and a room was prepared for the beauty who appears to walk hand in hand with illness. She was driven to London Clinic in a studio limousine. Before Liz entered the clinic, she posed jauntily for a picture. She came well prepared for the photographer in a light suede sheeplined jacket, fawn colored riding pants, highheeled, calf-length black boots with red borders at the tops. Dr. Robert Young, an orthopedic surgeon, and two assistants then took over. Liz was wheeled to surgery, administered a general anesthetic, and her knee then was “manipulated” by the doctors back to its normal position. “It was over in forty-five minutes,” Burton went on. “When Liz came to in her room, she felt no pain. Her knee was in a plaster splint which the hospital said would have to remain on for a few days.” Liz may have recalled with somewhat of a shudder her last stay in London Clinic in the early part of 1961, when she came down with pneumonia and other respiratory complications. Her life then had hung precariously in the balance — almost by a hair. Doctors performed a tracheotomy to help her breathe — and that saved her life. It was much different now. Said Burton, “Liz was alert and smiling.” Liz broke into a grin as her eyes focused on the people in her room — Burton, the doctors and nurses. And there was champagne to celebrate her recovery. When Richard toasted Liz for rallying so magnificently after her accident, little did they know that a fortnight later there would be bad news. The knee apparently did not respond completely, and Liz had to make plans to re-enter the clinic for major surgery to remove the troublesome cartilage. The operation would be simple, but the results could be tricky. No one would predict the outcome. But as they drank champagne, then, these thoughts had not entered their minds. Liz smiled as she raised her glass to Richard, toasting him for having been so lucky to come out of his beating with only a cut and blackened eye. When you think of it, Richard Burton is a fortunate fellow. “Do you know,” he told me, “that one of those fellows even went so far as to put his bloody boot in my eye! Luckily, it wasn’t a winkleticker.” “Uh?” I asked. “What, my dear fellow, you don’t know what a winkleticker is?” Now I know. A winkleticker is the currently popular men’s shoe with the exaggerated long pointed toe. No story about Richard Burton and Liz Taylor is complete without some mention of Eddie Fisher. From Hollywood, where he was keeping a singing engagement, word came that Eddie had heard about Burton’s unfortunate experience. It was reliably reported he had no comment— except that he was heard to mutter: “Mmmmm. . . .” — George Carpozi, Jr.