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enterprising Fourth Estaters hooked the defenseless Sybil with a question that seemed to literally pop her eyes.
“Are you going to date Eddie Fisher while you’re in America, Mrs. Burton?" the young reporter asked.
Sybil did not answer with words — she only smiled a silent, mirthless smile.
Her attorney finally led Sybil, her children, and the nurse to a waiting stationwagon as newsmen and photographers followed in futile pursuit.
Frosch led the hounds of the press oft the trail by throwing them a phony lead.
“Mrs. Burton is going to visit Philip Burton, Richard Burton’s father, for the Easter holidays,” the lawyer said.
Of course, Frosch should have known better. For one thing, Philip Burton is not Richard’s father. As a matter of historical fact. Richard was horn in the coal country of Pontrhydhfen. Wales, as Richard Walter Jenkins, son of a miner named Jenkins who is still living.
Philip Burton is a drama coach who providentially taught Richard to speak English properly after he shed his native Welsh dialect. Out of gratitude to him. Richard took Burton’s name when he went on the stage in London.
The upshot of the lawyer’s erroneous direction was the uncorking of an avalanche of newsmen and news photographers upon Burton’s apartment house at 33 West 67th Street in Manhattan.
The reporters and photographers found comfortable seats on two wide wood benches that flanked the entrance of the classic old apartment house. It was easy to watch the street from a sitting position. As soon as Sybil and/or Philip Burton and the two little Burton girls walked in. they would be snapped up.
The lobby also offered another advantage— the door to Burton’s one and a halfroom apartment could be seen from the benches. The Burtons couldn’t sneak by. The lobby was an airtight trap.
The hours dragged by without Sybil’s arrival, but newsmen bided their time by swapping stories about vigils for other stories. Finally the pessimists began saying that Sybil would never show up, that Burton’s small apartment would not be a likely place for his best friend’s wife and their two small children to stay the night.
They were saying it was much too late for the children to be up. And they were almost certain now that she was staying someplace else, and was already asleep.
Then suddenly, "to break the monotony, a couple of reporters ambled out to the street for a short stroll in the exhilarating spring night — and all at once spotted Sybil in a parked car in front of the house, talking to a young man!
At least, she looked a lot like Sybil. . . .
The reporters walked back to the lobby
at a leisurely gait. They didn’t want to alarm Sybil with a mad fifteen-yard dash that would scare her off. And, besides, it was their obligation to alert all the other waiting reporters.
And how they did!
Sybil got out of the car and walked to the entrance, her blonde hair glistening brilliantly in the glow of the overhead street light. Reporters and photograhers surged toward her.
Sybil halted in terror. Her mouth was agape and primed for a scream, when a sharp-eyed photographer stammered :
“Why . . . why . . . y-y-ou are n-n-ot S-s-s-ybil!”
“So, who said I was?” the blonde sniffed hotly, strolling in a huff past the coterie of disappointed newsmen and disappearing inside the elevator.
As they resumed their vigil, somewhere else in that vast wonderland of glass and concrete skyscrapers and sprawling humanity which is the fabled Isle of Manhattan, this reporter was with the real Sybil at her hotel, getting the story of how she was forced to give up Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor.
And at that very moment, 3000 miles away in London’s posh Dorchester Hotel. Mrs. Burton’s husband and Mr. Fisher’s wife were probably once again caught up in that little world of their own which seems to render them oblivious of all problems.
A very little world, indeed, if you considered the periphery of their adjoining suites. . . . — George Carpozi, Jr.