Richard Burton - Early Acting Career

Early Acting Career

In the 1940s and early 1950s Burton worked on stage and in cinema in the United Kingdom. Before his war service with the Royal Air Force, he starred as Professor Higgins in a YMCA production of Pygmalion. He earned his first professional acting fees doing radio parts for the BBC. He had made his professional acting debut in Liverpool and London, appearing in Druid's Rest, a play by Emlyn Williams (who also became a guru), but his career was interrupted by conscription in 1944. Early on as an actor, he developed the habit of toting around a book-bag filled with novels, dictionaries, a complete Shakespeare, and books of quotations, history, and biography, and enjoyed solving crossword puzzles. Burton could, given any line from Shakespeare's works, recite from memory the next several minutes of lines. His Welsh love of language was paramount, as he famously stated years later, with a tearful Elizabeth Taylor at his side, "The only thing in life is language. Not love. Not anything else."

In 1947, after his discharge from the RAF, Burton went to London to seek his fortune. He immediately signed up with a theatrical agency to make himself available for casting calls. His first film was The Last Days of Dolwyn, set in a Welsh village about to be drowned to provide a reservoir. His reviews praised him for his "acting fire, manly bearing, and good looks."

Burton met his future wife, the young actress Sybil Williams, on the set, and they married in February 1949. They had two daughters, and divorced in 1963 after Burton's widely reported affair with Elizabeth Taylor. In the years of his marriage to Sybil, Burton appeared in the West End in a highly successful production of The Lady's Not for Burning, alongside Sir John Gielgud and Claire Bloom, in both the London and NewYork productions. He had small parts in various British films: Now Barabbas Was A Robber; Waterfront (1950) with Robert Newton; The Woman with No Name (1951); and a bigger part as a smuggler in Green Grow the Rushes, a B-movie.

Reviewers took notice of Burton: "He has all the qualifications of a leading man that the British film industry so badly needs at this juncture: youth, good looks, a photogenic face, obviously alert intelligence, and a trick of getting the maximum of attention with a minimum of fuss." In the 1951 season at Stratford, he gave a critically acclaimed performance and achieved stardom as Prince Hal in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 opposite Anthony Quayle's Falstaff. Philip Burton arrived at Stratford to help coach his former charge, and he noted in his memoir that Quayle and Richard Burton had their differences about the interpretation of the Prince Hal role. Richard Burton was already demonstrating the same independence and competitiveness as an actor that he displayed off-stage in drinking, sport, or story-telling.

Kenneth Tynan said of Burton's performance, "His playing of Prince Hal turned interested speculation to awe almost as soon as he started to speak; in the first intermission local critics stood agape in the lobbies." Suddenly, Richard Burton had fulfilled his guardian's wildest hopes and was admitted to the post-War British acting circle which included Anthony Quayle, John Gielgud, Michael Redgrave, Hugh Griffith and Paul Scofield. He even met Humphrey Bogart, a fellow hard drinker, who sang his praises back in Hollywood. Lauren Bacall recalled, "Bogie loved him. We all did. You had no alternative." Burton bought the first of many cars and celebrated by increasing his drinking. The following year, Burton signed a five-year contract with Alexander Korda at £100 a week, launching his Hollywood career.