BURTON RECALLED WITH TEARS AND JOY
BURTON RECALLED WITH TEARS AND JOY
By Leslie Bennetts
With Welsh songs, lines from Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas, with favorite jokes and fond anecdotes, with tears and laughter and, finally, with their departed comrade's own thrilling voice, a theater full of his friends and fans paid tribute yesterday to the late Richard Burton.
A thousand admirers gathered at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater for the memorial, in which many of the actor's former co-workers from stage and film participated. The setting was appropriate; the Lunt-Fontanne was the scene, not only of the actor's last Broadway performances in ''Private Lives,'' but also, years earlier, of his Hamlet.
His colleagues spoke of Mr. Burton's wit and his generosity, his exuberant excesses and his dark melancholies. Some sang their tributes, including Robert Merrill and, less grandly, Richard Harris. In his will, Mr. Burton requested that a Welsh hymn commonly rendered with spirit at Welsh rugby matches be sung at his funeral services; gallantly, Mr. Harris complied.
Wine and Iambic Pentameter
Many were the stories of friendships forged backstage or on film locations. Roscoe Lee Brown recalled nights of drinking wine and trying, with considerable success, ''to have conversations in which we spoke only in iambic pentameter.'' Shirley Knight remembered how she, as a naive 20-year-old fresh from the Kansas farmlands, became the beneficiary of a heroic effort by Mr. Burton to teach her to speak in tones worthy of the theater, rather than what she described as her own Kansas-accented whine. Mr. Burton spent half an hour trying, in vain, to correct her pronunciation of a single word, ''warrior.'' At the tribute, she pronounced it exquisitely.
Sidney Lumet, who directed Mr. Burton in ''Equus,'' recalled that the actor had arrived to begin filming only hours after completing ''Exorcist II,'' for which his hair had been dyed a hideous shoe-polish black that turned orange when back-lit. Every suggested remedy seemed to risk even worse results. Finally, Mr. Burton said hesitantly, ''Maybe if I'm good enough no one will notice the hair.''
''What I loved about Richard that day was his refusal to let life and reality defeat him,'' said Mr. Lumet. Mr. Burton had a great actor's ''grace and courage,'' the director added, along with the conviction: ''If I give enough, nothing else matters.''
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Dick Cavett arrived, rumpled and frazzled from a traffic jam, carrying, but not wearing, a tie borrowed from a stagehand. ''But the fact that Richard did my show with no shoes on I think would justify that,'' he said. Of the occasion, he added, ''The only thing I can think about his death is what Hemingway said about a friend of his: 'Dammit to hell, anyway.' '' 'Softly and Tenderly'
While most of the reminiscences were humorous, Miss Knight moved many in the audience to tears with her fragile a cappella rendition of a hymn Mr. Burton had loved and asked her to record for him. ''Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling,'' she sang, ''Calling for you and for me/ Calling, 'Oh, sinner, come home.' ''
Alfred Drake recalled playing Claudius to Mr. Burton's Hamlet, an experience he said was never boring. ''Richard had the theory that Hamlet could be played a hundred ways, and he tested every one of them,'' Mr. Drake recalled. ''Within one scene you might get Heathcliff, Sir Toby Belch and Peck's Bad Boy.'' Another of Mr. Burton's theories was his conviction that the audience wasn't really listening. To test that one, he inserted lines from Marlowe into those of Shakespeare, with apparent impunity.
Mr. Burton's admirers were nothing if not a varied lot; Sir Richard Attenborough read letters from Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Henry A. Kissinger, while Mike Merrick, who co- produced the Broadway revival of ''Camelot,'' read one from Richard M. Nixon. Tribute From Daughter
One of the late actor's last co-stars was his daughter, Kate, with whom he had just completed the filming of the television mini-series, ''Ellis Island.'' Miss Burton dedicated a selection from ''The Three Sisters'' to her father, from his children. ''They are leaving us,'' she read. ''One has gone for good, forever. We are left alone, to begin our lives all over again. We must live. We must work.''
Some of his friends, however, refused to acknowledge their loss. ''Richard Jenkins is dead, but Richard Burton is dead only if we want to believe it,'' proclaimed Richard Harris, referring to Mr. Burton's original family name. ''He is forever. The flame is quenched, but the light will shine as long as memory holds a place in our distracted souls.''
Although there was much affectionate laughter at the recollection of many of Mr. Burton's bon mots, at the end, those who had theretofore maintained dry eyes were undone when Mr. Burton's own magnificent voice filled the theater in a recording from ''Camelot.''
It was left to Mr. Merrick to conclude. ''Wherever you are tonight, raise your glass and drink a toast to Mr. Burton,'' he said. ''Because wherever he is, he'll know and be glad.''
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/08/29/theater/burton-recalled-with-tears-and-joy.html
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