BABYSITTING BURTON
JOHN le Carré has described having to babysit a drunk Richard Burton while he took on one of the author’s most famous characters. The 84-year-old writer, whose latest successful screen adaption saw Tom Hiddleston starring in The Night Manager – based on another of his novels – first tasted fame with his third book The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
Director Martin Ritt decided to turn the bestseller into a film just as le Carré – real name David Cornwell – hit the big time.
“Movie making is the enforced bonding of irreconcilable opposites,” the writer said in his new book The Pigeon Tunnel.
“And this was never more evident than when Richard Burton stepped into the leading role of Alec Leamas.”
“I read the script, liked it and told Ritt I liked it,” le Carré said.
“A few nights later my phone rang. It was Ritt calling from Ardmore studios in Northern Ireland. Shooting was supposed to have started.”
“Richard needs you David,” the director told him.
“Richard needs you so bad he won’t speak his lines until you’ve rewritten them.
“Richard’s holding up the production until he gets you.
“We’ll pay your fare first-class and give you your own suite. What more can you ask?”
The author, who himself worked for the secret service in the 1950s and ’60s flew to Dublin the next morning and found that Burton needed more than simply his lines rewritten.
“‘Somebody has to look after Richard, David,” Ritt told him.
“Richard’s drinking too Richard needs a friend.”
According to le Carré, the problem was down to Burton’s method acting as commitment to the role.
“He was being Alec Leamas. And as Leamas he was a prowling solitary going to seed,” the writer said.
“If Leamas walked alone so must Burton.
“If Leamas kept a half-bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky in his raincoat pocket so did Burton.”
Le Carré was tasked with spending hours confined to a room with Burton in order to calm the actor down and temper his wild mood wings – and said Burton spent most of that time guzzling his bottle of whisky.
Burton’s drinking was said to have caused tension on set between the thespian and his director, with much. Le Carré even describing how Ritt called the Welshman “an old whore” whose best days were behind her.
Le Carré insists, however, that this was “not true and not at all fair”.
He added: “Richard Burton was a literate, serious artist.
“He was a superb Alec Leamas. In a different year his performance might have earned him the Oscar that eluded him all his life.”
Meanwhile Simon Cornwell, the son of John le Carré and the producer of The Night Manager, has confirmed that a second series for the small screen adaption could still be in the pipeline, despite the fact that the original Le Carré story would have to be extended beyond the confines of the novel.
“I think in a lot of ways we would love to do another series, it would be very exciting,” he said.