Actors: The Man on the Billboard

ACTORS

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The posters are rising everywhere. The Egyptian lies on her right side in a gold nightgown with a gold snake in her jet-black hair. The Roman leans broodingly over her, dressed for war in his deep purple cuirass.

On the half-acre billboard above Manhattan's Times Square, there are no names. There is no title. There is no need for one, for the billboard is instantly recognizable as 20th Century-Fox's proclamation of its $40 million movie Cleopatra, by far the most expensive picture ever made, which opens a few weeks hence. Nor do the two lovers need an introduction. The tabloids have taken care of that.

There is some difference in the familiarity of the two faces. Hers is widely recognizable. His is not. But it would be hard to find anyone who could not identify that Roman. He is Richard Burton as Mark Antony. In the short space of a year or so, his name has become about as well-known as a name can be.

Everyone, in short, knows who Richard Burton is, or at least what he is at the moment. He is the demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm and burgonet of men, the fellow who is living with Elizabeth Taylor. Stevedores admire him. Movie idols envy him. He is a kind of folk hero out of nowhere, with an odd name like Richard instead of Tab, Rock, or Rip, who has out-tabbed, outrocked, and outripped the lot of them. He is the new Mr. Box Office.

If only he were indeed from nowhere—a sort of Priapus ex machina—his dazzle would be unshadowed. But beyond the flaring headlines of the past year, few are aware of who Richard Burton really is, what he has done, and what he is throwing away by gulping down his past and then smashing the glass.

Superb & Definitive. Not too long ago, Richard Burton was considered one of the half-dozen great actors in the English-speaking world. Other men equally select —Paul Scofield, Sir Laurence Olivier-recognized this; so did critics like Kenneth Tynan; so did a growing public, aware that Burton was young and that most of his major work was still to be done. He has not done it, and there is more than a slight possibility that he never will. But no one can take from him, at least, the achievements that are already behind him.

Only four actors in history have played Prince Hamlet more than 100 times in a single production—Sir Henry Irving, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Sir John Gielgud, and Richard Burton. Moreover, Burton was the longest-running Hamlet in the history of the late Old Vic, where Hamlets were kept in the repertory only as long as the box office remained strong.

Between Stratford-upon-Avon and the Old Vic, he has delivered some nine or ten major Shakespearean performances, including a shining Prince Hal, a superb lago, and the definitive Coriolanus.

He was first seen on Broadway in a small but memorable part in The Lady's Not for Burning. He scored high a few years later opposite Helen Hayes in Jean Anouilh's Time Remembered. His movie performances have mainly been journeyman labors in poor films, with a few exceptions such as Look Back in Anger. His talents were wastefully poured into Game-lot, like a cataract into a thimble, but he was a more than magical king, giving a performance of rigor, charm, gaiety, melancholy, and controlled dash that made every audience fall in love with him. He was like a highly practiced