The Man on the Billboard

Friday, Apr. 26, 1963

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performance of Hamlet as I can remember." Years later, when Winston Churchill—The Valiant Years was under preparation for television, its producers asked Sir Winston who he thought should do the voice of Churchill. "Get that boy from the Old Vic," said the old man.*

Wince & Wait. By that time, Richard Burton was a long way from the Old Vic. As his stage career fanned to promise and even moments of greatness, he salted his interludes with movies. Everyone does this. Sir Laurence Olivier was in Spartacus. But Burton's serious work on the stage began to atrophy as he gave himself increasingly to films, playing opposite an odd assortment of ladies—Lana Turner, Olivia de Havilland, Jean Simmons—in weak pictures wherein he was miscast. Given his professional fears and the economic spareness of his beginnings, it is not hard to understand why he would shy from the stage toward the greater money and simpler disciplines of pictures, even though his strongest characteristics—controlled flamboyance and overwhelming physical presence—are stunted and sealed off on film.

He hates his movies. "In a film, you are a puppet," he says. "On a stage, you are the boss." Significantly, he was the tribune Marcellus in The Robe, the first CinemaScope spectacle. "It is the bane of my life," he says. "Whenever a fan comes up to me and says, 'I enjoyed you in ..." I wince, and wait. It's almost always The Robe. The picture was rubbish. It was written as if for Peg's Paper*It was tastelessly sentimental, and badly acted by me." How did he like The Rains of Ran-chipur? "Beyond human belief." Bitter Victory? "Anonymous." Edna Ferber's Ice Palace? "A cold Giant"

Overshadowed Antony. Hence, he was not exactly a virgin when he tumbled for Cleopatra. He was bored with Camelot, and 20th Century-Fox paid $50,000 to get him out of it; also, Writer-Director Joe Mankiewicz promised him "a playable part." Fox's $40 million movie has been seen by no one and will not be until its release in June. But judging by the script, Mankiewicz did indeed give Burton a playable part. Since most of the scripting took place as Cleopatra was being shot, Writer Mankiewicz—in his approach to each character—knew just whose brain, tongue, and talent he was writing for, and it is not surprising that Burton has the most interesting role. Much of the time, too, Mankiewicz appears to be describing Burton as well as the Antony of history. "There is something about Antony which escapes you and me," says one character, "but for which women will forsake the living and forget the dead." Poor Rex Harrison, who went off to Rome a sex symbol and came away an old man, plays Julius Caesar and is actually the dominant figure in the first half of the film—but his beetly brow has ended up in a postage-stamp insert in a remote corner of that celebrated advertising poster.*

Mankiewicz constantly wrote around Elizabeth Taylor, although she is supposed to be the picture's heroine. The early hours of the film also seem to give rather heavy emphasis to spectacle—everything from a 2 2-ton rolling sphinx to an acre of skin, dancing. Mark Antony is essentially absent until after the intermission, but then the level of the writing rises. The dialogue