Aubrey Malone's Poisoned Chalice: How Fame Ruined Richard Burton, is brand new from Bear Manor for 2026, and a riveting read. As the author acknowledges, there are several Burton biographies, a few of them recent, and while this one is not intended as a fully definitive recap of the actor's life, it sticks to its subject and delivers a fairly complete picture of Burton's 59 years, with its emphasis on how he was destroyed by what he wanted most in life as a young man: Fame and money. He liked to think of himself as a writer, but his overpowering greed (mitigated by generosity, although some of that was for show) and desperate need for attention destined him for the stage, and film.
Malone exhibits a high degree of skill with words from the outset, and although this flags a couple of times towards the end, the writing is generally of a high standard, while remaining readable throughout. Beginning with Burton's early years (as Richard Jenkins) and establishing his beginnings as an actor, the core of the book is its discussion of his films, most often achieved by relying on contemporaneous critiques. But these are well-chosen and usually lead to the book's main theme, Burton's destruction: This is not a 'Films Of' book. Unlike his fellow hellraisers Richard Harris and Peter O'Toole, Burton did not live past middle age, and while it's fair to say he was the architect of his own demise, the book makes clear that it was Elizabeth Taylor who wielded the sword. The hideous Burton/Taylor history dominates the second half of the book, which is just as well, because their relationship clearly dominated the second half of Burton's life. They could not live together, but neither of them, Taylor especially, were whole on their own.
All of this, and Burton's lifelong philandering, necessarily overshadows his last great films (Where Eagles Dare, which comes in for some ridicule, and The Wild Geese) and his last very good ones (The Medusa Touch, 1984), as the Taylor trainwreck, including a lucrative, though ill-advised, tour of Noel Coward's Private Lives, is never far from center stage. The author drops in a few tidbits of Burton's antipathy for Robert Shaw and Stewart Granger, which could have been developed further, but makes better use of the mutual hatred of Taylor and Granger. Accordingly, despite devoting a great deal of space to a bizarre Taylor/Burton appearance on The Lucy Show, no mention is made of Burton's late-career guesting on The Fall Guy, which (as with Lucy) was seen by more people than went to most of his films, and which (unlike Lucy) handed him one of his better scripts, albeit one that was played entirely for laughs (also unlike Lucy).
While Burton's life is certainly worthy of the 800-page treatment, for those who don't want granular detail, this 300-page entry will more than suffice, and leave the reader with no doubt of what made Richard Burton what he became or how he got there.
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