Richard Burton On His Humble Welsh Upbringing | The Dick Cavett Show

are all welchman able to sing like a lark it seems to be at a national trait and no they don't old singer locks but I know there was a famous Welshman for instance who was famous for his music actually man called Ivor Novello whose full name is Ivor Novello Davis and he was the world's when he couldn't sing a note but he wrote those musicals we went on forever and ever you know I've gotten where they were call now but the dancing years and and I think he wrote keep the home fires burning and stuff like that but he couldn't sing in it and I remember his telling me once that he did a tour of hospitals during the war and a piano they only played his famous numbers and in one ward they asked him to sing and he said I can't sing and they refused to believe him and there was a lady who accompanied him on tour she was Welsh too and he said Daphne you sing and she said I can't sing either so they tried to sing and I didn't believe him and I said well sing for me now and he said well what do you want me to sing and I said well sing the minstrel boy to the war have gone or something and he sang and it really was the most extraordinary cacophony I believe the word is and it really wasn't the main Tsuboi of the war he couldn't do it at all and I don't understand that we ended up in the musical world it's very straight so you could pick out a tune but he was tone-deaf I select the green valleys of Wales always rang with the natural voices and this is for the most part I think we we sing rather better than most people I don't know that it's the coal dust in the air or on the eternal rain but certainly most most Welsh people sing mellifluous ly how do you say what looks like Punta hidden if an Pond Street of M Pont creed event on he'd affair means the bridge we have a lot of Latin in our language means the bridge across the veil or the valley yeah and there is a bridge that crosses the my village from Mountain to mountain and that's the village you were born in yes yeah I don't know why I had an image of your childhood as being an upper-class somehow and been to Oxford and undoubtedly was to the manor born that's the right use of that and it's a it was anything but that I wonder how many other people are under the same mistaken I had a very happy childhood was pretty poor it was during the Depression my father was a miner and all my brothers except one my younger brother were miners and they all got out of the mines except the very oldest one who loved the mind so much that I couldn't bribe him out I couldn't get him there was no way I could get him out and he stayed in until the bitter end so that he died he died last year no he died this year actually about five or six months ago and you can imagine how tough the the Constitution of the family is that with his lungs for dust if he lived until he was 79 and he was very angry because he didn't make a tea but to have lived that long and worked he went down the mines when he was 13 years old and he came up when he was 65 and he died of the enjoyment from just pneumoconiosis yeah but you were being sarcastic when you said he loved the mines you know you really didn't know anyone love oh yes oh yes my undermind met my father who was apparently a great miner in the days before the mechanization and so on when you got the great seem as if there's a great seam famous seam world famous one which I believe is called the great Atlantic Fault and it starts in northern Spain in the Basque Country and it goes under the Bay of Biscay and it comes up in South Wales and goes under the Atlantic and comes up in Pennsylvania so that if you took a Basque minor or Welsh minor or a Pennsylvania minor and if you could blindfold them and transport them and they know the cold face the minute they saw it is it I believe it's four feet six inches and my father used to talk about it as some men will talk about women talk about the beauty of this cold face and my brothers would tell me stories about my father who would look at the scene my father's a very short man an ideal height for a mine he was about five feet three or four very very powerful of course and he would look at the at the seam of coal and he would ask her almost surgically make a mark on it and then ask his boy every miner has a boy who works for him and he would say give me the number two mandrel that's a half headed pic and then having stared this gorgeous display of black shining ribbon of coal he would then hit it with one enormous blow and if he hit it right something like 20 tons of coal would fall out from the coal face with so that it was filling it was exciting and indeed that's why I think when you perhaps think of me as being born with a silver spoon and so on - believed themselves or believed themselves anyway to be the the aristocrats of the working class they felt superior to all other kinds of manual laborers they were skilled workers that coal face was a was a magical feature has that all been replaced now by real things now and you lost about myeongsu years it's what your father would probably be against that yeah well he wouldn't say that you'd say the non miners at all now they're just things do the word machines did you have a fear of the mines or what what I'm trying to say is did you see yourself as that that was something to escape to get out into another world no not at all no the opposite ISM in fact everybody's ambition every little boy's ambition in my valley wants to become a miner because there was the arrogant strut of the Lords of the coalface they had these muscular buttocks and the bow bow legs and they walked with a kind of arrogance and everybody wanted to be like a miner wanted stand on street corners and look at the posh people pass with with hostile eyes and insult the girls from the doctor's daughter the lawyers daughter the preacher's daughter as they passed insult some of these Cole looks because they were the kings of the underworld they look down on people from below in a sense they you know absolutely you are clever oh yes you invent things so beautiful how many days is this show going to love because my feet is starting to get cold no boots back on yes you can in fact if for those are just joined this he has shoes with him and flip them on at any time I don't want you to take cold as we say in Midwestern America does one take cold and in your basic oh one draws above yeah and takes a cold some of those things I need the great deal of explanation than they how does one draw a bath I just wait about it pull it out of the air I draw you about did you take after your father do you think yes in many ways yes if I met him would I I see you and some some ways it's apart from the accident we look very much alike and especially the older I get more like he might look I'm much taller than he he was a coarseness but when I was younger too I was much more muscular and also we both had to put it mildly a predilection for strong liquor I suppose he died of it but it took 83 years to knock him off he was a remarkable fella in many ways he spoke perfect English and on occasions pretended that he couldn't as opposed to well she mean it as opposed to our native tongue which is Welsh and where I remember him when he was 79 when he was do you mind if I tell you what shorts no I liked when he was 40 years old he got into a terrible fight with a chap called Jeremiah John and this bridge that I've told you that spans the valley the fight took place it at one end of the bridge and anyway in the course of the fight my father was not he was 40 years old he was knocked over this sort of piping and he fell from the the end of the bridge that side of the valley should we say and though it wasn't a straight fall it was a really precipitous slope and it was 85 feet and he didn't break a bone or anything like that like all drunks they're very lucky in that way but he was in pretty bad shape apparently well when he was 79 years old almost 40 years later I went home by this time I'd earned a little money and so I was pretty flush I'd made my first film in Hollywood and so on and I really everybody thought I was a vitamin multi-millionaire but I I went home and I went immediately to see my father and when I took him to the pub and we had two drinks and he he said what's that you're ordering and I said it's an American guys it's called a boilermaker he said what's that and I said well usually it's rye which we don't have in this country and except we speaking in Welsh of course and I said you chase it with a beer but I said I'm doing but and I do it with rum oh good idea he said so yeah I ramen and he chased it with a pint of beer and then he had another and we had about three together and then I had to leave and go and have I have an enormous family so I had to go round visit so I left my father gave him a five-pound note my brother said don't give him money but anyway I left couldn't so he paid off all the debts of the year and five-pound note in those days was a considerable amount of money and anyway dissolve and in the middle of the night I was staying with one of my sisters in the middle of night was a thunderous knocking on the door and it was with no telephones at home in those days and it was the local policeman and he said that my father was in hospital in a place called Ken fruiting and he was asking for me and from one of my brother's called Evol I wa as he would say so um I got into my car and I drove like mad it was about 1 o'clock in the morning drove like mad to pick up my brother was staying with another sister and we tore off to the hospital and there was a lady doctor and a man doctor and they both we went to the emergency thing and they came out and they said does anyone here speak Welsh and my brother and I said we we speak Welsh they say because we've got a man in here who doesn't doesn't speak English [Music] so I said okay we come in and translate for you so we went in and my father was lying there and I suddenly realized how little II was unite shrunk with age and he was virtually naked lying there and he had a bruise on his stomach there was as big as a rugby football you know some norms like a pregnant woman and otherwise I think broken and he was singing quietly to himself and he'd fallen off the other end of the bridge 279 hit red at Central and falling off the other end of the bridge and he landed on what we call a Galvin a Galvin is is is a dead tree which which has grown out of brick wa-l stonework and it had grown out of this this ancient bridge that crosses the very and he'd fallen and impaled himself I mean on his on his stomach on the tree and he couldn't get off he's very drunk and it was a wild night fortunately because one of the miners coming home from work heard this singing and he decided to take a shortcut up the side of the mountain rather than round by the road because the night was so wild unfortunately he did and he heard the singing and he went to the source of the song and he found my father and he couldn't get him off - strong as he was he couldn't get him off either so you ran up and he got down nephews and stuff and they finally got him off the thing he was happy as a lot so anyway there he was in hospital and then the lady doctor who was English said would you ask him if he knows who you are I'd explained to you was my father so I said I always called him dick I said dick Tina Pauly do you know me and then in flawless English she said only to bloody world it's a shame you didn't live 220 he could have got off the center of the bridge well that's what he said as a matter of fact he said yes he's well I've been off one side of the bridge when I was forty year of the other side of the village around 79 all I need to do is to go off the middle of the projection I shall descend I have been a shower of angels sorry when you were doing his voice just then it reminded me of my grandfather who came from car Mar then oh yes and there was that slight trill on the arse and he said well if I ever yes yes it's in a very attractive accent I think the the those who speak Welsh and English the ones who mana Glatt English the the accident of Sharpe and I think rather unattractive but the the the bilingual Welshman when they speak English the accent is very lovely they listen to it yes but what did he make of your profession it's a custom is he was a very very puzzled I remember going home once and I went to the house where he was saying used to change he went my mother had been dead since I was two so he lived with one sister for should we say yeah six months or a year and then he moved and go to another system so I went to the particulars history was staying with other than I said him up here which is Wells for where is he and she said getting middle which means where do you think so I said thank you and went to the pub there he was indeed and he was very imperative Woolworths classes you know the kind of governor you try on it you get which had lost one lens and one thing and it was tied behind his ear with her with a string and he was reading the lot of the newspaper and he squinted at me because by this time I think so many years and in the minds he had astigmatism of the eyes from coal dust and he peered at me because he has seven sons and he said poor unity which means which one are you I said I'm rich oh yes and he said I've been reading in the papers here that that you're getting fifty thousand dollars for 12 weeks work in that Holly well I said he said that's not true is it I said no he said no I thought it was I said it's a hundred and fifty thousand dollars he stared at me as well as he could through those stigmatized eyes and said what for that's a good question even you were stuck for an answer to that yes but I couldn't explain I still can't explain how can you I still don't understand what happened to me it's a mass of things I mean I came into it by accident and I still think everybody's insane when they pay me so much money for for doing what we all do it home yeah well if that's true of almost all actors who get the enormous financial success that it just seemed it seems like some kind of dream and therefore because it does seem like a dream it could also just evaporate and suddenly yes I think that one of the actors a night manages the fact that some one of these days somebody's going to find out get a catch here than you catch me [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The Dick Cavett Show

Views: 488,316

Rating: 4.900589 out of 5

Keywords: The Dick Cavett Show, Talk Show, Musician, Celebrities, Dick Cavett, United States, Chat Show, Interview, Richard Burton, Richard Burton Actor, Richard Burton Oxford, Richard Burton Coal Miners, Coal Mines, Coal Miners, Richard Burton Wales, Richard Burton Welsh, Richard Burton Oxford University, Richard Burton interview, richard burton dick cavett, dick cavett interview

Id: 708q7LjMGso

Length: 18min 17sec (1097 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2020

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