Richard Burton Bullied Helmut Berger on the set of Ash Wednesday

Brandishing a gun is a little more than bullying. Helmut wasn't there and there are no more examples. What a lame story.

From Helmut Berger: Ich: Die Autobiographie:

I took revenge on Richard Burton gently, literally.When I fell in love with Liza, Liz Taylor's daughter, during the shooting of Ash Wednesday.

The patriarch of the Burton-Taylor clan scolded that an actress and a alcoholic was enough for a family.

He shamed me with Liza and filled his wife with long comments on my multiple weaknesses. I showed nothing and remained friendly as always. But I never forgot none of his wickedness that hurt me.

Liz wasn't even listening to him. What he said didn't interest her anyway. When Richard, once again drunk, shouted at Liz, I spread in a flash a whole box of chocolate truffles on a sofa where he was about to sit.

He didn't understand why we we couldn't stop giggling. Shortly after, he walked to his professional meeting with his pants covered in brown marks, and Liz and I burst out laughing.

But in his Irish blood did not flow only whiskey, he also had a lot of humor. Later, he laughed as much as we did at my joke.

R1 He bullied Helmut verbally.

also, Helmut himself talked about Burton's constant bullying at R2

Wait. Berger "fell in love" with Liza Todd while filming Ash Wednesday? She was only 15 or 16 and he was nearly 30.

I didn't intend to be even a little bit on Burton's side, yet here we are.

No excuse for guns, though. I would have brandished a riding crop.

I am mostly shocked that Helmut was a Gilbert O'Sullivan fan.

R5 Burton's problem was Helmut was not because of the age difference. It was because of Berger's bisexuality.

R7 here: "Burton's problem with Helmut ......."

R6 I'm also surprised, But Helmut Berger was a very sensitive person (contrary to the popular belief) so I can understand why he loved and was obsessed with this particular song.

Allow me to vent. I could never see the appeal of Richard Burton. To me, he looked sweaty and unkempt, as if he smelled bad - booze and BO. When he spoke, it was as if he was in love with the sound of his own voice, and played it for all it was worth.. Apologies to those who admire him. There, I got that off my chest.

Helmut Berger and Liz Taylor on the set of Ash Wednesday.

Gawd, Liza looks just like Mike Todd. Another daughter of a beauty who looks more like dad than mom.

R1 Funny this is coming from a DL poster!

Richard Burton was a charming man but also a bully (when drunk). Marlon Brando recounted a story in his book, about Burton making a racist comments about the skin color of Marlon girlfriend and going on and on about it until Marlon threatened to beat him up if he didn't shut up.

Liza Todd has a weird/very short chin

More stories on the set of Ash Wednesday:

Having somehow alienated Burton, Dominick nearly did the same with his famous leading lady when he suggested they dine one night with Andy Warhol. She initially scoffed at the idea. “That man made millions off me!” exclaimed Taylor, incensed at the artist’s quadruple silk screens of her in Cleopatra getup circa 1964. (Fifty years later, the quadtych would be valued at $20 million.) Warhol’s slight rip-off aside, Taylor finally agreed to meet the king of pop art.

Warhol’s first mistake was showing up at the restaurant in Rome with his usual gang of hangers-on, transvestites, assorted freaks, and Paul Morrissey, the man responsible for actually writing, directing, and producing most of the Warhol movies. “You, over there!” Taylor ordered Warhol’s entourage, and pointed to the opposite corner of the restaurant.

The Warhol/Taylor confab became one of Dominick’s favorite anecdotes in years to come. He recalled how it began as a pleasant, chatty, alcohol-doused dinner before it turned ugly. After dessert, Taylor got up to go to the ladies room, and pushing herself off the red leather banquet she felt something hard under her sable coat. Warhol had surreptitiously placed a tape recorder there, and it was taping their every word.

“You’ve been recording me while I’m drunk?!” she cried.

Dominick felt “mortified and furious at Andy,” since he had arranged the dinner. Warhol’s pasty white skin turned Campbell’s soup red as he removed the tape from the recorder and meekly handed it to the star. Dominick and Taylor left in what he called “stormy silence.” Later, Paul Morrissey told Dominick that the problem with Ash Wednesday was not the script. “If you called it Elizabeth Taylor’s Facelift, everyone would go to see it!” he advised.

It was a cozy company of actors hand-picked by their producer. Dominick had seen Keith Baxter on Broadway in the hit thriller Sleuth and wanted the British stage actor to play the gay photographer David in Ash Wednesday. For the role of Erich, Dominick indulged in typecasting, giving the part to the twenty-eight-year-old actor Helmut Berger, whose sixty-four-year-old lover had lobbied hard for his current inamorato. The Italian director Luchino Visconti even went so far as to hold a private screening for Dominick, showing him his new film, Ludwig, in which Berger, again typecast, played the mad, decadent king of Bavaria.

After the screening, Visconti and Dominick chatted, and among other topics the legendary director launched into a complaint about today’s young actors “who have everything handed to them.”

Berger interrupted the old man. “You think it’s easy fucking you every night?” he asked. Dominick could not resist casting such an actor.

Keith Baxter did not think the European press exaggerated when they called Helmut Berger “the most beautiful man in the world.” Not that Berger let such an accolade go to his head. He never played hard to get.

“Helmut and I had an affair, which I soon regretted,” said Baxter, “because Helmut would stay out all night, hit the clubs, and then come banging on my door every morning at three o’clock. Dominick adored Helmut, but nothing came of it. Dominick was a very moral person, and he was very aware of his daughter and boys and Lenny.”

Dominick, in fact, was simply more discreet than moral, at least when it came to the most beautiful man in the world. According to Dominick’s longtime partner, Norman Carby, Berger could count Keith Baxter and Dominick as two of his many off-the-set conquests during the production of Ash Wednesday. Whenever Baxter did not answer an early morning call from Visconti’s boyfriend, it was Dominick who benefited.

She's 15-16 in that photo, r5? Jesus, she's tall enough to be his mother.

Dominick tried to explain. “No, it isn’t that kind of a film.” Since the monsignor required much persuading, Taylor took the opportunity to give herself a long break and invited Baxter to her trailer.

“Do you like vodka?” Taylor asked her dark, handsome costar.

“We were there two and a half hours,” Baxter recalled, while poor Dominick dealt with the priest and his anger over a near-naked model desecrating his church. “We sat there drinking and talking, and Elizabeth talked about being terribly constipated. She didn’t know what to do.”

“Just stick your finger up your ass,” said her butler, Raymond Vignale.

“I’ve tried that,” said Elizabeth.

“It doesn’t work because you wear that big ring!” Vignale cracked. In addition to being chronically constipated, Taylor admitted that she and Burton had not had sex in months, despite her butler’s best efforts to provide them with pornography.

While his actors proceeded to get smashed on vodka, Dominick dealt with the irate monsignor. He would later admit, “My drinking reached its zenith during [Ash Wednesday], but everyone was drunk on that movie, no one ever noticed, except possibly the village priest of Cortina d’Ampezzo.”

After Dominick lied and called the model’s exposure a huge mistake, he graciously said good-bye to the priest and promptly fell down the church steps. “We were all drunks, except Henry Fonda, and doing [cocaine],” said Dominick, sniffing and touching his nose to suggest the drug.

R18 Liza Todd was 16 YO during the shooting of the movie in 1973, Liza was born in 1957.

R18 That's Liza in OP's pic. I don't know who the woman is in the picture of Liz, Helmut, a woman, and Burton.

Helmut looks like the guy from GoT, Jaime Lannister, in OP’s photo

R21 The woman in R2 is actress Florinda Bolkan. Helmut Berger's close friend.

Florinda Bolkan with Helmut Berger and Visconti.

Who could blame a teenager for having a crush on that guy.

I wonder why Burton was so mad. He should have been grateful the girl fell for a (gay) man who was unlikely to take advantage of her feelings. Maybe Burton thought he was leading her on as a potential beard. Liz would have been able to commiserate with the kid after her own unrequited crushes on James Dean, Rock Hudson, and Montgomery Clift.

In that pic with Liza, Helmut looks like Roger Howarth, I kid you not.

R25 I think Burton was homophobic. Also, Helmut Berger was bisexual so in Burton's mind, there was a risk of a possible affair between Liza and Helmut.

Keith Baxter was GORGEOUS. Fuck the rest of them. Fonda was just there for the paycheck.

"I'm gay too."

"But you're Welsh!"

Jean-Claude Tramont tried to rewrite the script to Peerce and Dominick’s satisfaction but was not up to the job. He also turned himself into something of a joke on set when he gave everybody gifts of T. S. Eliot’s poem “Ash Wednesday” and signed them “with best wishes, Jean-Claude.”

Taylor also hated the script and thought less of the man who wrote it when her butler overheard Tramont launch into a scathing critique of the star’s questionable taste in clothes. She told Dominick, “Get that asshole off the set!” He had two choices: alienate Sue Mengers, who helped get him the job; or alienate his star, who threatened to become even more intractable.

Dominick continued to play sycophant to Elizabeth Taylor, performing little tasks to keep her happy—like dashing off telegrams to Paramount Pictures to tell them not to send her any more bouquets of carnations. She hated carnations. She thought carnations were bad luck. He suggested they send bouquets of roses on a daily basis instead.

It did not make any difference. Taylor never arrived on set on time, even though her contract stipulated a very leisurely work day, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. “But she never worked until after 4:00 p.m.,” said Peerce. Missing hours of production time due to an incensed priest was not a typical work day on the Ash Wednesday set. A typical day began with Taylor showing up two or three hours late. Her tardiness continued even when Henry Fonda arrived at Cortina d’Ampezzo.

For their first scene together, she showed up later than usual. Her acting assignment that day did not require much—a walk across a dining room filled with dozens of extras.

On Fonda’s first day, Taylor walked on set shortly after noon. Rather than taking the time to greet her famous costar, she instead made an abrupt, puzzling announcement, “If there’s going to be anything grotty, I’d better have Richard here!”

Dominick could not imagine what could be grotty (i.e., unpleasant) about her walking across a dining room. But, as usual with Taylor, he did as she told him. Dominick fetched Burton.

“Richard, what do you think?” the star asked her husband.

Burton looked around, and seeing nothing grotty told her, “Frankly, I agree with Larry and Nick.”

The couple, on the verge of divorce, often used the cast and crew to wage war on each other. Upset by his wife’s chronic lateness, Burton asked Henry Fonda to speak up and complain.

“That’s not my job. I’ll have no part of it,” said Fonda. Other times, Burton defended his wife and lashed out at how Dominick and Peerce treated her. In a letter to the two men, he wrote how they were dealing with a “bombe plastique” that could go off at any moment if they were not careful.

Ultimately, it fell to the director to discipline. When Taylor showed up one day with her usual male entourage, Peerce waved them away. “You go!” Then he pointed at her. “You stay.” The star did not speak to the director for two full weeks. “That’s some way to make a movie,” said Peerce.

When Taylor was not creating problems, it was Burton’s turn. He housed a volatile temper, especially when drunk, which was often. During one early morning breakfast, Dominick burst into the actors’ caravan of trailers. He was frantic. “Where’s Helmut?” he asked. As usual, Helmut Berger was listening to the new hit single “Alone Again, Naturally,” which held some special significance for him. He played it endlessly. Baxter continued reading Bleak House, and Fonda went back to his hobby, painting miniatures.

“Helmut,” said Dominick, “you’ve got to come down! Immediately! We’re taking you to another hotel! Richard is on the way with a gun!”

Taylor’s daughter, Liza Todd, had made the mistake of developing a crush on Berger, and her adoptive father did not much like it. “Richard couldn’t bear the fact,” said Baxter.

Dominick threw Berger into a taxi and had him chauffeured down the mountain to the Hotel de la Poste.

After Dominick succeeded in saving Berger’s life, Burton did indeed arrive at the caravan of trailers. He carried no firearms but he was angry and, of course, he was drunk at ten in the morning.

“Where is he?” Burton screamed. “That queer, Helmut!”

Baxter explained that Berger had departed to another hotel. “He’s queer. Doesn’t it make your flesh crawl?” asked Burton.

“I’m queer,” said Baxter.

“But you’re Welsh!”

“You couldn’t have Liza in safer hands,” said Baxter. “Helmut’s wonderful with her.”

When Burton was not threatening Berger, he took to berating his wife. In one scene, the actors needed to improvise a game of bridge. Taylor got confused and asked, “Four of what? What am I supposed to be saying here?” She did not play bridge.

Burton, on the other hand, was an expert. “You stupid cow! Just show your big tits!” he yelled from behind the camera. During another altercation, Dominick watched as Burton called Taylor a “cunt” in front of her children.

Stupid cow or movie star, the actress caused the executives at Paramount Pictures to step up their complaints about the lack of footage coming from Italy. Dominick tried talking to his star about her tardiness. “Oh, what now?” she complained.

“Elizabeth, this can’t go on,” he told her. But, of course, it did. Taylor enjoyed boasting that she had kept the Queen of England waiting twenty minutes, Princess Margaret thirty minutes, and President Josip Broz Tito an hour. “They can damn well wait for me a few minutes!”

When Taylor was not late, it was something else. During production on Ash Wednesday, she came down with the measles, missing even more days of work. Obviously, MGM had protected the actress even from contracting a childhood disease.

“Elizabeth was bright,” said Larry Peerce, “but her biggest problem was she was born and raised in the aegis of the big studio, the Louis B. Mayer father syndrome.”

Taylor did not just dislike being on a movie set. She hated it. Off hours with vodka in hand, she enjoyed regaling the Ash Wednesday cast with horror stories from her childhood days at MGM, like the time she filmed a Lassie movie with her friend Roddy McDowall and the producer used unbleached corn flakes to simulate snow. When they turned on the fans to blow the brittle pieces of corn, McDowall and Taylor flinched as a hurricane of dry breakfast cereal hit them in the eyes. MGM took care of that problem by having the two children’s faces anesthetized with multiple shots of Novocain.

Dominick sympathized. “But you’ve got to understand, Elizabeth, this isn’t MGM,” he said. The old studio system, however, had controlled her life for so long that she never learned to cope with the vagaries of life like a normal person.

Taylor turned to alcohol, usually vodka or champagne, and it did not help that Dominick had made a deal with Dom Perignon to feature it prominently in the film in exchange for plenty of screen time. Larry Peerce recalled seven hundred bottles of the champagne being delivered to Cortina d’Ampezzo. When Taylor was not chronically late, she was trying to get her costars chronically drunk.

Between takes for their big bedroom scene, she asked Helmut Berger, “Do you want a little champagne?” It was not even noon yet, and she continued to ply Helmut with the complimentary Dom Perignon until he was drunk and Peerce had to stop the work day before lunch.

Taylor’s champagne days, however, were some of her more productive ones on the set. More problematic were her whisky or vodka days. On those days, she carried her own glasses—that is, Raymond Vignale carried her glasses. They were huge sixteen-ounce goblets. Her work day began with a cry to her butler, “I want a Bloody Mary, Raymond baby. I need a bloody!”

That was Vignale’s cue to fill one of her sixteen-ounce glasses with vodka, a weak splash of tomato juice, and one small ice cube. At one o’clock, it was time for lunch, which entailed three or four glasses of wine and required Giancarlo to redo her makeup. An assistant would arrive to break up the two-hour lunch: “Elizabeth, we’re ready.”

“Yes, I’m coming,” she replied, irritated, taking at least another half hour. Back on set at three o’clock, she then ordered, “Raymond baby, how about a Jack?”

Out came the jumbo glasses, one ice cube, a little soda, and a lot of Jack Daniel’s. It was when Dominick knew that Peerce had about half an hour to get something of Taylor on film.

“Our careers, Nick and mine, were disappearing as Elizabeth and Richard lived out this human tragedy,” said Peerce. The drinking on set was contagious.

[quote]. . . Liza Todd has a weird/very short chin

And a fetching little pencil mustache

Dominick continued to get phone calls and telegrams from Paramount, telling him, “Get that fat pig on set!”

Meanwhile, Taylor received cables from Paramount, telling her, “You look beautiful in the rushes!” And the studio kept sending her roses as other bills piled up, including ones for Richard Burton’s request that the studio serve a traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner for the entire company in the month of May at the expensive Miramonti.

It was Elizabeth Taylor, ironically, who gave Dominick the bad news. “You know, this is going to be your last film,” she told him.

After a disastrous autumn screening of the movie in Los Angeles, Dominick repeated one more time his story about Jean-Claude Tramont being Jack Schwartz from the Bronx. But in this latest retelling, he added a quip about the zaftig agent Sue Mengers, whom Tramont had recently married: “One day, if the true story of this film is ever told, it should be called When a Fat Girl Falls in Love,” said Dominick.

Even an insult about the agent’s weight was not enough, so he embellished the anecdote further. He said he was writing a book about the making of Ash Wednesday and calling it When a Fat Girl Falls in Love. He was not writing such a book, but he thought it sounded funny. At the time.

On the eve of the film’s premiere, Marvene Jones retold Dominick’s story in the November 13, 1973, issue of the Hollywood Reporter. She reported his joke as if it were fact, telling her readers, “Dominick Dunne didn’t just produce Ash Wednesday and while away his leisure hours on location. He compiled a diary which he’s turning into a book titled When a Fat Girl Falls in Love, not so loosely based on Sue Mengers (she’s becoming overexposed) and her Ash Wednesday writer-husband, Jean-Claude Tramont. Ohhh what he wrote down! IFA will arrange the pulishing [sic] contract, and also for a film. . . . Starring Cass Elliot?”

Paramount’s Robert Evans read the item. He phoned Dominick to inform him, “You’ll never work in this town again!” For his part, Evans did not

For his part, Evans did not remember the conversation but admitted, “It’s possible. Sue was a great friend of mine.”

“I felt Ash Wednesday was a ridiculous exercise,” Bart recalled. “I never had a meeting on it. But Evans got his revenge. Bob stayed out of The Day of the Locust completely, and got his revenge on me.”

Although Dominick continued to disparage Tramont whenever he told his Ash Wednesday story, Bart knew another man.

“Jean-Claude shouldn’t have tried to be a director or screenwriter,” said Bart, “but he was a substantial and brilliant financial guy. Today you’d call him a financial adviser, and good at it. I think he made Sue Mengers a lot of money.”

Tramont died of cancer at age sixty-six in 1996, and while he enjoyed a substantial career beyond the film business, it is also true that his girlfriend-turned-wife, Sue Mengers, did help to end Dominick’s career in Hollywood.

Unwittingly, Elizabeth Taylor may have thrown the knockout punch to Dominick’s career by repeating the fat girl anecdote to any number of hairdressers, makeup artists, stylists, and other fashion sycophants who, in turn, told it to Marvene Jones. The Hollywood Reporter columnist made a frequent habit of quoting, if not shamelessly plugging, such sources in her fawning coverage of the movie star.

Dominick was not Mengers’s only victim. “She destroyed Nick, she tried to destroy me,” said Larry Peerce, “and then she wanted to be my agent. She was a very complex human being. Such craziness with that woman.”

Liza Todd now.

Let's just mention Liza Todd's son, Quinn Tivey

I know La Liz is beloved by many, but she sounds like a real piece of work. Spoiled rotten and drunk. She and Burton deserved each other.

r12 she actually looks like one of the Giudice troll kids in that picture

I love Taylor, and Burton, as actors, but I get very bored reading about their antics. They actually don't seem like bad people but like many ok people, when drunk they say a lot of shit, and it seems Burton was known for this. There was a scene in the TV miniseries about Wagner (with Burton playing Wagner) where he appeared in a scene with John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, and Laurence Olivier. I think Olivier had been kind of a champion of the young Burton. Anyhow, the night before, they went out, and he got drunk and berated all three of them, apparently pushing all the right buttons. The next morning they had to do the scene and it was very awkward. He was just a really bad drunk.

[quote]she enjoyed regaling the Ash Wednesday cast with horror stories from her childhood days at MGM, like the time she filmed a Lassie movie with her friend Roddy McDowall and the producer used unbleached corn flakes to simulate snow. When they turned on the fans to blow the brittle pieces of corn, McDowall and Taylor flinched as a hurricane of dry breakfast cereal hit them in the eyes. MGM took care of that problem by having the two children’s faces anesthetized with multiple shots of Novocain.

That's a great story but I think that was Courage Of Lassie, where Liz rescues a lamb in a blizzard. Roddy wasn't in it. They were both in Lassie Come Home (and The White Cliffs Of Dover, minus Lassie) but there was no snow in those films. Liz was probably confused.

Burton/Taylor

[quote] Brandishing a gun is a little more than bullying.

Except here was NO gun.

[quote] Fifty years later, the quadtych would be valued at $20 million.

In that case the one of Katharine Parker must be worth $100 million.

Funny how some self hating queens here want to downplay Richard Burton's homophobic remarks (and racist remarks according to Marlon Brando).

According to them, If there was No gun, Burton's belittling remarks and threats towards Helmut Berger are just harmless words. Ha

"They actually don't seem like bad people but like many ok people, when drunk they say a lot of shit,"

Can this be said about Mel Gibson too?!

R47 They're dead. Go to their graves, stomp on them, and tell them they were bad people. Or just get over it. What the fuck does it even matter.

By this time, Burton and Taylor were purposely delaying production on every film because their contracts stipulated that the studio pay their lavish living expenses - essentially everything in addition to their salaries.

Another Berger thread?

This ice queen is quite the doyenne of the DL!

By the way Liz was the main celeb to bring AIDS to everyone's attention and was great in this regard.

Burton liked to kiss everybody when he was drunk, at parties. There's a hilarious picture I can't find now of him kissing Clifton Webb, then Webb pushing him off like 'get off me, you crazy idiot'. It's funny.

No idea who Helmut Berger is and I'm a big movie fan, was he in anything good?

[quote] By the way Liz was the main celeb to bring AIDS to everyone's attention and was great in this regard.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

R52 Hahaaaaaa, I thought the same thing.

It must have been exhausting being in their orbit.

OP's pic is hilarious. It looks like Berger is holding Elijah Wood in a wig hostage.

R52, R53, Just that someone was comparing her to Mel Gibson and I thought maybe it should be said in her defense.

And that's MISTER Captain Obvious, to you.

On Elizabeth Taylor : "That's my love. thin or fat, she's Elizabeth Taylor"

On Jerry Hall: "She's a bitch. just rock and roll, I had her before Mick. How's Bianca?" (starting at 0:47 and 1:53)

R56 The comparison was between Richard Burton and Mel Gibson.

Wasn’t Burton kept by a man when he was a student or struggling young actor. His birth name was Jenkins—I somehow thought he adopted Burton as homage to his patron.

In Helmut Berger book "A life in pictures", Helmut dedicated a page for his pictures with Liza Todd.

R51 "was he in anything good?"

Ludwig, The Damned, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and others

[quote]No idea who Helmut Berger is and I'm a big movie fan, was he in anything good?

I had to google him too, R51.

It's interesting that in the Marilyn Monroe threads, behavior like this is greeted with 100 replies about how she had massive mental illness that was so bad she couldn't have survived anyway and her suicide was inevitable. Here, Taylor behaving this way is "well, she was just used to the old studio system, she just wanted to milk expenses from the studio."

I've never understood why some celebrities become more interesting with their bad behavior, and others are condemned for it. Someone will say it's because Taylor is a better actress, but let's be honest, she only gave two or maybe three good performances, the rest were entirely about her looks or her celebrity.

To me a helmet burger isn't very appealing. Your mileage may vary.

The entire making of that film was a gigantic shitstorm from Hell.

Now watching. Thanks, OP! I couldn't help myself.

The Mike Todd genes are powerful, at OP's pic.

Burton said he tried the homosex but it wasn't for him.

VILLAIN is a rather interesting late Burton movie, in which he plays gay.

Young Richard Jenkins's relationship with his "mentor" Philip Burton is worthy of note. "My Fair Welsh Lad."

Another photo of Helmut Berger and Liza Todd.

Maybe Burton had an attraction to Berger. He had indulged in bisexuality in his younger years.

Both Burton and Taylor were spoiled, alcoholic brats. I find tales of their unprofessionalism exhausting.

I'm a huge Dame Liz fan and tried to watch 'Ash Wednesday' once. It's a pretty dreadful film. Reading all this behind-the-scenes nonsense explains why.

And yes, those Mike Todd genes are incredibly strong, even on the grandson at R39.

R74 So are the Taylor genes.

Taylor & Burton were basically just common white trash with money. Both of them were sloppy drunkards and druggies, and of course she went on to become a big fat slob with an endless appetite. Put her in curlers and him in a wife beater and they would have looked totally at home in a trailer.

And yet the average trailer trash person doesn't perform in Hamlet and Henry V, or give Oscar winning performances...

R76 Agree

Wait. Richard Burton thought that Dominick Dunne was Welsh?

I doubt it with a name like Dunne.

Oh, my mistake, I lost track of the interlocutors in the OP. It's Keith Baxter whom Burton correctly diagnosed as Welsh.

“He’s queer. Doesn’t it make your flesh crawl?” asked Burton.

“I’m queer,” said Baxter.

“But you’re Welsh!”

R79 Doubt what?? Helmut Berger himself talked about Richard Burton's abuse and bullying in his book R2

and Keith Baxter talked about it in OP.

R81 No, Richard was talking to Welsh actor Keith Baxter.

Burton was just a drunken blowhard and in those days it wasn't unusual for there to be casual homophobia. He did get mentored by an older man, a teacher, that he lived with, whose last name he took - that's a little strange and he probably had some gay experience or other. I know he said he tried it and didn't like it, or something like that. Which was forthcoming of him. But why would you even try it unless you were interested?

Helmut Berger with Liza Todd

Henry Fonda, Liz Taylor, Helmut Berger and others on the set of Ash Wednesday.