By Elwyn Davies
As a former miner at a pit called Cynheidre, not too far from Richard Burton’s home of Pontrhydyfen, I was keen to see the telling of this Hollywood star’s early life.
It is a film that deals very well with several strands that formed the man, the actor, and the star he became, because he was all three.
But the film also shows it was Mr Phillip Burton, his schoolteacher, who recognised, supported and moulded the boy, then called Richard Jenkins, into one of the leading Shakespearean actors of the day. Hollywood came later.
Pontrhydyfen was a coal mining town and up to that point had not produced many film stars funnily enough. Coal mining was a hard way to earn a living, but there was little else. Richard’s father and brothers, and many of his extended family were employed in the pits. Most young men would have expected to go the same way. It was a very Welsh speaking town, and Burton himself had Welsh as his first language.
He was one of 12 siblings. His mother had died when he was two. He was strongly supported by his sister and her husband, whom he lived with as a young man. His father was an alcoholic and the emphasis on his father’s behaviour seems to be a prequel to Richard’s own well documented struggles later.
We first see the young man who was ‘rough around the edges’ coming to the attention of Phillip Burton, his schoolmaster. Phillip Burton encouraged the young Richard, and with his contacts in theatre he had some experience in playwriting and production, and he promoted his protégée.
There was a hurdle at one stage when Phillip Burton was sponsoring Richard to a ‘summer school’ when it became clear that the application would not be well received with the surname Jenkins. Burton was unable to adopt Richard, but he did become his guardian, hence the surname change.
