Word: burtonizing
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...Richard Burton...
...magnificent baritone was not merely a voice. It was an orchestra of enormous range and power, and when it was silenced last week, its graceful sound seemed to linger on for millions who had heard it on film and stage. Homer must have known someone very much like Richard Burton. Describing Odysseus' effect on an audience in a faraway land, the poet wrote: "He ceased; but left so pleasing on the ear his voice, that list'ning still they seemed to hear...
...Burton was not the greatest actor of his generation, although many of his peers were convinced that he could have been. Nor was he the greatest success at the box office, although 20 years ago he was almost certainly the highest-paid actor in the world. But for the better part of the '60s and '70s, the years of his romance with and marriages to Elizabeth Taylor-the Elizabethan years, as he later called them-he was one of the most celebrated men on the planet. Amplified by the resources of modern media, the lovemaking and the battles...
...been touched by the finger of God, Actor Hume Cronyn observed, and there was in fact something miraculous in his becoming an actor at all. His father, Richard Jenkins, was a coal miner in the Welsh steel town of Pontrhydyfen; Burton was the twelfth of 13 children, and his mother died when he was two. An ambition to be not only an actor but a superb actor was somehow ignited, and when he was in his teens he attached himself to Philip Burton, who taught literature and drama in a local school. "He had a very coarse, rough voice then...
...necessary diversion for a world wearied by wars and assassinations. The pair made millions and spent millions, traveling with an entourage that would pauper a Saudi prince, taking over entire floors of famous hotels. Like Henry VIII, a part he played with gusto in Anne of the Thousand Days, Burton lavished jewels on his consort: the 33-carat Krupp diamond, the 69-carat Cartier diamond and the lustrous Peregrina pearl that King Philip II of Spain gave Mary Tudor in 1554. Liz and Dick made a couple of good movies together, including Virginia Woolf and The Taming of the Shrew...