Lucy, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton

From the highly entertaining biography, “I Loved Lucy…”

(Chapter 16) We ushered in 1989 in Palm Springs, California, in true Lucy style - staying home and playing games on New Year’s Eve……this Chrismas season Lucy was in anything but a jolly mood. She was more reclusive and depressed than I’d ever seen her. And she still felt ill at ease about going out in public since her stroke six months earlier, which left her with a slight speech impediment and a crooked bottom lip.

Lucy was also very upset about The Richard Burton Diaries, a recently published book in which Burton was quoted as saying that after he and Elizabeth Taylor did a Here’s Lucy show he swore he would never work with Lucy again. We all knew how devastated Lucy would be to learn how Burton felt, so we tried, unsuccessfully, to keep the book out of her hands. Celebrity bios were Lucy’s favorite, so it wasn’t long before she read the terrible things he had to say about her in print. Lucy read about how impossible he thought she was on the set - bossy, giving him and everyone else line readings, suggesting he shout every piece of dialogue at the top of his lungs, and on and on…..

What made all of this all the more heartbreaking for Lucy was the fact that she was in awe of Burton…. It was Lucy who, at a Hollyood party (something she rarely attended) with great trepidation, approached Richard and Elizabeth, like a starstruck fan, and asked them about doing her sitcom, a request she never thought they would agree to in a million years…..

The trio made the cover of TV Guide the week the show aired. According to Lucy, the week of work with the Burtons was terrific and the only fireworks on the set were those generated by Taylor and Burton themselves, who were forever fighting and making up. I don’t know what happened between Lucy and Richard Burton, but I do know that Lucy was devastated to be so maligned in print by a fellow performer.