
A lady I follow on Twitter named @johnstonglenn posted earlier that on this day in 1925, the famous Welsh actor Richard Burton was born. Yes, this would have been the great man’s 100th birthday.
I’ve written about Burton a lot on this blog (see links below), and so I thought I would share this bit of trivia. A fabulously gifted Shakespearean actor, Burton had the second-greatest voice in Western theater (after James Earl Jones, who had the very best). But Burton wasn’t just a great voice. He was a deeply intelligent man who brought enormous power to every part he played. And soul. Lots of it. (He was a bit like Viggo Mortensen in that last regard, actually). If you’ve never seen a Burton film and are looking for a good one to start with, I recommend 1965’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. A snippet of it is shown below.
See also…