Between him and Richard Harris, I can only imagine what the bar tabs must have been.
LOL! If only they had cast Oliver Reed and Peter O’Toole to go with them.
I have a book called “Hellraisers” by Robert Sellers. It chronicles the lives of Burton, Harris, Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed and focuses much on their drinking exploits. Burton plays a character in the Wild Geese who is a heavy drinker but is an effective commander of men in combat. The studio balked at having him AND Harris. The director was told no insurance company would be “made enough” to cover Harris. Harris had to defer half his salary as evidence he would behave during filming.
That must have been truly epic drinking, "a drunkenness no 10 men of today could achieve," as Homer would have said.
Saw O'Toole say once he was so blitzed he wandered far into some part of London and sort of came to and had no idea where he was. He went to a phone booth and called his agent to pick him up. His agent, of course, asked where he was, and of course he replied, "I have no idea." I think they had to get the operator on the line to tell them where the phone booth was.