[bd476]

miss marmelstein wrote: "Burton's narration is a thing of beauty in that film. Oh, if he had only sustained his greatness and not gone for the dirty lucre!"

Whoa, what ever could have happened to the last part of your sentence? ;P :D

He gets me every time. I would like to think it's due to his acting, but Burton had something else, some intangible something. Maybe it's as simple as his being Welsh. From earliest childhood I heard all about my Welsh roots, about where "we" were from, so it's entirely possible. Yet who can resist his delivery, his on-screen intensity.

The critique given an artist as being so good that people would pay to hear them recite the telephone directory sometimes isn't just a catchphrase.

[Tax-chick]

Not just hear. We want to watch Rex Harrison read from the phone directory (or the Unabridged Dictionary), too.

[miss marmelstein]

Well, I never bought the phone book analogy but Burton had one of the greatest speaking voices of any actor of the 20th century. He was also a very great stage actor - early in his career.

His first role was in the play “A Lady's Not for Burning” in which he played a young servant who scrubbed the floor - his back to the audience. No dialogue. For whatever reason, his presence alone caused audience members to be moved to tears and critics to exclaim at this new force in the theater world. Now that is the stuff of legend. In theater parlance, he had at a young age what is called “hunger.” Success, Elizabeth Taylor and tons of money destroyed that hunger. He also began to dislike acting and turned his talents to writing.