RICHARD BURTON - CONTRACT SIGNED 02/23/1978 CO-SIGNED BY: ROY A. SOMLYO - HFSID 177675

RICHARD BURTON
Contract signed by Burton to appear in King Lear
Contract signed: "Richard Burton" and "Roy Somylo" on line labeled "Alexander H. Cohen by Roy A. Somylo" on last page, 8p, 8½x11. 1978 February 23. This contract is between Richard Burton and producer Alexander H. Cohen for Burton to appear in the 1978 New York production of King Lear for a minimum of $7,500 per week. Burton got his acting start on the London stage and was an established Shakespearean actor by this point in his career, having played the lead role in Hamlet in London's Old Vic Theatre and on Broadway, which was a long-running 1964 production presented by Cohen as well.Richard Burton (1925-1984), a Welsh stage and screen actor with a magnificent voice, received seven Oscar nominations for My Cousin Rachel in 1952, The Robe in 1953, Becket in 1964, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold in 1965, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1966, Anne of the Thousand Days in 1969 and Equus in 1977, with all but the first for Best Actor. Burton may be best remembered, however, for his tempestuous romances, movie pairings with Elizabeth Taylor, whom he met on the set of Cleopatra (1963), and four failed marriages, two of them to Taylor. He was born Richard Walter Jenkins, Jr., the 12th of a Welsh coal miner's 13 children, but changed his last name to that of Phillip Burton, who helped him get a scholarship to Oxford. He got his start on the stage in 1943, but had his career put on hold when he was drafted into the Royal Air Force in 1944. After his discharge, he had his first hit in 1949's The Lady's Not For Burning. He began making movies in Britain in 1949, with My Cousin Rachel as his first Hollywood role. Lightly toned and spotted. Staple holes in upper left corner. Otherwise, fine condition.