RICHARD BURTON - DOCUMENT SIGNED CO-SIGNED BY: ROY A. SOMLYO - HFSID 177680

RICHARD BURTON
Stage contract signed by Burton
Contract signed: "Richard Burton" and "Roy Somylo" on line labeled "Alexander H. Cohen by Roy A. Somylo", 1p numbered 8, 8½x11. This contract is between the producer Richard Burton and Alexander H. Cohen for Burton to appear in an unknown play. Burton had gotten 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. Burton was to star in two productions by Cohen, a long-running 1964 production of Hamlet and a 1978 production of King Lear. which was a long-running 1964 production presented by Cohen as well.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. Staple holes in upper left corner. Otherwise, fine condition.