Richard Burton Double Shot: ‘Ice Palace’ & ‘Bramble Bush’

Richard Burton, 1960 B.C. -- Before Cleopatra!

After 1960 WB duds "Ice Palace" & "The Bramble Bush," Richard Burton starred
on Broadway in the hit, "Camelot." Then Fox came calling, with "Cleopatra."

 

I recently watched Richard Burton in two 1960 soaps: Ice Palace and The Bramble Bush. The latter was especially sudsy and stultifying, but with Burton stiff and stone-faced in both. These were his last movies before he went off to play King Arthur in Broadway’s Camelot, which gave the once-promising film actor a box office boost. But this was the stage and not the movies, where the big bucks were. That all changed when Burton’s contract was bought out to return to 20^th Century Fox, and paid $250,000 to portray Marc Anthony to Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra. Since WB had paid Richard $125,000 each for Ice Palace and The Bramble Bush, Burton would get a Cleo boost in just about every way!

In his first 8 years in film, Burton made mostly bombs.

Arriving in Hollywood in the early 1950s, Richard Burton was given the big build up by 20^th Century Fox. First, he was cast as co-star to two-time Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland in My Cousin Rachel. Burton got a Supporting Actor Oscar nod for his role, but the film was not a commercial success. Then Richard received a Best Actor Oscar nom for the smash epic, The Robe. After that, it was a very mixed bag for Burton at Fox. For the few hits like The Desert Rats, there was Burton in a turban in The Rains of Ranchipur. Then there was blonde and bewigged Burton, as Alexander the Great. Richard was then adrift with Joan Collins’ nun in The Sea Wife. After Burton left Fox, he made a strong British art film, 1959’s Look Back in Anger.

"Ice Palace," a standard studio film at a time when audiences wanted something new. 

Though 1956’s Giant is regarded as a classic, some criticize the Texas epic as too long and soapy. Giant naysayers, take a gander at Alaskan counterpart Ice Palace. Both were adaptations of best-selling novels by Edna Ferber. The movie versions were made by Warner Brothers. The stories had two alpha male characters that clashed for decades and were in love with the same woman. Both mixed history and personal stories that often played like soap opera. 

Edna Ferber's last novel, "Ice Palace."

But there were significant differences that made ‘56’s Giant a classic and 1960’s Ice Palace a clinker. The greatest was that Giant was directed and produced by George Stevens. The filmmaker was at his peak, whose vision focused on Ferber's research and take on the Texas state of mind. This also symbolized the US and her intriguing characters were based on real people. While Stevens realized audiences needed romance and action, he put Texas’ issues and the characters’ lives in the forefront and the plotting was subtly secondary. Stevens also cast up and coming actors with real substance. All this makes for a strong film decades later.

Aging Robert Ryan, quirky Carolyn Jones, bored Richard Burton,
and plastic Martha Hyer are the stars of 1960's "Ice Palace."

With Ice Palace, penny-pinching Jack Warner was in charge, not an innovative director. So, Ice Palace got competent studio director Vincent Sherman, a cast of young WB actors who were TV lightweights, veteran actor Robert Ryan, and then-journeyman actor Richard Burton. No hot new stars, like Rock Hudson or James Dean. The female star Ryan and Burton pined for was Carolyn Jones, a quirky starlet given her biggest break here. While Jones was the best of the cast, these three actors didn't exude the youth and freshness of Rock, Jimmy, and Elizabeth Taylor. Despite some location filming, Ice Palace feels full of scenes that are glaringly obvious with back lot shooting, rear projection, fake snow, and emphasis on wall-to-wall soap opera plotting, which dominates over social issues.

Richard Burton as ruthless tycoon Jeb Kennedy in "Ice Palace."

Burton plays Jeb Kennedy, a variation of Jett Rink, the poor boy who becomes super rich, and a super SOB. Burton’s Jeb is in love with another man's girl; thwarted, he marries a rich girl to get a jump in life, and makes her miserable. As the movie's anti-hero, Burton just bellows, scowls, and is generally stone-faced.

"The Bramble Bush" was one of many "Peyton Place" imitations.

The Bramble Bush was obviously inspired by Peyton Place: a "sexy" soap set in New England, where everybody seems unhappy and “unfulfilled.” And the plot revolves around the latter issue being alleviated! As Guy Montford, Burton’s doctor returns to his home town in Massachusetts. Best friend Larry McFie (Tom Drake) is dying and wants Doc Burton to bump him off, with hopes that Guy will take over as husband to his wife, played by Barbara Rush. Meanwhile, nurse Fran (Angie Dickinson) is madly in love with Guy, but has to fend off Jack Carson’s lech lawyer Bert, who wants to marry her. And Burton’s doc has it in for the town drunk, who he blames for family problems. The film has an excellent cast, but all drown in soap suds and dumb dialogue. The attempts at daring and sexy are coy and hypocritical, hallmarks of the mid-century Hollywood. Daniel Petrie directs competently, but unexcitingly.

By 1960, Richard Burton was still handsome but at 35,
he was looking stocky and low-energy in an era of buff hunks
like same age Paul Newman, Rock Hudson, and Tony Curtis.

The cast does what they can with clichéd material: Rush is no-nonsense and natural as always. Carson is good in likeable heel mode. James Dunn once again plays an alcoholic, as he did in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Angie Dickinson as the sexy but sincere nurse is sympathetic, though her character is called upon to literally grovel for Burton on her knees!  

Nurse Angie Dickinson throws herself at Doc Richard Burton in "Bramble Bush."

Then there's Burton, who performs as always, when faced with inferior material: murmuring lines, snapping them curtly, and bellowing through his big scenes. Why the doc stirs everyone up in this town is beyond me. The worst is when Guy confesses why he hates town drunk, Stew. As a boy, Guy catches his neglected mother in bed with Stew. Guy blurts the truth at the family dinner table, resulting in his father’s later suicide. Burton’s recitation of this secret isn’t exactly on par with his monologues in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? When faced with bad material, there are stars who make the best of it, and stars who just walk through it for the paycheck or contractual obligation. Burton was the latter.

Ironically, Burton's character can't tolerate James Dunn's messy town drunk.

Luckily, Burton’s best was yet to come—Becket, Night of the Iguana, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Taming of the Shrew, Anne of a Thousand Days, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Richard truly excelled as a star character actor in this period. Later, there were more artistic duds that Burton walked through—The Sandpiper, The Comedians, Boom, Hammersmith is Out, and Divorce His/Divorce Hers. Stick with the former group and avoid the latter, including Ice Palace and The Bramble Bush.

Though Robert Ryan & Richard Burton's characters are supposed to be scrappy
 young men at the beginning of "Ice Palace," Ryan was 50 and Burton was 35.