Sybil Christopher, whose marriage to Richard Burton ended with his infamous affair with Elizabeth Taylor on the set of the 1963 film Cleopatra, died March 9. She was 83. No other details were immediately available. As actress Sybil Williams, Christopher met fellow Wales native Burton during the production of the British drama The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949) — her only movie appearance and his first. She was 19 and he was 23. They were wed in 1949, and she ended her acting career, which included work in the West End of London, to accompany her husband to Switzerland and
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- 3/11/2013
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Welsh-born actor and Richard Burton's first wife, she moved to the Us after their split and co-founded a famous New York disco
Sybil Christopher, who has died aged 83, was the injured party in Hollywood's most famous on- and off-screen romance, that between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor during the making of Joe Mankiewicz's blockbuster epic Cleopatra (1963). Sybil Williams, as she was born, was the girl from the Welsh valleys whom Burton had married in 1949. Theirs was a tenacious and loving relationship that survived the actor's affairs with Claire Bloom and Susan Strasberg, among many others, and his hell-raising exploits.
Having ditched her own career as an actor to follow his star – and raise their two daughters – she always remained discreetly quiet about the marriage, filing for divorce in 1963 on the grounds of "abandonment and cruel and inhumane treatment". Moving to New York, she made a new career for herself on a tide of goodwill.
Sybil Christopher, who has died aged 83, was the injured party in Hollywood's most famous on- and off-screen romance, that between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor during the making of Joe Mankiewicz's blockbuster epic Cleopatra (1963). Sybil Williams, as she was born, was the girl from the Welsh valleys whom Burton had married in 1949. Theirs was a tenacious and loving relationship that survived the actor's affairs with Claire Bloom and Susan Strasberg, among many others, and his hell-raising exploits.
Having ditched her own career as an actor to follow his star – and raise their two daughters – she always remained discreetly quiet about the marriage, filing for divorce in 1963 on the grounds of "abandonment and cruel and inhumane treatment". Moving to New York, she made a new career for herself on a tide of goodwill.
- 3/11/2013
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
(Emlyn Williams, 1949, StudioCanal, U)
In 1986 the Welsh-language Coming Up Roses, directed by Stephen Bayly, an American resident in the principality, was the only British movie in the official programme at Cannes, and thought the harbinger of a major revival of Welsh cinema. It wasn't to be. But Wales has a cinematic tradition, and in his invaluable Wales & Cinema: The First Hundred Years, David Berry calls the little-known The Last Days of Dolwyn "one of the most distinctive postwar contributions to the cinema of Wales" and regrets that playwright Emlyn Williams, its writer-director and star, "was not inveigled into directing again". Set in 1892, it's a powerful, poetic, elegiac melodrama about the destruction of a tight-knit community when a Welsh valley is drowned to provide water for Liverpool. Williams plays the vicious agent of capitalism, an aggrieved, anglicised Welshman who persuades the impoverished local aristocrat and her leaseholders to sell out their heritage.
In 1986 the Welsh-language Coming Up Roses, directed by Stephen Bayly, an American resident in the principality, was the only British movie in the official programme at Cannes, and thought the harbinger of a major revival of Welsh cinema. It wasn't to be. But Wales has a cinematic tradition, and in his invaluable Wales & Cinema: The First Hundred Years, David Berry calls the little-known The Last Days of Dolwyn "one of the most distinctive postwar contributions to the cinema of Wales" and regrets that playwright Emlyn Williams, its writer-director and star, "was not inveigled into directing again". Set in 1892, it's a powerful, poetic, elegiac melodrama about the destruction of a tight-knit community when a Welsh valley is drowned to provide water for Liverpool. Williams plays the vicious agent of capitalism, an aggrieved, anglicised Welshman who persuades the impoverished local aristocrat and her leaseholders to sell out their heritage.
- 2/24/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
★★★☆☆ Rereleased on DVD this week alongside Gilbert Gunn's 1953 effort Valley of Song, The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949) is a refreshingly regional British drama from directors Russell Lloyd and Emlyn Williams. Set amidst the titular mid-Welsh community of Dolwyn in the days leading up to a cataclysmic flood that submerges the village, the film revolves around an ongoing dispute over land ownership. With significant similarities to later working class dramas, including Bill Forsyth's north-of-the-border tale Local Hero (1983), Lloyd and Williams' near-forgotten work has undoubtedly played a part in shaping non-English national identity on-screen.
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- 2/19/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
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