Boom! (1968)

Tennessee Williams adapted Boom! from his 1963 play, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, which was itself based on a short story he wrote in 1953, Man Bring This Up Road. He regarded the film as the best screen adaptation of one of his plays. The film’s director, Joseph Losey, initially thought Elizabeth too young to play the world’s wealthiest woman, Flora “Sissy” Goforth, who is dying of an unidentified ailment. He eventually conceded that “it would be more interesting [a film] if the heroine wasn’t so old” and convinced Williams “to rewrite parts of his scenario with her in mind.”

Elizabeth convinced her brother, Howard, to make a cameo in the film as a mariner when the actor who had been assigned the role was a no show. “They say she’s a bitch to approach,” Howard’s character says in his brief appearance, referring to Elizabeth’s character in the film. Howard had previously made a “blink and you’ll miss it” appearance in his sister’s breakout film, National Velvet.

The Burtons were thrilled with the casting of Noël Coward as the Witch of Capri, which “makes the film very much more interesting from our point of view,” Richard wrote in his diary prior to filming, adding that “he should be brilliant.” Elizabeth and Richard would later reunite onstage in Private Lives, arguably Coward’s most famous play.

Director Joseph Losey made the stylistic choice for the film to be devoid of colour as much as possible, and suggested that Elizabeth wear a single colour throughout the film. Taking it a step further, she said, “I’ll wear no colour at all”. Her mostly white wardrobe was designed by Karl Lagerfeld for Tiziani of Rome.

Although Sissy’s ailment is not identified in the film, to lend authenticity to Elizabeth’s performance, Losey engaged a London doctor to prepare a report so that, biographer Alexander Walker wrote, she “could graduate her performance like the graph of a fever.” Presumably taking his cue from the progression of Sissy’s illness as described in Williams’s script, he suggested that has a type of leukemia. “The states can linger for a long time and death can be sudden,” he wrote.

A Costume Ball at the Ca’ Rezzonico Palace

‍In September 1967, Elizabeth and Richard, accompanied by her brother, Howard, and his wife, Mara, attended an eighteenth-century-themed costume ball in aid of Venetian artisans impacted by a terrible flood the previous November. Held at the Ca’ Rezzonico Palace on Venice’s Grand Canal, Elizabeth wore her Kabuki costume from Boom!, which the Burtons were filming at the time. The guest list also included Princess Grace of Monaco, Aristotle Onassis, Countess Jacqueline de Ribes, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Rose Kennedy, Clare Boothe Luce, and Oscar Hammerstein II. A downpour delayed the arrival of many guests, many of whom eventually showed up soaking wet, and caused what was described as “the worst nautical traffic jam Venice has seen in many years.” “Even Venice Never Saw Anything Like It” blared a headline the following day. Richard recorded the event in his diary:

“All hell broke loose after permission was given – E’s Kabuki dress had to be brought from Rome by Evan Roberts Tiziani, her Kabuki headdress flown from Sardinia by ‘Lear’ Jet with Jeanette in charge. Alexandre[,] Mara and How went out shopping to buy polo necked sweaters for Howard and myself. We wore them with our dinner jackets with necklaces! The press were all over the place [...] And lo and behold the most publicized snap of the evening in the papers next day was one of E, Mara and Princess Grace all sitting side by side and all looking ravishing – especially, of course, E.”

That same month, Elizabeth had another opportunity to wear another of her fabulous Boom! costumes at an event at Ca’ Vendramin Calergi during the 28th Venice Film Festival, where the Burtons were photographed having a ball with Italian actress Claudia Cardinale.