Come Here To Me!

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Dublin Airport, 4 April 1965. © Science and Society / SuperStock

As the world mourns the death of Elizabeth Taylor today, a number of people on RTE radio earlier this afternoon were telling their own stories about meeting Taylor during her visits to Dublin in 1965 and 1967. (You can listen to the podcast here.)

Taylor stayed first in Dublin in 1965 with her husband Richard Bruton who was filming the classic The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. The Oscar-winning adaptation of the novel by John Le Carre starred Burton as a Cold War-era British spy.

Though set in Berlin, Smithfield Market was used as stand in.

For several weeks in the late winter of 1965, the lead-grey skies of the Irish capital deputised for those of East Germany and, in the opinion of director Martin Ritt, were more convincing than the real thing. Dublin’s architecture helped too.

Scenes were shot in Cork Street, North Strand, and elsewhere. But the star performer was Smithfield: a run-down plaza north of the Liffey, where the fulcrum of Cold War-Berlin, Checkpoint Charlie, was recreated. – Frank McNally, Irish Times.

[The opening shots of the movie were filmed in Smithfield. You’d recognise those cobbled streets anywhere!]

One woman recalled that they both used to drink in Kavanagh’s in New Street on the corner of the Long Lane. Apparently Liz herself was partial to a pint of Guinness. While Bruton used to enjoy a drink in The White Horse in the Liberties as well, Liz, a woman, was refused.

Another caller remembers meeting the couple in Malpas Street in the Blackpitts when they were using a part of a derelict wall there as a substitute for the Berlin Wall.

The couple and their children took over a full floor of The Gresham Hotel on O’Connell Street and stayed there for two months during the filming.

An additional listener told Joe Duff that he met the couple briefly in The Comet Pub in Santry.

In 1967, Taylor returned to Dublin in more somber circumstances. During her initial visit two years previously, her chauffeur-driven car had knocked down and killed an elderly pedestrian on the Stillorgan Road. Taylor returned to attend the coroner’s report and court hearing. To make it even more tragic, the chauffer himself, Gaston Sanz, had just returned from France where had buried his 16 year old son who was killed in a shooting accident.

The Irish Times. Wednesday, March 17, 1965.