Alfred Bercovici's That Blackguard Burton (Indianapolis, Indiana: Bobbs Merrill, 1962) is marketed as "biography with fictional dialog" and is in fact a romance novel. This is easily demonstrated as "Alfred Bercovici" is rumored to be the fictional name used by the romance novelist Alberta Simpson Carter. However, her choice of the name Bercovici is intriguing because the prolific and popular writer Konrad Bercovici (1882-1961) in his autobiography (It's the Gypsy In Me. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1941: pp.332-5) writes "Needing money, I thought of an unfinished novel, based on the life of Sir Richard Burton, that I had on hand ... the money from the sale of the Burton story bought a new car and a new trailer ... The producer who had bought my Burton story went out of business, but, before doing so, he sold my story to another company for ten times as much as he paid me. 'It's a very good story,' he informed me, grinning." I bring this topic up for discussion in this forum for several reasons: 1) I am looking for a copy of this story or script by Konrad Bercovici; 2) I can't believe that Alberta Simpson Carter's choice of this fictional name for her romance novel is a mere coincidence, but have not yet resolved this mystery, and 3) I wonder how many treatments of Sir Richard Burton's life have been purchased by Hollywood producers or seriously considered for the silver screen before the production of Mountains of the Moon? Anyone with any answers or insights, please share them. David

The query about Burton and film scripts is interesting. It has occasionally been stated that he is a good subject for a movie. And there have been some who want to see a movie about him. Yet it was disappointing to not that 'Mountains of the Moon' was not commercially successful enough to inspire anything else. The BBC series 'The Search fot the Nile' added the fascinating element of putting the story in the context of Burton's life. Seeing it again more recently was the more remarkable because by knowing more about the story, the various vignettes of Burton's life interspersed through the series added greatly to the impact.

I was also reminded of Errol Flynn trying to sell his script on the life of Sir James Brooke (another fascinating 19th century character worthy of a movie). Nothing came of it and Brooke still awaits a movie treatment. There were after all three biographies of Burton in the 1930s at a time when he would have been ripe for treatment (but perhaps the Stanley & Livingstone movie was considered enough). By the way, does anyone recall a recent movie with a gay/AIDS theme that featured Burton as one of its characters?

I have read Bercovici's book (in spite of Casada's views of it and the contemporary one of Edwardes) and to me it does have a script element (perhaps more like a 'novelisation' of a movie). I can't help you on the Bercovici connection, but would be interested to see what this line of investigation may reveal.

The name of the 1993 movie with Burton as a central character is "Zero Patience". The movie concerned a Canadian flight attendant who was accused of bring Aids to North America. Burton apparently is alive and well working at a Toronto museum.