Dirk Bogarde(1921-1999)
- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Sir Dirk Bogarde, distinguished film actor and writer, was born Derek
Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde on March 28, 1921, to Ulric
van den Bogaerde, the art editor of "The Times" (London) newspaper, and
actress Margaret Niven in the London suburb of Hampstead. He was one of
three children, with sister Elizabeth and younger brother Gareth. His
father was Flemish and his mother was of Scottish descent.
Ulric Bogaerde started the Times' arts department and served as its
first art editor. Derek's mother, Margaret - the daughter of actor and
painter Forrest Niven - appeared in the play "Bunty Pulls The Strings",
but she quit the boards in accordance with her husband's wishes. The
young Derek Bogaerde was raised at the family home in Sussex by his
sister, Elizabeth, and his nanny, Lally Holt.
Educated at the Allen Glen's School in Glasgow, he also attended
London's University College School before majoring in commercial art at
Chelsea Polytechnic, where his teachers included
Henry Moore. Though his father
wanted his eldest son to follow him into the "Times" as an art critic
and had groomed him for that role, Derek dropped out of his commercial
art course and became a drama student, though his acting talent at that
time was unpromising. In the 1930s he went to work as a commercial
artist and a scene designer.
He apprenticed as an actor with the Amersham Repertory Company, and
made his acting debut in 1939 on a small London stage, the Q Theatre,
in a role in which he delivered only one line. His debut in London's
West End came a few months later in
J.B. Priestley's play "Cornelius," in
which he was billed as "Derek Bogaerde". He made his uncredited debut
as an extra in the pre-war George Formby
comedy Come on George! (1939).
The September 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union triggered World War II, and in 1940 Bogarde joined the Queen's
Royal Regiment as an officer. He served in the Air Photographic
Intelligence Unit and eventually attained the rank of major. Nicknamed
"Pippin" and "Pip" during the war, he was awarded seven medals in his
five years of active duty. He wrote poems and painted during the war,
and in 1943, a small magazine published one of his poems, "Steel
Cathedrals," which subsequently was anthologized. His paintings of the
war are part of the Imperial War Museum's collection.
Similar to his character, Captain Hargreaves, in
King & Country (1964), he was
called upon to put a wounded soldier out of his misery, a tale
recounted in one of his seven volumes of autobiography. While serving
with the Air Photographic Intelligence Unit, he took part in the
liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which he said was
akin to "looking into Dante's Inferno".
In one of his autobiographies, he wrote, "At 24, the age I was then,
deep shock stays registered forever. An internal tattooing which is
removable only by surgery, it cannot be conveniently sponged away by
time."
After being demobilized, he returned to acting. His agent re-christened
him "Dirk Bogarde," a name that he would make famous within a decade.
In 1947 he appeared in "Power Without Glory" at the New Lindsay
Theatre, a performance that was praised by
Noël Coward, who urged him to continue his
acting career. The Rank Organization had signed him to a contract after
a talent scout saw him in the play, and he made his credited movie
debut in
Dancing with Crime (1947) with
a one-line bit as a policeman.
His first lead in a movie came that year when Wessex Films, distributed
by Rank, gave him a part in the proposed
Stewart Granger film
Sin of Esther Waters (1948). When Granger
dropped out, Bogarde took over the lead. Rank subsequently signed him
to a long-term contract and he appeared in a variety of parts during
the 14 years he was under contract to the studio.
For three years he toiled in Rank movies as an apprentice actor without
making much of a ripple; then in 1950, he was given the role of young
hood Tom Riley in the crime thriller
The Blue Lamp (1950) (the title
comes from the blue-colored light on police call-boxes in London), the
most successful British film of 1950, which established Bogarde as an
actor of note. Playing a cop killer, an unspeakable crime in the
England of the time, it was the first of the intense neurotics and
attractive villains that Bogarde would often play.
He continued to act on-stage, appearing in the West End in
Jean Anouilh's "Point of
Departure". While he was praised for his performance, stage acting made
him nervous, and as he became more famous, he began to be mobbed by
fans. The pressure of the public adulation proved overwhelming,
particularly as he suffered from stage fright. He was accosted by
crowds of fans at the stage door during the 1955 touring production of
"Summertime," and his more enthusiastic admirers even shouted at him
during the play. He was to appear in only one more play, the Oxford
Playhouse production of "Jezebel," in 1958. He never again took to the
boards, despite receiving attractive offers.
He first acted for American expatriate director
Joseph Losey in
The Sleeping Tiger (1954).
Losey, a Communist and self-described Stalinist at the time, had
emigrated to England after being blacklisted in Hollywood after he
refused to direct
The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)
at RKO Pictures, which was owned by right-wing multi-millionaire
Howard Hughes at the time, and he
was accused in testimony before the House Un-American Activities
Committee of being a Communist. The director, like Bogarde, would not
find his stride until the early 1960s, and Losey and Bogarde would
build their reputations together.
First, however, Losey had to overcome Bogarde's reluctance to star in a
low-budget film (shot for $300,000) with a blacklisted American
director. Losey, who had never heard of Bogarde until he was proposed
for the film, met with him and asked Bogarde to view one of his
pictures. After seeing the film, Bogarde was enthusiastic, and Losey
talked him into taking the role, which he accepted at a reduced fee
(Losey originally was not credited with directing the film due to his
being blacklisted in the States). A decade later they would make more
memorable films that would be watersheds in their careers.
It was not drama but comedy that made Dirk Bogarde a star. He achieved
the first rank of English movie stardom playing Dr. Simon Sparrow in
the comedy
Doctor in the House (1954).
The film was a smash hit, becoming one of the most popular British
films in history, with 17 million admissions in its first year of
release. As Sparrow, Bogarde became a heartthrob and the most popular
British movie star of the mid-50s. He reprised the character in
Doctor at Sea (1955),
Doctor at Large (1957).
The title of the latter film may have described his mood as a serious
actor having to do another turn as Dr. Sparrow between his
career-making performances in Losey's
The Servant (1963), with a script by
Harold Pinter, and Losey's adaptation of
the stage play
King & Country (1964), in which
Bogarde memorably played the attorney for a young deserter (played by
Tom Courtenay).
Bogarde, hailed as "the idol of the Odeons" in honor of his box-office
clout, was offered the role of Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger (1959) by producer Harry Saltzman and
director Tony Richardson, based
on the play that touched off the "Angry Young Man" and "Kitchen Sink
School" of contemporary English drama in the 1950s. Though Bogarde
wanted to take the part, Rank refused to let him make the film on the
grounds that there was "altogether too much dialog." The part went to
Richard Burton instead, who went
over-the-top in portraying his very angry, not-so-young man.
After this disappointment, Bogarde went to Hollywood to play
Franz Liszt in
Song Without End (1960) and to
appear in Nunnally Johnson's Spanish
Civil War drama
The Angel Wore Red (1960) with
Ava Gardner. Both were big-budgeted films,
but hampered by poor scripts, and after both films failed, Bogarde
avoided Hollywood from then on.
He was reportedly quite smitten with his French "Song Without End"
co-star Capucine, and wanted to marry
her. Capucine, who suffered from bi-polar disorder, was bisexual with
an admitted preference for women. The relationship did not lead to
marriage, but did result in a long-term friendship. It apparently was
his only serious relationship with a woman, though he had many women
friends, including his
I Could Go on Singing (1963)
co-star Judy Garland.
In the early 1960s, with the expiration of his Rank contract, Bogarde
made the decision to abandon his hugely successful career in commercial
movies and concentrate on more complex, art house films (at the same
time, Burt Lancaster made a similar
decision, though Lancaster continued to alternate his artistic ventures
with more crassly commercial endeavors). Bogarde appeared in
Basil Dearden's seminal film
Victim (1961), the first British movie to
sympathetically address the persecution of homosexuals. His career
choice alienated many of his old fans, but he was no longer interested
in being a commercial movie star; he, like Lancaster, was interested in
developing as an actor and artist (however, that sense of finding
himself as an actor did not extend to the stage. His reputation was
such in 1963 that he was invited by National Theatre director
Laurence Olivier to appear as Hamlet to
open the newly built Chichester Festival Theatre. That production of
the eponymous play also was intended to open the National Theatre's
first season in London. Bogarde declined, and the honor went instead to
Peter O'Toole, who floundered in
the part.)
Jack Grimston, in Bogarde's "Sunday Times" obituary of May 9, 1999,
entitled "Bogarde, a solitary star at the edge of the spotlight," said
of the late actor that he "belonged to a group that was rare in the
British cinema. He was a fine screen player who owed little to the
stage. Dilys Powell, the Sunday Times film critic, wrote of him before
her own death: 'Most of our gifted film players really belonged to the
theater. Bogarde belonged to the screen.'" Bogarde had won the London
Critics Circle's Dilys Powell award for outstanding contribution to
cinema in 1992.
Appearing in "Victim" was a huge career gamble. In the film, Bogarde
played a married barrister who is being blackmailed over his closeted
homosexuality. Rather than let the blackmail continue, and allow the
perpetrators to victimize other gay men, Bogarde's character
effectively sacrifices himself, specifically his marriage and his
career, by bravely confessing to be gay (homosexuality was an offence
in the United Kingdom until 1967, and there reportedly had been a
police crackdown against homosexuals after World War II which made gay
men particularly vulnerable to blackmail).
The film was not released in mainstream theaters in the US, as the
Production Code Administration (PCA) refused to classify the film and
most theaters would not show films that did not carry the PCA seal of
approval. "Victim" was the antithesis of the light comedy of Bogarde's
"Doctor" movies, and many fans of his character Simon Sparrow were
forever alienated by his portrayal of a homosexual. For himself,
Bogarde was proud of the film and his participation in it, which many
think stimulated public debate over homosexuality. The film undoubtedly
raised the public consciousness over the egregious and unjust
individual costs of anti-gay bigotry. The public attitude towards the
"love that dared not speak its name" changed enough so that within six
years, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act decriminalizing homosexual acts
between adults passed Parliament. Bogarde reported that he received
many letters praising him for playing the role. His courage in taking
on such a role is even more significant in that he most likely was gay
himself, and thus exposed himself to a backlash.
Bogarde always publicly denied he was a homosexual, though later in
life he did confess that he and his manager,
Anthony Forwood, had a long-term
relationship. When Bogarde met him in 1939, Forwood was a theatrical
manager, who eventually married and divorced
Glynis Johns. Forwood became Bogarde's
friend and subsequently his life partner, and the two moved to France
together in 1968. They bought a 15th-century farmhouse near Grasse in
Provence in the early 1970s, which they restored. Bogarde and Forwood
lived in the house until 1983, when they returned to London so that
Forwood could be treated for cancer, from which he eventually died in
1988. Bogarde nursed him in the last few months of his life. After
Forwood died, Bogarde was left rudderless and he became more reclusive,
eventually retiring from films after
Daddy Nostalgia (1990).
Mark Rowe and Jeremy Kay, in their obituary of
Bogarde, "Two brilliant lives - on film and in print," published in
"The Independent" on May, 9, 1999, wrote, "Although he documented with
frankness his early sexual encounters with girls and later his adoring
love for Kay Kendall and
Judy Garland, he never wrote about his
longest and closest relationship - with his friend and manager for more
than 50 years, Tony Forwood. Sir Dirk said the clues to his private
life were in his books. "If you've got your wits about you, you will
know who I am." The British documentary The Private Dirk Bogarde: Part One (2001) made with the permission of his family, stressed the
fact that he and Forwood were committed lifelong partners.
In the same issue, the National Film Theatre's David Thompson, in the
article "The public understood he was essentially gay," wrote about
Bogarde at his high-water mark in the 1950s, that "Audiences of that
time loved him . . . Very few people picked up on the fact that there
was a distinct gay undertone. It says something about British audiences
of the time. He had the good fortune to break out of that prison, and
it came through the film Victim (1961),
where he played a gay character, and through meeting with
Joseph Losey, who directed him in
The Servant (1963). For the first
time, Bogarde's ambivalence was exploited and used by film."
Bogarde's sexuality is not the issue; what was striking was that it was
an act of personal courage for one of Britian's leading box-office
attractions to appear in such a provocative and controversial film.
Even in the 21st century, many mainstream actors are afraid to play a
gay character lest they engender a public backlash against themselves,
which is much less likely than it was more than 40 years ago when
Bogarde made "Victim."
Apart from sociology, "Victim" marks the milestone in which critics and
audiences could discern the metamorphosis of Bogarde into the mature
actor who went on to become one of the cinema's finest performers. Most
of Bogarde's best and most serious roles come after "Victim," the film
in which he first stretched himself and broke out of the mold of "movie
star." He received the first of his six nominations as Best Actor from
the British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA) for the film.
Bogarde co-starred with John Mills in
The Singer Not the Song (1961),
and with Alec Guinness in
Damn the Defiant! (1962) (a.k.a.
"Damn the Defiant!"). In 1963 he reunited with Losey to film the first
of two Losey films with screenplays by Pinter. Bogarde's participation
in the two Losey/Pinter collaborations,
The Servant (1963) and
Accident (1967), in addition to 1964's
"King & Country", solidified his reputation. Critics and savvy
moviegoers appreciated the fact that Bogarde had developed into a
first-rate actor. For his role as the eponymous servant, Bogarde won
BAFTA's Best Actor Award. He had now "officially" arrived in the inner
circle of the best British film actors.
These three films also elevated Losey into the ranks of major directors
(Bogarde also starred in Losey's 1966 spy spoof
Modesty Blaise (1966), but that
film did little to enhance either man's reputation. He turned down the
opportunity to appear in Losey's
The Assassination of Trotsky (1972)
due to the poor quality of the script).
Philip French, in his obituary "Dark, exotic and yet essentially
English", published in "The Observer" on May 9, 1999, said of Bogarde,
"Losey discovered something more complex and sinister in his English
persona and his performance as Barrett, the malevolent valet in 'The
Servant,' scripted by Harold Pinter, is possibly the most subtle,
revealing thing he ever did - by confronting his homosexuality in a
non-gay context."
Losey told interviewer Michel Ciment that his work with Bogarde
represented a turning point in the actor's career, when he developed
into an actor of depth and power. He also frankly admitted to Ciment
that without Bogarde, his career would have stagnated and never reached
the heights of success and critical acclaim that it did in the 1960s.
Interestingly during the filming of "The Servant." Losey was
hospitalized with pneumonia. He asked Bogarde to direct the film in
order to keep shooting so that the producers would not cancel the film.
A reluctant Bogarde complied with Losey's wishes and directed for ten
days. He later said that he would never direct again.
Bogarde co-starred with up-and-coming actress
Julie Christie in
John Schlesinger's
Darling (1965), for which Christie won a
Best Actress Oscar and was vaulted into 1960s cinema superstardom.
During the filming of the movie, both Bogarde and Christie were waiting
to hear whether they would be cast as Yuri Zhivago and his lover Lara
in David Lean's upcoming blockbuster
Doctor Zhivago (1965). Christie
got the call, Bogarde didn't, but he was well along in the process of
establishing himself as one of the screen's best and most important
actors. He won his second BAFTA Best Actor Award for his performance in
"Darling."
Bogarde went on to major starring roles in such important pictures as
The Fixer (1968), for which
Alan Bates won a Best Actor
Academy Award nomination. While Bogarde never was nominated for an
Oscar, he had the honor of starring in two films for
Luchino Visconti,
The Damned (1969)
("The Damned") and
Death in Venice (1971), based on
Thomas Mann's novella "Death in
Venice." Bogarde felt that his performance as Gustav von Aschenbach,
the dying composer in love with a young boy and with the concept of
beauty, in "Death in Venice" was the "the peak and end of my career . .
. I can never hope to give a better performance in a better film."
Visconti told Bogarde that when the lights went up in a Los Angeles
screening room after a showing of "Death in Venice" for American studio
executives, no one said anything. The silence encouraged Visconti, who
believed it meant that the executives were undergoing a catharsis after
watching his masterpiece. However, he soon realized that, in Bogarde's
own words, "Apparently they were stunned into horrified silence . . . A
group of slumped nylon-suited men stared dully at the blank screen."
One nervous executive, feeling something should be said, got up and
asked, "Signore Visconti, who was responsible for the score of the
film?"
"Gustav Mahler," Visconti replied.
"Just great!", said the nervous man. "I think we should sign him."
After "Venice", Bogarde made only seven films over the next two
decades and was scathing about the quality of the scripts he was offered. To express himself artistically, he began to write. In his
third volumes of autobiography, he wrote, "No longer do the great
Jewish dynasties hold power: the people who were, when all is said and
done, the Picture People. Now the cinema is controlled by vast firms
like Xerox, Gulf & Western, and many others who deal in anything from
sanitary-ware to property development. These huge conglomerates,
faceless, soulless, are concerned only with making a profit; never a
work of art . . . "
He rued the fact that "it is pointless to be 'superb' in a commercial
failure; and most of the films which I had deliberately chosen to make
in the last few years were, by and large, just that. Or so I am always
informed by the businessmen. The critics may have liked them
extravagantly, but the distributors shy away from what they term 'A
Critic's Film', for it often means that the public will stay away.
Which, in the mass, they do: and if you don't make money at the
box-office you are not asked back to play again."
However, the courageous artist was not to be daunted: "But I'd had very
good innings. Better than most. So what the hell?" His well-written
works were enthusiastically received by critics and the book-buying
public.
Bogarde appeared in another film that flirted with the theme of German
fascism, Liliana Cavani's highly
controversial
The Night Porter (1974)
("The Night Porter"). He played an ex-SS officer who encounters a woman
with whom he had been engaged in a sado-masochistic affair at a World
War II Nazi extermination camp. Many critics found the film, which
featured extensive nudity courtesy of
Charlotte Rampling, crassly
offensive, but no one faulted Bogarde's performance.
He played Lt. Gen. Frederick "Boy" Browning in the all-star blockbuster
A Bridge Too Far (1977).
Although some of his fellow actors were World War II veterans, only
Bogarde had been involved in the actual battle. His performance
arguably is the best in the film. Appearing in
Alain Resnais' art house hit
Providence (1977) gave Bogarde the
opportunity to co-star with John Gielgud.
He also starred in German wunderkind
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's
adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's
Despair (1978), with a script by
Tom Stoppard. Though the film was not much
of a critical success, Bogarde's acting as 1930s German businessman
Hermann Hermann, a man who chooses to go mad when faced with the
paradoxes of his life in his proto-fascist fatherland, was highly
praised.
Bogarde enjoyed working with Fassbinder. He wrote that "Rainer's work
was extraordinarily similar to that of Visconti's; despite their age
difference, they both behaved, on set, in much the same manner. Both
had an incredible knowledge of the camera: the first essential. Both
knew how it could be made to function; they had the same feeling for
movement on the screen, of the all-important (and often-neglected)
'pacing' of a film, from start to finish, of composition, of texture,
and probably most of all they shared that strange ability to explore
and probe into the very depths of the character which one had offered
them."
After his experience with Fassbinder, he acted only four more times,
twice in feature films and twice on television. Bogarde was nominated
for a Golden Globe for playing Roald Dahl in
The Patricia Neal Story (1981).
He got rave reviews playing Jane Birkin's
father in Bertrand Tavernier's
Daddy Nostalgia (1990), his last
film.
In 1984 Bogarde was asked to serve as president of the jury at the
Cannes Film Festival, a huge honor for the actor, as he was the first
Briton ever to serve in that capacity. Two years earlier he had been
made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des lettres 1982. A decade later, he was
knighted by Queen Elizabeth II on
February 13, 1992.
Bogarde won two Best Actor Awards out of six nominations from the
British Academy of Film & Television Arts, for "The Servant" and
"Darling" in 1964 and 1966, respectively. He was also nominated in 1962
for "Victim," in 1968 for "Accident" and
Our Mother's House (1967) and
in 1972 for "Morte a Venezia."
Bogarde suffered a stroke in 1996, and though it rendered him partially
paralyzed, he was able to recover and live in his own flat in Chelsea.
However, by May of 1998 he required around-the-clock nursing care, and
he had his lawyers draw up a "living will," also known as a
no-resuscitation order. Bogarde publicly came out in favor of voluntary
euthanasia, becoming Vice President of the Voluntary Euthanasia
Society. He publicly addressed the subject of his own "living will,"
which ordered that no extraordinary measures be taken to keep him alive
should he become terminally ill.
The living will proved unnecessary. Dirk Bogarde died of a heart attack
on May 8, 1999, in his home in Chelsea, London, England. According to
his nephew Brock Van den Bogaerde, the family planned to hold a private
funeral but no memorial service in accordance with his uncle's wish
"just to forget me." Bogarde wanted to be cremated and have his ashes
scattered in France, and accordingly, his remains were returned to
Provence.
Margaret Hinxman, in her May 10, 1999, obituary in "The Guardian", said
of him, "At his peak and with directors he trusted - Joseph Losey,
Luchino Visconti and Alain Resnais - Dirk Bogarde . . . was probably
the finest, most complete, actor on the screen."
Clive Fisher's obituary in "The Independent" on May 10, 1999, praised
Bogarde as "a major figure because, wherever they were made, his finest
films are all somehow about him. He was a great self-portraitist and
the screen persona he fashioned, a stylization of his private being,
not only dominated its surroundings but spoke subliminally and
powerfully to British audiences about the tensions of the time, about
connivances and cruel respectabilities of England in the Fifties and
Sixties."
The secret of Dirk Bogarde's success as a great cinema actor was his
intimate relationship with the camera. Bogarde believed that the key to
acting on film was the eyes, specifically, the "look" of the actor.
Like Alan Ladd, it didn't matter if an
actor was good with line readings if they had mastery over the "look."
For many critics and movie-goers at the end of the 20th century, Dirk
Bogarde's face epitomized the "look" of Britain in the tumultuous
decades after the Second World War.
David Tindle's portrait of Bogarde is part of the collection of
London's National Portrait Gallery, London. In 1999, the portrait, on
temporary loan, was displayed at 10 Downing Street, the Prime
Minister's official residence, with other modern works of art.
Officially, Dirk Bogarde had become the look of Britain.
Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde on March 28, 1921, to Ulric
van den Bogaerde, the art editor of "The Times" (London) newspaper, and
actress Margaret Niven in the London suburb of Hampstead. He was one of
three children, with sister Elizabeth and younger brother Gareth. His
father was Flemish and his mother was of Scottish descent.
Ulric Bogaerde started the Times' arts department and served as its
first art editor. Derek's mother, Margaret - the daughter of actor and
painter Forrest Niven - appeared in the play "Bunty Pulls The Strings",
but she quit the boards in accordance with her husband's wishes. The
young Derek Bogaerde was raised at the family home in Sussex by his
sister, Elizabeth, and his nanny, Lally Holt.
Educated at the Allen Glen's School in Glasgow, he also attended
London's University College School before majoring in commercial art at
Chelsea Polytechnic, where his teachers included
Henry Moore. Though his father
wanted his eldest son to follow him into the "Times" as an art critic
and had groomed him for that role, Derek dropped out of his commercial
art course and became a drama student, though his acting talent at that
time was unpromising. In the 1930s he went to work as a commercial
artist and a scene designer.
He apprenticed as an actor with the Amersham Repertory Company, and
made his acting debut in 1939 on a small London stage, the Q Theatre,
in a role in which he delivered only one line. His debut in London's
West End came a few months later in
J.B. Priestley's play "Cornelius," in
which he was billed as "Derek Bogaerde". He made his uncredited debut
as an extra in the pre-war George Formby
comedy Come on George! (1939).
The September 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union triggered World War II, and in 1940 Bogarde joined the Queen's
Royal Regiment as an officer. He served in the Air Photographic
Intelligence Unit and eventually attained the rank of major. Nicknamed
"Pippin" and "Pip" during the war, he was awarded seven medals in his
five years of active duty. He wrote poems and painted during the war,
and in 1943, a small magazine published one of his poems, "Steel
Cathedrals," which subsequently was anthologized. His paintings of the
war are part of the Imperial War Museum's collection.
Similar to his character, Captain Hargreaves, in
King & Country (1964), he was
called upon to put a wounded soldier out of his misery, a tale
recounted in one of his seven volumes of autobiography. While serving
with the Air Photographic Intelligence Unit, he took part in the
liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which he said was
akin to "looking into Dante's Inferno".
In one of his autobiographies, he wrote, "At 24, the age I was then,
deep shock stays registered forever. An internal tattooing which is
removable only by surgery, it cannot be conveniently sponged away by
time."
After being demobilized, he returned to acting. His agent re-christened
him "Dirk Bogarde," a name that he would make famous within a decade.
In 1947 he appeared in "Power Without Glory" at the New Lindsay
Theatre, a performance that was praised by
Noël Coward, who urged him to continue his
acting career. The Rank Organization had signed him to a contract after
a talent scout saw him in the play, and he made his credited movie
debut in
Dancing with Crime (1947) with
a one-line bit as a policeman.
His first lead in a movie came that year when Wessex Films, distributed
by Rank, gave him a part in the proposed
Stewart Granger film
Sin of Esther Waters (1948). When Granger
dropped out, Bogarde took over the lead. Rank subsequently signed him
to a long-term contract and he appeared in a variety of parts during
the 14 years he was under contract to the studio.
For three years he toiled in Rank movies as an apprentice actor without
making much of a ripple; then in 1950, he was given the role of young
hood Tom Riley in the crime thriller
The Blue Lamp (1950) (the title
comes from the blue-colored light on police call-boxes in London), the
most successful British film of 1950, which established Bogarde as an
actor of note. Playing a cop killer, an unspeakable crime in the
England of the time, it was the first of the intense neurotics and
attractive villains that Bogarde would often play.
He continued to act on-stage, appearing in the West End in
Jean Anouilh's "Point of
Departure". While he was praised for his performance, stage acting made
him nervous, and as he became more famous, he began to be mobbed by
fans. The pressure of the public adulation proved overwhelming,
particularly as he suffered from stage fright. He was accosted by
crowds of fans at the stage door during the 1955 touring production of
"Summertime," and his more enthusiastic admirers even shouted at him
during the play. He was to appear in only one more play, the Oxford
Playhouse production of "Jezebel," in 1958. He never again took to the
boards, despite receiving attractive offers.
He first acted for American expatriate director
Joseph Losey in
The Sleeping Tiger (1954).
Losey, a Communist and self-described Stalinist at the time, had
emigrated to England after being blacklisted in Hollywood after he
refused to direct
The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)
at RKO Pictures, which was owned by right-wing multi-millionaire
Howard Hughes at the time, and he
was accused in testimony before the House Un-American Activities
Committee of being a Communist. The director, like Bogarde, would not
find his stride until the early 1960s, and Losey and Bogarde would
build their reputations together.
First, however, Losey had to overcome Bogarde's reluctance to star in a
low-budget film (shot for $300,000) with a blacklisted American
director. Losey, who had never heard of Bogarde until he was proposed
for the film, met with him and asked Bogarde to view one of his
pictures. After seeing the film, Bogarde was enthusiastic, and Losey
talked him into taking the role, which he accepted at a reduced fee
(Losey originally was not credited with directing the film due to his
being blacklisted in the States). A decade later they would make more
memorable films that would be watersheds in their careers.
It was not drama but comedy that made Dirk Bogarde a star. He achieved
the first rank of English movie stardom playing Dr. Simon Sparrow in
the comedy
Doctor in the House (1954).
The film was a smash hit, becoming one of the most popular British
films in history, with 17 million admissions in its first year of
release. As Sparrow, Bogarde became a heartthrob and the most popular
British movie star of the mid-50s. He reprised the character in
Doctor at Sea (1955),
Doctor at Large (1957).
The title of the latter film may have described his mood as a serious
actor having to do another turn as Dr. Sparrow between his
career-making performances in Losey's
The Servant (1963), with a script by
Harold Pinter, and Losey's adaptation of
the stage play
King & Country (1964), in which
Bogarde memorably played the attorney for a young deserter (played by
Tom Courtenay).
Bogarde, hailed as "the idol of the Odeons" in honor of his box-office
clout, was offered the role of Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger (1959) by producer Harry Saltzman and
director Tony Richardson, based
on the play that touched off the "Angry Young Man" and "Kitchen Sink
School" of contemporary English drama in the 1950s. Though Bogarde
wanted to take the part, Rank refused to let him make the film on the
grounds that there was "altogether too much dialog." The part went to
Richard Burton instead, who went
over-the-top in portraying his very angry, not-so-young man.
After this disappointment, Bogarde went to Hollywood to play
Franz Liszt in
Song Without End (1960) and to
appear in Nunnally Johnson's Spanish
Civil War drama
The Angel Wore Red (1960) with
Ava Gardner. Both were big-budgeted films,
but hampered by poor scripts, and after both films failed, Bogarde
avoided Hollywood from then on.
He was reportedly quite smitten with his French "Song Without End"
co-star Capucine, and wanted to marry
her. Capucine, who suffered from bi-polar disorder, was bisexual with
an admitted preference for women. The relationship did not lead to
marriage, but did result in a long-term friendship. It apparently was
his only serious relationship with a woman, though he had many women
friends, including his
I Could Go on Singing (1963)
co-star Judy Garland.
In the early 1960s, with the expiration of his Rank contract, Bogarde
made the decision to abandon his hugely successful career in commercial
movies and concentrate on more complex, art house films (at the same
time, Burt Lancaster made a similar
decision, though Lancaster continued to alternate his artistic ventures
with more crassly commercial endeavors). Bogarde appeared in
Basil Dearden's seminal film
Victim (1961), the first British movie to
sympathetically address the persecution of homosexuals. His career
choice alienated many of his old fans, but he was no longer interested
in being a commercial movie star; he, like Lancaster, was interested in
developing as an actor and artist (however, that sense of finding
himself as an actor did not extend to the stage. His reputation was
such in 1963 that he was invited by National Theatre director
Laurence Olivier to appear as Hamlet to
open the newly built Chichester Festival Theatre. That production of
the eponymous play also was intended to open the National Theatre's
first season in London. Bogarde declined, and the honor went instead to
Peter O'Toole, who floundered in
the part.)
Jack Grimston, in Bogarde's "Sunday Times" obituary of May 9, 1999,
entitled "Bogarde, a solitary star at the edge of the spotlight," said
of the late actor that he "belonged to a group that was rare in the
British cinema. He was a fine screen player who owed little to the
stage. Dilys Powell, the Sunday Times film critic, wrote of him before
her own death: 'Most of our gifted film players really belonged to the
theater. Bogarde belonged to the screen.'" Bogarde had won the London
Critics Circle's Dilys Powell award for outstanding contribution to
cinema in 1992.
Appearing in "Victim" was a huge career gamble. In the film, Bogarde
played a married barrister who is being blackmailed over his closeted
homosexuality. Rather than let the blackmail continue, and allow the
perpetrators to victimize other gay men, Bogarde's character
effectively sacrifices himself, specifically his marriage and his
career, by bravely confessing to be gay (homosexuality was an offence
in the United Kingdom until 1967, and there reportedly had been a
police crackdown against homosexuals after World War II which made gay
men particularly vulnerable to blackmail).
The film was not released in mainstream theaters in the US, as the
Production Code Administration (PCA) refused to classify the film and
most theaters would not show films that did not carry the PCA seal of
approval. "Victim" was the antithesis of the light comedy of Bogarde's
"Doctor" movies, and many fans of his character Simon Sparrow were
forever alienated by his portrayal of a homosexual. For himself,
Bogarde was proud of the film and his participation in it, which many
think stimulated public debate over homosexuality. The film undoubtedly
raised the public consciousness over the egregious and unjust
individual costs of anti-gay bigotry. The public attitude towards the
"love that dared not speak its name" changed enough so that within six
years, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act decriminalizing homosexual acts
between adults passed Parliament. Bogarde reported that he received
many letters praising him for playing the role. His courage in taking
on such a role is even more significant in that he most likely was gay
himself, and thus exposed himself to a backlash.
Bogarde always publicly denied he was a homosexual, though later in
life he did confess that he and his manager,
Anthony Forwood, had a long-term
relationship. When Bogarde met him in 1939, Forwood was a theatrical
manager, who eventually married and divorced
Glynis Johns. Forwood became Bogarde's
friend and subsequently his life partner, and the two moved to France
together in 1968. They bought a 15th-century farmhouse near Grasse in
Provence in the early 1970s, which they restored. Bogarde and Forwood
lived in the house until 1983, when they returned to London so that
Forwood could be treated for cancer, from which he eventually died in
1988. Bogarde nursed him in the last few months of his life. After
Forwood died, Bogarde was left rudderless and he became more reclusive,
eventually retiring from films after
Daddy Nostalgia (1990).
Mark Rowe and Jeremy Kay, in their obituary of
Bogarde, "Two brilliant lives - on film and in print," published in
"The Independent" on May, 9, 1999, wrote, "Although he documented with
frankness his early sexual encounters with girls and later his adoring
love for Kay Kendall and
Judy Garland, he never wrote about his
longest and closest relationship - with his friend and manager for more
than 50 years, Tony Forwood. Sir Dirk said the clues to his private
life were in his books. "If you've got your wits about you, you will
know who I am." The British documentary The Private Dirk Bogarde: Part One (2001) made with the permission of his family, stressed the
fact that he and Forwood were committed lifelong partners.
In the same issue, the National Film Theatre's David Thompson, in the
article "The public understood he was essentially gay," wrote about
Bogarde at his high-water mark in the 1950s, that "Audiences of that
time loved him . . . Very few people picked up on the fact that there
was a distinct gay undertone. It says something about British audiences
of the time. He had the good fortune to break out of that prison, and
it came through the film Victim (1961),
where he played a gay character, and through meeting with
Joseph Losey, who directed him in
The Servant (1963). For the first
time, Bogarde's ambivalence was exploited and used by film."
Bogarde's sexuality is not the issue; what was striking was that it was
an act of personal courage for one of Britian's leading box-office
attractions to appear in such a provocative and controversial film.
Even in the 21st century, many mainstream actors are afraid to play a
gay character lest they engender a public backlash against themselves,
which is much less likely than it was more than 40 years ago when
Bogarde made "Victim."
Apart from sociology, "Victim" marks the milestone in which critics and
audiences could discern the metamorphosis of Bogarde into the mature
actor who went on to become one of the cinema's finest performers. Most
of Bogarde's best and most serious roles come after "Victim," the film
in which he first stretched himself and broke out of the mold of "movie
star." He received the first of his six nominations as Best Actor from
the British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA) for the film.
Bogarde co-starred with John Mills in
The Singer Not the Song (1961),
and with Alec Guinness in
Damn the Defiant! (1962) (a.k.a.
"Damn the Defiant!"). In 1963 he reunited with Losey to film the first
of two Losey films with screenplays by Pinter. Bogarde's participation
in the two Losey/Pinter collaborations,
The Servant (1963) and
Accident (1967), in addition to 1964's
"King & Country", solidified his reputation. Critics and savvy
moviegoers appreciated the fact that Bogarde had developed into a
first-rate actor. For his role as the eponymous servant, Bogarde won
BAFTA's Best Actor Award. He had now "officially" arrived in the inner
circle of the best British film actors.
These three films also elevated Losey into the ranks of major directors
(Bogarde also starred in Losey's 1966 spy spoof
Modesty Blaise (1966), but that
film did little to enhance either man's reputation. He turned down the
opportunity to appear in Losey's
The Assassination of Trotsky (1972)
due to the poor quality of the script).
Philip French, in his obituary "Dark, exotic and yet essentially
English", published in "The Observer" on May 9, 1999, said of Bogarde,
"Losey discovered something more complex and sinister in his English
persona and his performance as Barrett, the malevolent valet in 'The
Servant,' scripted by Harold Pinter, is possibly the most subtle,
revealing thing he ever did - by confronting his homosexuality in a
non-gay context."
Losey told interviewer Michel Ciment that his work with Bogarde
represented a turning point in the actor's career, when he developed
into an actor of depth and power. He also frankly admitted to Ciment
that without Bogarde, his career would have stagnated and never reached
the heights of success and critical acclaim that it did in the 1960s.
Interestingly during the filming of "The Servant." Losey was
hospitalized with pneumonia. He asked Bogarde to direct the film in
order to keep shooting so that the producers would not cancel the film.
A reluctant Bogarde complied with Losey's wishes and directed for ten
days. He later said that he would never direct again.
Bogarde co-starred with up-and-coming actress
Julie Christie in
John Schlesinger's
Darling (1965), for which Christie won a
Best Actress Oscar and was vaulted into 1960s cinema superstardom.
During the filming of the movie, both Bogarde and Christie were waiting
to hear whether they would be cast as Yuri Zhivago and his lover Lara
in David Lean's upcoming blockbuster
Doctor Zhivago (1965). Christie
got the call, Bogarde didn't, but he was well along in the process of
establishing himself as one of the screen's best and most important
actors. He won his second BAFTA Best Actor Award for his performance in
"Darling."
Bogarde went on to major starring roles in such important pictures as
The Fixer (1968), for which
Alan Bates won a Best Actor
Academy Award nomination. While Bogarde never was nominated for an
Oscar, he had the honor of starring in two films for
Luchino Visconti,
The Damned (1969)
("The Damned") and
Death in Venice (1971), based on
Thomas Mann's novella "Death in
Venice." Bogarde felt that his performance as Gustav von Aschenbach,
the dying composer in love with a young boy and with the concept of
beauty, in "Death in Venice" was the "the peak and end of my career . .
. I can never hope to give a better performance in a better film."
Visconti told Bogarde that when the lights went up in a Los Angeles
screening room after a showing of "Death in Venice" for American studio
executives, no one said anything. The silence encouraged Visconti, who
believed it meant that the executives were undergoing a catharsis after
watching his masterpiece. However, he soon realized that, in Bogarde's
own words, "Apparently they were stunned into horrified silence . . . A
group of slumped nylon-suited men stared dully at the blank screen."
One nervous executive, feeling something should be said, got up and
asked, "Signore Visconti, who was responsible for the score of the
film?"
"Gustav Mahler," Visconti replied.
"Just great!", said the nervous man. "I think we should sign him."
After "Venice", Bogarde made only seven films over the next two
decades and was scathing about the quality of the scripts he was offered. To express himself artistically, he began to write. In his
third volumes of autobiography, he wrote, "No longer do the great
Jewish dynasties hold power: the people who were, when all is said and
done, the Picture People. Now the cinema is controlled by vast firms
like Xerox, Gulf & Western, and many others who deal in anything from
sanitary-ware to property development. These huge conglomerates,
faceless, soulless, are concerned only with making a profit; never a
work of art . . . "
He rued the fact that "it is pointless to be 'superb' in a commercial
failure; and most of the films which I had deliberately chosen to make
in the last few years were, by and large, just that. Or so I am always
informed by the businessmen. The critics may have liked them
extravagantly, but the distributors shy away from what they term 'A
Critic's Film', for it often means that the public will stay away.
Which, in the mass, they do: and if you don't make money at the
box-office you are not asked back to play again."
However, the courageous artist was not to be daunted: "But I'd had very
good innings. Better than most. So what the hell?" His well-written
works were enthusiastically received by critics and the book-buying
public.
Bogarde appeared in another film that flirted with the theme of German
fascism, Liliana Cavani's highly
controversial
The Night Porter (1974)
("The Night Porter"). He played an ex-SS officer who encounters a woman
with whom he had been engaged in a sado-masochistic affair at a World
War II Nazi extermination camp. Many critics found the film, which
featured extensive nudity courtesy of
Charlotte Rampling, crassly
offensive, but no one faulted Bogarde's performance.
He played Lt. Gen. Frederick "Boy" Browning in the all-star blockbuster
A Bridge Too Far (1977).
Although some of his fellow actors were World War II veterans, only
Bogarde had been involved in the actual battle. His performance
arguably is the best in the film. Appearing in
Alain Resnais' art house hit
Providence (1977) gave Bogarde the
opportunity to co-star with John Gielgud.
He also starred in German wunderkind
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's
adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's
Despair (1978), with a script by
Tom Stoppard. Though the film was not much
of a critical success, Bogarde's acting as 1930s German businessman
Hermann Hermann, a man who chooses to go mad when faced with the
paradoxes of his life in his proto-fascist fatherland, was highly
praised.
Bogarde enjoyed working with Fassbinder. He wrote that "Rainer's work
was extraordinarily similar to that of Visconti's; despite their age
difference, they both behaved, on set, in much the same manner. Both
had an incredible knowledge of the camera: the first essential. Both
knew how it could be made to function; they had the same feeling for
movement on the screen, of the all-important (and often-neglected)
'pacing' of a film, from start to finish, of composition, of texture,
and probably most of all they shared that strange ability to explore
and probe into the very depths of the character which one had offered
them."
After his experience with Fassbinder, he acted only four more times,
twice in feature films and twice on television. Bogarde was nominated
for a Golden Globe for playing Roald Dahl in
The Patricia Neal Story (1981).
He got rave reviews playing Jane Birkin's
father in Bertrand Tavernier's
Daddy Nostalgia (1990), his last
film.
In 1984 Bogarde was asked to serve as president of the jury at the
Cannes Film Festival, a huge honor for the actor, as he was the first
Briton ever to serve in that capacity. Two years earlier he had been
made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des lettres 1982. A decade later, he was
knighted by Queen Elizabeth II on
February 13, 1992.
Bogarde won two Best Actor Awards out of six nominations from the
British Academy of Film & Television Arts, for "The Servant" and
"Darling" in 1964 and 1966, respectively. He was also nominated in 1962
for "Victim," in 1968 for "Accident" and
Our Mother's House (1967) and
in 1972 for "Morte a Venezia."
Bogarde suffered a stroke in 1996, and though it rendered him partially
paralyzed, he was able to recover and live in his own flat in Chelsea.
However, by May of 1998 he required around-the-clock nursing care, and
he had his lawyers draw up a "living will," also known as a
no-resuscitation order. Bogarde publicly came out in favor of voluntary
euthanasia, becoming Vice President of the Voluntary Euthanasia
Society. He publicly addressed the subject of his own "living will,"
which ordered that no extraordinary measures be taken to keep him alive
should he become terminally ill.
The living will proved unnecessary. Dirk Bogarde died of a heart attack
on May 8, 1999, in his home in Chelsea, London, England. According to
his nephew Brock Van den Bogaerde, the family planned to hold a private
funeral but no memorial service in accordance with his uncle's wish
"just to forget me." Bogarde wanted to be cremated and have his ashes
scattered in France, and accordingly, his remains were returned to
Provence.
Margaret Hinxman, in her May 10, 1999, obituary in "The Guardian", said
of him, "At his peak and with directors he trusted - Joseph Losey,
Luchino Visconti and Alain Resnais - Dirk Bogarde . . . was probably
the finest, most complete, actor on the screen."
Clive Fisher's obituary in "The Independent" on May 10, 1999, praised
Bogarde as "a major figure because, wherever they were made, his finest
films are all somehow about him. He was a great self-portraitist and
the screen persona he fashioned, a stylization of his private being,
not only dominated its surroundings but spoke subliminally and
powerfully to British audiences about the tensions of the time, about
connivances and cruel respectabilities of England in the Fifties and
Sixties."
The secret of Dirk Bogarde's success as a great cinema actor was his
intimate relationship with the camera. Bogarde believed that the key to
acting on film was the eyes, specifically, the "look" of the actor.
Like Alan Ladd, it didn't matter if an
actor was good with line readings if they had mastery over the "look."
For many critics and movie-goers at the end of the 20th century, Dirk
Bogarde's face epitomized the "look" of Britain in the tumultuous
decades after the Second World War.
David Tindle's portrait of Bogarde is part of the collection of
London's National Portrait Gallery, London. In 1999, the portrait, on
temporary loan, was displayed at 10 Downing Street, the Prime
Minister's official residence, with other modern works of art.
Officially, Dirk Bogarde had become the look of Britain.