Dirk Bogarde

I came to know of Dirk Bogarde later in life... his life, not mine.  I was young.  I knew who he was but as a teenager I was not the least bit interested in English movies.  I wasn't interested in English actors unless, of course, they'd moved over here and made a slew of American films.  I was still in my Troy Donahue phase... what did I know about great English actors?

Just at the time we were studying Franz Liszt in my music appreciation class in high school, a film biography came out about him called Song Without End.  It seemed reckless not to go.  I needed to show some appreciation for his music in my class and this flick was gonna do it for me.  How did I know I would go gaga for three of its stars, one of whom was Bogarde as the famous composer?  More on this film in good time.

To this day I have still not seen his first seven British films.  Perhaps I should hang my head in shame when I say I have also never seen a series of four films he made (three in the 1950s and one in the 1960s)

often called The Doctor Films.  He played the same character, Dr. Simon Sparrow, in all of them.  There's Doctor in the House, Doctor at Sea, Doctor at Large and Doctor in Distress.  They were huge on his home turf and presumably elsewhere but to this day I've never seen them.

As I result I have chosen not to delve into any of these aforementioned films especially because I am going to comment on the 20 Bogarde films that I have seen.

The little baby was born with a very big name... Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde... in England in 1921.  A career in the arts seemed a given since his father was art editor for the London Times and his mother was an actress who was just beginning to receive international fame at the time of Dirk's birth.  He was an extremely pretty little boy who inherited his mother's theatricality and his father's taste in art.  Of course he was raised with those impeccable upper-crust British manners.  

In his autobiographies he is given to saying he had an almost idyllic childhood but it is largely embellished.  His mother got an offer to act in America and was anxious to accept but her husband forbade it.  In fact, he gave her an ultimatum... Hollywood or her marriage and family.  She chose the latter which brought about a lifetime of depression and alcoholism.  Dirk and his brother and sister were largely raised by a beloved nanny.

His first real taste of acting came in a school play and although he says he stood there frozen, it awakened in him a love of performing and annoyed his father who hoped he'd followed him on his career path. His father remained adamant and sent his son to art school where, of course, Dirk learned a great deal about art which would serve him well in life and promote an interest in buying great art in his adult life but that was it.

He began performing in local theater and would soon wind up on West End stages.  He was hooked.  He had that awful chat with his father.  He met Anthony Forwood, married at the time to actress Glynis Johns, who became his manager and closest companion until Bogarde went into the service.  Toward the end of the war, driving in a monsoon rain in Calcutta, Bogarde killed two pedestrians.  Even though he was cleared of any charges, he never drove again.

After the service and Forwood's divorce from Johns, the two moved in together and would stay put from the late 40s until Forwood died in 1988.  And yet, no matter the year, no matter the circumstances, they were just friends.  Forwood always agreed.  Around the same time and in response to the gossip, Bogarde said people can't understand how you can be unmarried, have an adoring family and simply wish to be on your own.  I am not homosexual but if that's what people want to think, they'll think it.  The truth is, I dread possession.  No one is ever allowed to come too close and the limit is always fixed by myself.  So far and no further.  There was some truth to the distance he liked to keep but the rest is pure rubbish.

I may cut him some slack because of the statement being made in the late 40s or early 50s and in England, no less, but what's his excuse for such bs in his later years?  He no longer had an acting career, was certainly not the gorgeous leading man of his youth, Forwood was dead and the world had changed.  What caring person would judge him about his truth?  In the closet his entire life... no, locked in the closet his entire life.  How sad.  What a great waste.

The Rank Organisation spotted him and wanted to turn him into a big movie star.  He signed a seven-year contract and he was consulted about the publicity they wanted to generate for him.  They were taken aback when he said he didn't want his personal life exploited in the public.  Did they know what he meant?  He, however, came up with his own version of his personal life and past and that's what the world got.  He hated working for Rank before the ink was dry.

Rank kept him working nonstop and in short order he became England's biggest movie star.  He also became a romantic leading man in what he would consider very ordinary films.  He only really cared for a half dozen of all the films he made.  He was dying to break out of the mold and away from Rank but it would be awhile.

He played a young thug in a manhunt thriller, The Blue Lamp (1950).  It became the most popular film in Britain in that year and helped catapult him to the top of the acting heap.  

So Long at the Fair (1950) has Jean Simmons top-billed as a young Brit who travels to Paris with her brother who promptly vanishes.  It seems that no one recalls seeing the brother except for Bogarde who met him the night before and agrees to do some detective work with Simmons. 

 

One of the actor's best early movies is The Stranger in Between (1952) in which he plays a violent criminal who reluctantly teams up with a mistreated boy (Jon Whiteley) to evade the law.  While there are some exciting sequences, it is the character study of the two that won me over.

I wasn't even aware of The Sleeping Tiger (1954) when I just happened to catch it on the tube about 10 years ago.  It concerns a convict (Bogarde) who breaks into a shrink's home and instead of having him arrested, the doctor (Alexander Knox) decides to try to rehabilitate him.  But problems occur when the doctor's wife (Alexis Smith) takes a fancy to the intruder.  What is she doing in a British film?  Loved watching this trio and although the premise is a bit of a stretch, it's pulled off well.

In 1958 Bogarde made The Doctor's Dilemma, which is not a part of 

the famed Doctor series.  It is based on a 1906 George Bernard Shaw play about a wife (Leslie Caron) who asks a busy doctor famed for curing TB to cure her husband (Bogarde).  When the doctor finds out what a scoundrel he is, including another wife hidden away, he resists doing the work without telling the wife why.  It bombed at the box office although I liked it chiefly due to the pairing of Bogarde and Caron. 

I love a mystery and 1959's Libel satisfied me completely in that regard.  Bogarde plays a shell-shocked WWII vet with memory problems who is accused by a former comrade of being an impostor.  Wife Olivia de Havilland wants Bogarde to sue.  It's a fascinating story.

Bogarde was beyond thrilled when he was offered a role in an American film, something he had dreamed about for years.  The film was that Liszt bio, Song Without End (1960).  By all sources it was a nightmare from start to finish.  Autocratic director Charles Vidor yelled and screamed at the top of his lungs to indicate just about anything he wanted.  Bogarde said he'd never worked under such tyranny.  Much of the director's rantings were directed at Bogarde.

He wanted to marry Capucine

More of it, however, was directed to French actress Capucine, also in her first American film.  Despite my adoring this woman beyond anything that is reasonable she was a wooden performer and Vidor couldn't stand it.  He screamed at her, then telling her to relax.  He even grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her like a rag doll.  Bogarde usually came to her defense which brought on Vidor's ire even more.  

Three weeks into the production Vidor died of a heart attack.  Of course his coworkers were surprised and yet not.  He was replaced by famed American director George Cukor.  He changed much about the film and while he got on well with Bogarde and Capucine, there wasn't a lot he could do to fix the screenplay which proved slow and tedious to many.  While I agree with that perception, I still enjoyed this movie.

I thought the oddest thing happened with Bogarde as a result of this film.  Despite his life-long gayness and being in a relationship with Forwood, Bogarde says he and the bisexual Capucine fell in love  and planned to get married.  She was also involved at the time with powerhouse producer Charles K. Feldman.  If true, what was going on?  Was this going to be a sham marriage to throw off the gossip columnists and fool fans?

Whatever the answer was, apparently Capucine's feelings were never quite as ingrained as Bogarde's and the marriage idea quickly faded.  Their friendship, however, would last a lifetime.  Bogarde continued his life with Forwood and there was never any further talk about marrying a woman.  Capucine returned to Feldman who begged his pal William Holden to take over the love and care of the actress.  

A costar he dearly loved... Ava Gardner

Around the same time I saw Bogarde opposite Ava Gardner in The Angel Wore Red  (1960).   He was signed after the original choice, Montgomery Clift, couldn't pass insurance requirements.  Feldman talked to someone who talked to someone about giving Bogarde the part.  At the time, Feldman wanted Bogarde far away from Capucine.

Here is the story of a defrocked priest who falls in love with a lusty cabaret singer against the backdrop of the Spanish civil war.  Bogarde and Gardner were crazy about one another in their fashion and would also become lifelong friends.  The film was a financial disaster for MGM and of course I very much liked it.

Then came Victim (1961) and Bogarde's career would change forever more.  He was tired of playing pretty boys and matinee idol-type roles.  He'd been looking for something meatier for some time.  But friends warned him that playing a gay character considering he was a gay man himself and a deeply-closeted one seemed foolhardy.  Since the character doesn't act upon his homosexual inclinations, Bogarde thought it would be okay.  The film, already reviewed, did for him exactly what he'd hoped... opened his chances to play more controversial, complex and even subversive roles.   And to that end, Bogarde bought out his Rank contract.  He was free to pursue what he wanted.  He would always credit Victim for providing him with one of the best roles of his career and opening doors for him.

Often called the first gay Mexican western, The Singer Not the Song (1961) required audiences to look hard for the gay part but again, in the it-takes-one-to-know-one vein, it can be done.  Was Bogarde starting to feel frisky and have some fun?  He looked hot in his tight leather pants.  He plays a villain who hates the Catholic church but loves its priest (John Mills).  The shootout ending had some eroticism but the overall film is a mess.

He reunited with his Victim director, Basil Dearden, for The Mindbenders (1963) about a doctor who agrees to be the guinea pig in an experiment... to see if he can successfully be brain-washed.  If so, there may be serious repercussions.  The film was successful with Bogarde fans but not in general.  The experimental Dirk was not satisfying the public.

Bogarde met Judy Garland circa 1957-58 when he flew to Hollywood to talk about the part of Gaston in Gigi.  (It would go to Louis Jourdan.)  They would become fast friends for about 10 years.  He liked her energy, he loved to hear the Hollywood gossip from the good ol' days and he loved her celebrity and they loved laughing.  Being with Garland, he would say, working with her, loving her as I did, had made me the most privileged of men.  She treasured gay friends and he would need to be a shrink, servant and nurse to one of the most neurotic of stars but their friendship endured.

Schmoozing with Garland

While visiting him at his English home, Garland asked him if he'd like to star opposite her in I Could Go on Singing  (1963) and he happily accepted.  He knew she would be boozed-up, drugged-out and impossible but he wanted to work with his friend.  Besides, he thought she might need him.  The story of a difficult American songbird who meets up with her former love, now a surgeon, who must somehow get her through her drugs and booze to take to the London Palladium stage, sounds autobiographical.  It was a rough shoot for Bogarde but he was glad to support his friend in her final movie.

Bogarde would come to say each of the four films I made with (Joseph) Losey between 62 and 66 was a bitter, exhausting, desperate battle.  On The Servant (1963) Losey was hospitalized for a time and he asked Bogarde to help him direct the film by telephone.  Here is a perverse drama essentially about a master and manservant who effectively switch roles but with the most unusual outcome.  Bogarde is the servant and James Fox as the master.  This was an exciting acting partnership and I came to love Fox and watch for his future roles and I loved Bogarde more than ever.  Sarah Miles and Wendy Craig are indispensable.

Another Bogarde-Losey collaboration is King and Country (1964) which has Bogarde as an army lawyer defending a soldier (Tom Courtenay) who is losing his grip on reality, for desertion.  Critics admired it but not so much the public.  Bogarde said it was the favorite of all his films.

Because of those offbeat films he wanted to make, his box office standing in England and Europe had diminished some.  He began looking at some character parts.  But not before he got some world-wide attention for his role in Darling (1965).  It may be the most emblematic of London's Swingin' 60s.   

Julie Christie is the title star, an utterly amoral model who sleeps her way through London society.  Bogarde plays a married man with children who leaves them for Christie until she tires of him and moves on.  Bogarde loved working on the film which I always thought had a gay sensibility about it but then costar Laurence Harvey and director John Schlesinger were also gay. 

Up next are two by director Luchino Visconti, two closely identified with Bogarde.  The Damned (1969) is considered a masterpiece by many, especially those with an open mind.  The story of a man who claws his way into a wealthy steel family during the Third Reich is compelling on several levels.  If homosexuality, pederasty, sado-masochism, incest, arson, massacre, madness, patricide and matricide aren't your cup of tea, you may not sing its praises. The acting by Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin and Helmut (Cabaret) Griem is exceptional.

I will acknowledge that the second Visconti film, Death in Venice (1971), is often considered the best performance of Bogarde's career and he definitely thought so.  He plays a sickly composer who is convalescing on an Italian beach where he tortures himself over his infatuation with a golden boy whose existence he can hardly bring himself to acknowledge.  I loved his look, that white suit and panama hat, just sitting and staring at the boy.

I (and others) have long called it Slow Death in Venice and I am not kidding when I say this is mind-numbingly slow and boring and I have never understood its tremendous appeal (for some).  Thomas Mann's original work is based on Gustav Mahler and in fact his music is stunningly used throughout.

Silvana Mangano, swathed in Givenchy, plays the boy's wealthy mother in a part coveted by Capucine.  Bogarde thought his good friend would be good in the part (so do I although there wasn't much for the character to do) and he did all he could to persuade the director but Visconti would not budge.  Some say Capucine, hoping to revive her career, never fully recovered.

Bogarde, at nearly 50, realized his days as a big British star were over and at the same time he had grown tired of living in England.  At first he and Forwood moved to Rome and after a year they settled in France.  They bought a 15th century farmhouse near Grasse in Provence.  They turned the property and house into a showplace.  Their beautiful gardens were envied.  Both men claimed their 20 years there as the happiest of their lives. 

Bogarde considered retiring (due to exhaustion) after making the sadomasochistic The Night Porter (1974) and there may be those who wished he had.  His earlier desire after making Victim to make films that were controversial, complex and perverse was certainly realized here. The depraved story opens 15 years after the war when an SS concentration camp officer, now a night porter at a hotel, and the inmate (Charlotte Rampling) he repeatedly raped and tortured resume their former relationship.  Oh the Nazis and their S/M... 

Bogarde corrrectly sensed that the end of his career was on the horizon.  Ever the clever re-inventor of himself, he became an author and as I see it, a very good one.  If it seems odd that a man who wanted to remain deep in the closet, hiding under the clothes and shoes, would write an autobiography (1977), consider then that he actually wrote seven (!) autobiographies.  And not in one of them did he mention that he was gay, much less in a decades-long relationship with Forwood.  If Bogarde mentioned his partner at all, it was along with handling some household task so people thought he was a butler or gardener or such.  Glynis Johns not so surprisingly said I never believed a single word that he wrote.  He also pumped out another

half dozen novels and one of short-story collections.

Bogarde had just a few more performances to give before he retired.  He, John Gielgud, David Warner and Ellen Burstyn give sterling performances as a dysfunctional family in Providence (1977) about a dying writer who incurs the wrath of his crazy family when they discover he's writing about them.  The movie got some international attention and awards but the U.S. savaged it.  I saw it at my local art house theater and have never forgotten the great acting.  Gielgud said it is one of his two favorite screen performances.

The last Bogarde film I saw was A Bridge Too Far (1977), a war movie I saw only because of the cast which includes Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Maximilian Schell, Hardy Kruger, Ryan O'Neal and James Caan.  Bogarde's portrayal of a real-life general he knew during the real war was considered controversial and he resisted the interpretation he was asked to give.  His future relationship with the director, Richard Attenborough, greatly suffered as a result.

He received a great many honors in his lifetime, all well-deserved.  They include five BAFTA nominations and two wins (for The Servant and Darling), a knighthood, an Honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Andrews University and most importantly from the adopted country he so loved, the French title of Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts des Lettres.

With longtime partner, Anthony Forwood

He suffered a minor stroke in 1987 while Forwood was dying from cancer and Parkinson's and after his longtime partner's passing, Bogarde was never quite the same.  He became even more of a recluse and for the last few years in particular, he was more depressed than he usually was.  In 1996 he underwent angioplasty and had a massive stroke following the operation.   It affected his speech and he was partially paralyzed resulting in use of a wheelchair.  In May of 1999, he died of a pulmonary embolism at age 78.

I thought he was a great English actor and I always admired the direction in which he took his career after he ditched Rank.  I always wished he been as brave in his private life as he was with his acting choices.  Despite what he may have said and despite being one of England's greatest actors, I think his greatest regret was that he didn't become a big movie star in America.  He wanted to be James Mason.

Next posting:

a biographical gay movie