Dirk Bogarde

Sir Dirk Bogarde (born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde; 28 March 1921 – 8 May 1999) was an English actor, novelist and screenwriter. Initially a matinée idol in films such as ''Doctor in the House'' (1954) for the Rank Organisation, he later acted in art house films, evolving from "heartthrob to icon of edginess". In a second career, he wrote seven best-selling volumes of memoirs, six novels, and a volume of collected journalism, mainly from articles in ''The Daily Telegraph''. During five years of active military duty during World War Two, he reached the rank of major and was awarded seven medals. His poetry has been published in war anthologies; a painting by Bogarde, also from the war, hangs in the British Museum, with many more in the Imperial War Museum.

Having come to prominence in films including ''The Blue Lamp'' in the early 1950s, Bogarde starred in the successful ''Doctor'' film series (1954–1963). He twice won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, for ''The Servant'' (1963) and '' Darling'' (1965). His other notable film roles included ''Victim'' (1961), ''Accident'' (1967), '' The Damned'' (1969), ''Death in Venice'' (1971), ''The Night Porter'' (1974), '' A Bridge Too Far'' (1977) and '' Despair'' (1978). He was appointed a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1990 and a Knight Bachelor in 1992.

Early years and education

Bogarde was the eldest of three children born to Ulric van den Bogaerde (1892–1972) and Margaret Niven (1898–1980). Ulric was born in Perry Barr, Birmingham, of Flemish ancestry, and was art editor of ''The Times''. Margaret Niven, a former actress, was Scottish, from Glasgow. Dirk Bogarde was born in a nursing home at 12 Hemstal Road,Coldstream 2004, p. 24. West Hampstead, London, and was baptised on 30 October 1921, at St. Mary's Church, Kilburn. He had a younger sister, Elizabeth (born 1924), and a brother, Gareth Ulric Van Den Bogaerde, an advertising film producer, born in July 1933 in Hendon.Moir, Jon
"Dirk could be cruel – but I know why."
''The Daily Telegraph'' (London), 2 September 2004. Retrieved: 29 March 2015.

Conditions in the family home in North London became cramped, so Bogarde was moved to Glasgow to stay with relatives of his mother. He stayed there for more than three years, returning at the end of 1937. He attended University College School and the former Allan Glen's High School of Science in Glasgow, a time he described in his autobiography as an unhappy one. He secured a scholarship to the Royal College of Arts, completed his two year course, and landed "a back-stage job as tea-boy at seven shillings and sixpence per week". A chance to act as a stand-in convinced Bogarde that "he needed some additional basic training, and he joined a provincial repertory group". His first on-screen appearance was as an uncredited extra in the George Formby comedy, '' Come On George!'' (1939).

War service

During the war, Derek "Pip" Bogaerde served in the British Army, initially with the Royal Corps of Signals before being commissioned at the age of 22 into the Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey) in 1943. He served in both the European and Pacific theatres, principally as an intelligence officer.

D-Day and aftermath

Bogarde served as an intelligence officer with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s 21st Army Group as it liberated Europe. Taylor Downing's book, ''Spies in the Sky'', tells of Bogarde's work in photo-reconnaissance in the aftermath of D-Day, moving through Normandy with Royal Canadian Air Force units. By July 1944, they were located at the "B.8" airfield at Sommervieu, near Bayeux. As an air photographic interpreter with the rank of captain, Bogarde was later attached to the Second Army, where he selected ground targets in France, Holland, and Germany for the Second Tactical Air Force and RAF Bomber Command.''Above The Title'', Yorkshire Television interview, 1986. Villages on key routes were heavily bombed to prevent the Wehrmacht's armour from reaching the invasion lodgement areas. In a 1986 Yorkshire Television interview with Russell Harty, Bogarde recalled going on painting trips, sometimes to see the villages which he had selected as targets:

"I found what I had thought in the rubble were a whole row of footballs, and they weren't footballs... they were children's heads...A whole school of kids, a convent, had been pulled out of school, and lined up in this little narrow alleyway between the buildings to save them from the bombing, and the whole thing had come in on top of them."

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

Bogarde said he was one of the first Allied officers to reach the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany on 20 April 1945, an experience that had the most profound effect on him and about which he had difficulty speaking for many years afterward.

"The gates were opened, and then I realised that I was looking at Dante's ''Inferno''. And a girl came up who spoke English, because she recognised one of the badges, and she ... her breasts were like, sort of, empty purses, she had no top on, and a pair of man's pyjamas, you know, the prison pyjamas, and no hair... and all around us there were mountains of dead people, I mean mountains of them, and they were slushy, and they were slimy."

There was some doubt as to whether he really visited Belsen, although, more than a decade after publishing his biography, and following additional research, John Coldstream concluded that "it is now possible to state with some authority that he did at least set foot inside the camp."

Long-term effects

The horror and revulsion at the cruelty and inhumanity that he said he witnessed left him with a deep-seated hostility towards Germany; in the late 1980s, he wrote that he would disembark from a lift rather than ride with a German of his generation. Nevertheless, three of his more memorable film roles were as Germans, one of them as a former SS officer in ''The Night Porter'' (1974).

Bogarde was most vocal towards the end of his life on voluntary euthanasia, of which he became a staunch proponent after witnessing the protracted death of his lifelong partner and manager Anthony Forwood (the former husband of actress Glynis Johns) in 1988. He gave an interview to John Hofsess, London executive director of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society:

"My views were formulated as a 24-year-old officer in Normandy ... On one occasion, the jeep ahead hit a mine ... Next thing I knew, there was this chap in the long grass beside me. A gurgling voice said, "Help. Kill me." With shaking hands I reached for my small pouch to load my revolver ... I had to look for my bullets—by which time somebody else had already taken care of him. I heard the shot. I still remember that gurgling sound. A voice pleading for death."

Career

Bogarde's London West End theatre-acting debut was in 1939, with the stage name "Derek Bogaerde", in J. B. Priestley's play ''Cornelius''. After the war, he started pursuing film roles using the name "Dirk Bogarde". One of Bogarde's earliest starring roles was in the 1949 film ''Once a Jolly Swagman'', where he played a daring speedway ace, riding for the Cobras. This was filmed at New Cross Speedway, in South East London, during one of the postwar years in which speedway was the biggest spectator sport in the UK.

Film stardom

Bogarde was contracted to the Rank Organisation under the wing of the prolific independent film producer Betty Box, who produced most of his early films and was instrumental in creating his matinée idol image.Morley 1999, pp. 8–9. His Rank contract began following his appearance in ''Esther Waters'' (1948), his first credited role, replacing Stewart Granger. Another early role of his was in ''The Blue Lamp'' (1950), playing a hoodlum who shoots and kills a police constable ( Jack Warner), whilst in ''So Long at the Fair'' (1950), a film noir, he played a handsome artist who comes to the rescue of Jean Simmons during the World's Fair in Paris. He also had roles as an accidental murderer in '' Hunted'' (or ''The Stranger in Between'', 1952), a young wing commander in Bomber Command in ''Appointment in London'' (1953), and in ''Desperate Moment'' (1953), a wrongly imprisoned man who regains hope of clearing his name when he learns his sweetheart, Mai Zetterling, is still alive.

Bogarde featured as a medical student in ''Doctor in the House'' (1954), a film that made him one of the most popular British stars of the 1950s. The film co-starred Kenneth More and Donald Sinden, with James Robertson Justice as their crabby mentor. The production was initiated by Betty Box, who had picked up a copy of the book at Crewe during a long rail journey and had seen its possibility as a film. Box and Ralph Thomas had difficulties convincing Rank executives that people would go to a film about doctors and that Bogarde, who up to then had played character roles, had sex appeal and could play light comedy. They were allocated a modest budget and were allowed to use only available Rank contract artists. The film was the first of the ''Doctor'' film series based on the books by Richard Gordon.

In ''The Sleeping Tiger'' (1954), Bogarde played a neurotic criminal with co-star Alexis Smith. It was Bogarde's first film for American expatriate director Joseph Losey. He did his second ''Doctor'' film, '' Doctor at Sea'' (1955), co-starring Brigitte Bardot in one of her first film roles; played a returning colonial who fights the Mau-Mau with Virginia McKenna and Donald Sinden in ''Simba'' (1955); ''Cast a Dark Shadow'' (1955), as a man who marries women for money and then murders them; '' The Spanish Gardener'' (1956), with Michael Hordern, Jon Whiteley and Cyril Cusack; '' Doctor at Large'' (1957), again with Donald Sinden, another entry in the ''Doctor'' film series, with later Bond girl Shirley Eaton; the Powell and Pressburger production ''Ill Met by Moonlight'' (1957) co-starring Marius Goring as German General Kreipe, kidnapped on Crete by Patrick "Paddy" Leigh Fermor (Bogarde) and W. Stanley Moss (David Oxley), and a fellow band of Cretan resistance fighters based on W. Stanley Moss' real-life account (''Ill Met by Moonlight'') of the Second World War abduction; ''A Tale of Two Cities'' (1958), a faithful retelling of Charles Dickens' classic; as a flight lieutenant in the Far East, who falls in love with a beautiful Japanese teacher Yoko Tani in ''The Wind Cannot Read'' (1958);'' The Doctor's Dilemma'' (1959), based on a play by George Bernard Shaw and co-starring Leslie Caron and Robert Morley; and '' Libel'' (1959), playing three separate roles and co-starring Olivia de Havilland.

Art house and European cinema

After leaving the Rank Organisation in the early 1960s, Bogarde abandoned his heart-throb image and "chose roles that challenged received morality and that pushed the scope of cinema". He starred in the film ''Victim'' (1961), playing a London barrister who fights the blackmailers of a young man with whom he has had a deeply emotional relationship. The young man commits suicide after being arrested for embezzlement, rather than ruin his beloved's career. In exposing the ring of extortionists, Bogarde's character risks his reputation and marriage to see that justice is done. ''Victim'' was the first British film to portray the humiliation to which gay people were exposed via discriminatory law and as a victimised minority; it is said to have had some effect upon the later Sexual Offences Act 1967 ending the illegal status of male homosexual activity.

He again teamed up with Joseph Losey to play Hugo Barrett, a decadent valet, in ''The Servant'' (1963), with a script by Harold Pinter, and which garnered Bogarde a BAFTA Award. That year also saw the release of '' The Mind Benders'', in which he played a professor conducting sensory deprivation experiments at Oxford University (and which anticipates ''Altered States'' (1980)). The following year saw another collaboration with Losey in the antiwar film '' King & Country'', in which Bogarde played an army officer at a court-martial, reluctantly defending deserter Tom Courtenay. He won a second BAFTA for his role as a television broadcaster-writer Robert Gold in '' Darling'' (1965), directed by John Schlesinger. Bogarde, Losey and Pinter reunited for ''Accident'' (1967), which recounted the travails of Stephen, a bored Oxford University professor.

''Our Mother's House'' (1967) is an off-beat film noir and the British entry at the Venice Film Festival, directed by Jack Clayton, in which Bogarde plays a ne'er-do-well father who descends upon "his" seven children on the death of their mother. In his first collaboration with Luchino Visconti in ''La Caduta degli dei, The Damned'' (1969), Bogarde played German industrialist Frederick Bruckmann alongside Ingrid Thulin. Two years later Visconti was back at the helm when Bogarde portrayed Gustav von Aschenbach in ''Morte a Venezia, Death in Venice''. In 1974, the controversial ''Il Portiere di notte'' (or ''The Night Porter'') saw Bogarde cast as an ex-Nazi, Max Aldorfer, co-starring Charlotte Rampling, and directed by Liliana Cavani. He played Claude, the lawyer son of a dying, drunken writer (John Gielgud) in the well-received, multidimensional French film ''Providence'' (1977), directed by Alain Resnais, and industrialist Hermann Hermann, who descends into madness in '' Despair'' (1978) directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. "It was the best performance I've ever done in my life", he later recounted. "Fassbinder... really screwed the film up. He tore it to pieces with a scissors." This led to Bogarde going on an extended haitus. "And I thought, 'OK. Give it up'. So I gave it up and I didn't do another film for fourteen years". He returned one last time, as Daddy in Bertrand Tavernier's '' Daddy Nostalgie'', (or''These Foolish Things'') (1991), co-starring Jane Birkin as his daughter, Bogarde's final film role.

Other later career roles

In the 1960s and 1970s Bogarde played opposite many renowned stars. ''The Angel Wore Red'' (1960) saw Bogarde playing an unfrocked priest who falls in love with cabaret entertainer Ava Gardner during the Spanish Civil War. The same year, in ''Song Without End'' he portrayed Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt, a film initially directed by Charles Vidor (who died during shooting) and completed by Bogarde's friend George Cukor, which was the actor's only foray into Hollywood. The campy ''The Singer Not the Song'' (1961) starred Bogarde as a Mexican bandit alongside John Mills as a priest.

In '' H.M.S. Defiant'' (or ''Damn the Defiant!'') (1962), he played the sadistic Lieutenant Scott-Padget, co-starring Sir Alec Guinness; ''I Could Go On Singing'' (1963), co-starring Judy Garland in her final screen role; ''Hot Enough for June'' (or ''Agent 8¾'') (1964), a James Bond-type spy spoof co-starring Robert Morley; ''Modesty Blaise'' (1966), a campy spy send-up playing archvillain Gabriel opposite Monica Vitti and Terence Stamp and directed by Joseph Losey; '' The Fixer'' (1968), based on Bernard Malamud's novel, co-starring Alan Bates; '' Sebastian'' (1968), as Sebastian, a mathematician working on code decryption, who falls in love with Susannah York, a decrypter in the all-female decoding office he heads for British Intelligence, also co-starring Sir John Gielgud and Lilli Palmer, co-produced by Michael Powell; ''Oh! What a Lovely War'' (1969), co-starring Sir John Gielgud and Sir Laurence Olivier and directed by Richard Attenborough; '' Justine'' (1969), directed by George Cukor; '' Le Serpent'' (1973), co-starring Henry Fonda and Yul Brynner;

'' A Bridge Too Far'' (1977) saw Bogarde give a controversial performance as Lieutenant General Frederick 'Boy' Browning, also starring Sean Connery and an all-star cast and again directed by Richard Attenborough. Bogarde claimed he had known General Browning from his time on Field Marshal Montgomery's staff during the war, and took issue with the largely negative portrayal of the general whom he played in ''A Bridge Too Far''. Browning's widow, author Dame Daphne du Maurier, ferociously attacked his characterisation and "the resultant establishment fallout, much of it homophobic, wrongly convinced ogardethat the newly ennobled Sir Richard ttenboroughhad deliberately contrived to scupper his own chance of a knighthood." While several of his fellow actors were veterans, Bogarde was the only cast member to have served at the battles being depicted in the film, having entered Brussels the day after its liberation, and worked on the planning of Operation Market Garden.

Biographer and novelist

In 1977, Bogarde embarked on his second career as an author. Starting with a first volume ''A Postillion Struck by Lightning'' (an allusion to the phrase ''My postillion has been struck by lightning''), he wrote a series of 15 best-selling books—nine volumes of memoirs and six novels, as well as essays, reviews, poetry and collected journalism. As a writer, Bogarde displayed a witty, elegant, highly literate and thoughtful style.

Missed roles

While under contract with the Rank Organisation, Bogarde was set to play the role of T. E. Lawrence in a proposed film ''Lawrence'' written by Terrence Rattigan and to be directed by Anthony Asquith. On the eve of production, after a year of preparation by Bogarde, Rattigan, and Asquith, the film was scrapped without full explanation—ostensibly for budgetary reasons—to the dismay of all three men. The abrupt scrapping of ''Lawrence'', a role long researched and keenly anticipated by Bogarde, was among his greatest screen disappointments. (Rattigan reworked the script as a play, ''Ross'', which opened to great success in 1960, initially with Alec Guinness playing Lawrence.) Bogarde was also reportedly considered for the title role in MGM's ''Doctor Zhivago'' (1965). Earlier, he had declined Louis Jourdan's role as Gaston in MGM's '' Gigi'' (1958).

His contract with Rank had precluded him from accepting the lead in the film adaptation of John Osborne’s ground-breaking stage play, Look Back in Anger in 1959. In 1961, Bogarde was offered the chance to play Hamlet at the recently founded Chichester Festival Theatre by artistic director Sir Laurence Olivier but had to decline owing to film commitments. Bogarde later said that he regretted declining Olivier's offer and with it the chance to "really learn my craft."

Personal life

For nearly four decades, Bogarde shared his homes, first in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, and then in France, with Anthony Forwood, who had been married to actress Glynis Johns during the 1940s. They were together until Forwood's death in 1988. Bogarde repeatedly denied that his relationship to Forwood was anything other than platonic. There was much speculation as to whether this was in fact the case, given that male homosexual acts were criminal during most of his career, and could lead to prosecution and imprisonment. Rank Studio contracts included morality clauses, which provided for termination in the event of "immoral conduct" on the part of the actor. These included same-sex relationships, thus potentially putting the actor's career in jeopardy.

Bogarde's refusal to enter into a marriage of convenience was possibly a major reason for his failure to become a star in Hollywood, together with the critical and commercial failure of ''Song Without End''. His friend Helena Bonham Carter believed he did not come out during later life because this would have unbearably highlighted his regret at having been forced to camouflage his sexual orientation during his film career. He struggled with the trauma of his active service, compounded by rapid fame, recounting, "First there was the war, and then the peace to cope with, and then suddenly I was a film star. It happened all too soon”.

Death

Bogarde had a minor stroke in November 1987 while Forwood was dying of liver cancer and Parkinson's disease. In September 1996, he underwent angioplasty to unblock arteries leading to his heart and had a massive stroke following the operation. He was paralysed on one side of his body, which affected his speech. After the stroke, he used a wheelchair. He then completed the final volume of his autobiography, which covered the effects of the stroke, and published an edition of his collected journalism, mainly from ''The Daily Telegraph''. He spent some time with his friend Lauren Bacall the day before he died at his home in London from a pulmonary embolism on 8 May 1999, aged 78. His ashes were scattered at his former estate in Grasse, southern France.

Honours and awards

Bogarde was nominated five times as Best Actor by BAFTA, winning twice, for ''The Servant'' in 1963 and for '' Darling'' in 1965. He also received the London Film Critics Circle Lifetime Award in 1991. He made a total of 63 films between 1939 and 1991. In 1983, he received a special award for service to the cinema at the Cannes Festival. He was awarded the British Film Institute Fellowship in 1987. In 1988, Bogarde was honoured with the first BAFTA Tribute Award for an outstanding contribution to cinema.

Bogarde was created a Knight Bachelor in the United Kingdom in 1992, awarded the ''Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres'' by the French government in 1990, an honorary doctorate of literature on 4 July 1985 by St Andrews University in Scotland, and an honorary doctorate of letters in 1993 by the University of Sussex in England.

In 1984, Bogarde served as president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, the first British person to serve in this capacity.

Filmography

Titles preceded by an asterisk (*) are films made for television.

British box office ranking

For several years British film exhibitors voted Bogarde one of the most popular local stars at the box office:
*1953 – 5th
*1954 – 2nd (9th-most popular international star)
*1955 – 1st (also most popular international star)
*1956 – 3rd
*1957 – 1st (also most popular international star)
*1958 – 2nd (also 2nd-most popular international star)
*1959 – 5th
*1960 – 9th-most popular international star
*1961 – 8th-most popular international star
*1963 – 9th-most popular international star

Other works

Autobiographies and memoirs

*''A Postillion Struck by Lightning'', 1977
*''Snakes and Ladders'', 1978
*''An Orderly Man'', 1983
*''Backcloth'', 1986
*''A Particular Friendship'', 1989
*''Great Meadow: An Evocation'', 1992
*''A Short Walk from Harrods'', 1993
*''Cleared for Take-Off'', 1995
*''For the Time Being: Collected Journalism'', 1998
*''Dirk Bogarde: The Complete Autobiography'' (contains the first four autobiographies only)

Novels

*''A Gentle Occupation'', 1980
*''Voices in the Garden'', 1981
*''West of Sunset'', 1984
*''Jericho'', 1991
*''A Period of Adjustment'', 1994
*''Closing Ranks'', 1997

Discography

*''Lyrics for Lovers'' ( London Records, 1960)
*as Njegus in ''Die lustige Witwe'' (speaking role—of a narration by Tom Stoppard—in a complete recording of the opera conducted by Franz Welser-Möst)Rodney Milnes. Opera in Concert - Die lustige Witwe. Glyndebourne Festival Opera at the Royal Festival Hall, 20 July 1993. ''Opera'', September 1993, p1123-24. (The concert was recorded and issued on EMI CDS 5 55152-2.)

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

* Bogarde, Dirk. ''For The Time Being: Collected Journalism.'' Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1999. .
* Bogarde, Dirk. ''Snakes and Ladders''. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1988. .
* Brownlow, Kevin. ''David Lean: A Biography''. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. .
* Coldstream, John. ''Dirk Bogarde: The Authorised Biography''. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004. .
* Coldstream, John. ''Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters''. London: Phoenix, 2009. .
* Hawkins, Diana and Richard Attenborough. ''Entirely Up To You, Darling''. London: Arrow Books, 2009. .
* Hinxman, Margaret and Susan d'Arcy. ''The Films of Dirk Bogarde'' Richmond, California: Literary Services & Production, 1974. .
* Morley, Sheridan. ''Dirk Bogarde: Rank Outsider''. Pontarddulais, Swansea, UK: Macmillan Distribution Limited, 2000. .
* Shipman, David. ''The Great Movie Stars: The International Years''. London: Macdonald, 1989, p. 55-60
* Tanitch, Robert. ''Dirk Bogarde: The Complete Career Illustrated''. London: Ebury Press, 1988. .

Archival resources

* Dirk Bogarde collection, 1957–1993 (4.5 linear feet) is housed at Boston University Dept. of Special Collections
* Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, 1937–1980 (68 linear feet) are housed at the Columbia University Libraries. The Matson Company was the literary agency with which Bogarde worked; the collection contains correspondence and other documents related to his literary career.

External links

dirkbogarde.co.uk Official website of the Dirk Bogarde Estate
*
* Sir Dirk Bogarde at Faceboo

* . Biography and credits

Dirk Bogarde by Neil McNally


Dirk Bogarde at glbtq.com

The letters of Dirk Bogarde
at Telegraph.co.uk
Part 1Part 2


The Spectator
Bryan Forbesreviews The letters of Dirk Bogarde

Interview with Russell Harty in 1986

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bogarde, Dirk
1921 births
1999 deaths
20th-century English male actors
20th-century English novelists
Actors awarded knighthoods
Alumni of Chelsea College of Arts
People educated at Allan Glen's School
Best British Actor BAFTA Award winners
British Army personnel of World War II
Dutch–English translators
English male film actors
English memoirists
English people of Dutch descent
English people of Scottish descent
English male stage actors
Knights Bachelor
People from Grasse
People from West Hampstead
Queen's Royal Regiment officers
People educated at St Catherine's School, Twickenham
20th-century translators
English male novelists
British male comedy actors
20th-century English male writers
English male non-fiction writers
Royal Corps of Signals soldiers
Deaths from pulmonary embolism
Military personnel from London