Sir Dirk Bogarde (28 March 1921 – 8 May 1999)
was a
British actor and
novelist. Initially
a matinee star in such films as
Doctor in the House (1954) and
other
Rank Organisation pictures,
Bogarde later acted in
art house films like
Death in Venice (1971). He
also wrote several volumes of autobiography.
Early years
Bogarde
was born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den
Bogaerde in a nursing home at 12 Hemstal Road, West Hampstead
, London, of mixed Flemish,
Dutch
and Scottish
ancestry, and baptised on 30 October at St. Mary's Church,
Kilburn. His father, Ulric van den Bogaerde (born in Perry
Barr, Birmingham), was the art editor of
The Times and his mother
Margaret Niven was a former actress.
He
attended the former Allan Glen's School
in Glasgow (a time he described in his
autobiography as unhappy, although others have disputed his
account) and later studied at the Chelsea College
of Art & Design
.
War service
Bogarde served in
World War II, being
commissioned into the
Queen's
Royal Regiment in 1943. He reached the rank of
major and served in both the European and Pacific
theatres, principally as an intelligence officer.
He claimed to have
been one of the first Allied
officers in April 1945 to reach the Bergen-Belsen
concentration
camp in Germany, an experience that had the most profound
effect on him and about which he found it difficult to speak for
many years afterward. As
John
Carey has summed up with regard to John Coldstream's authorised
biography however, "it is virtually impossible that he [Bogarde]
saw Belsen or any other camp. Things he overheard or read seem to
have entered his imagination and been mistaken for lived
experience." Coldstream's analysis seems to conclude that this was
indeed the case. Nonetheless, the horror and revulsion at the
cruelty and inhumanity that he claimed to have witnessed still left
him with a deep-seated hostility towards Germany; in the late-1980s
he wrote that he would disembark from an elevator rather than ride
with a German.
Nevertheless, three of his more memorable
film roles were as Germans, one of them as a former SS
officer in
The Night
Porter.
He was most vocal, towards the end of his life, on the issue of
voluntary euthanasia, of which he became a staunch proponent after
witnessing the protracted death of his partner and manager Anthony
Forwood 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 bloody bundle,
shrapnel-ripped, legless, one arm only. The one arm reached out to
me, white eyeballs wide, unseeing, in the bloody mask that had been
a face. 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 ...
During the war I saw more wounded men being 'taken care of' than I
saw being rescued. Because sometimes you were too far from a
dressing station, sometimes you couldn't get them out. And they
were pumping blood or whatever; they were in such a wreck, the only
thing to do was to shoot them. And they were, so don't think they
weren't. That hardens you: You get used to the fact that it can
happen. And that it is the only sensible thing to do.
Film career
His London West End acting debut was in 1939, with stage name
"Derek Bogaerde" in
J. B. Priestley's play "Cornelius". After the war
his agent renamed him "Dirk Bogarde", and his good looks helped him
begin a career as a
film actor,
contracted to The
Rank
Organisation.Morley, Sheridan (1999).
Dirk Bogarde: Rank
Outsider. Second Edition. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN
0747546983
During the 1950s, Bogarde came to prominence playing a hoodlum who
shoots and kills a
Police Constable
in
The Blue Lamp (1950)
co-starring
Jack Warner and
Bernard Lee; by portraying a murderer who
befriends a young boy played by
Jon
Whiteley in
Hunted (aka
The Stranger in Between) (1952); in
Appointment in London (1953) as a
young airman in Bomber Command who, against orders, joins a major
offensive against the Germans;
The Sea Shall Not Have Them
(1954), playing a flight sergeant trapped in a dinghy with
Michael Redgrave;
Doctor in the House (1954), as a
medical student, in a film that made Bogarde one of the most
popular British stars of the 1950s, and co-starring
Kenneth More,
Donald
Sinden, and
James Robertson
Justice as their crabby mentor;
The Sleeping Tiger (1954), playing a
neurotic criminal with co-star
Alexis
Smith, and Bogarde's first film for American expatriate
director
Joseph Losey;
Doctor at Sea (1955), co-starring
Brigitte Bardot in one of her first
film roles;
Cast a Dark
Shadow (1955), as a man who marries women for money and
then murders them;
The
Spanish Gardener (1956), co-starring
Cyril Cusack,
Jon
Whiteley and
Bernard Lee;
Doctor at Large
(1957), another entry in the "Doctor series", co-starring later
Bond girl
Shirley Eaton;
A Tale of Two Cities
(1958), a faithful retelling of
Charles
Dickens' classic;
The Doctor's Dilemma
(1959), based on a play by
George
Bernard Shaw and co-starring
Leslie
Caron and
Robert Morley, (not a
part of the "Doctor series"); and
Libel (1959), playing two separate roles
and co-starring
Olivia de
Havilland. Bogarde quickly became a matinee idol and was
Britain's number one box office draw of the 1950s, gaining the
title of "The Matinee Idol of the Odeon".
After leaving the Rank Organisation in the early 1960s, Bogarde
abandoned his heart-throb image for more challenging parts, such as
barrister Melville Farr in
Victim (1961), directed by
Basil Dearden; decadent valet Hugo Barrett in
The Servant (1963),
directed by Joseph Losey and written by
Harold Pinter; television reporter Robert Gold
in
Darling (1965), directed
by
John Schlesinger; Stephen, a
bored Oxford University professor, in Losey's
Accident, (1967) also written by
Pinter; German industrialist Frederick Bruckman in
Luchino Visconti's
The Damned (1969); the ex-Nazi,
Max Aldorfer, in the chilling and controversial
The Night Porter (1974) directed by
Liliana Cavani; and, most notably, as
Gustav von Aschenbach in
Death in Venice (1971) also
directed by Visconti.
In some of his other roles during the 1960s and 1970s, Bogarde
played opposite renowned stars, yet several of the films were of
uneven quality. Some of these movies included
The Angel Wore Red (1960), playing
an unfrocked priest who falls in love with cabaret entertainer
Ava Gardner during the
Spanish Civil War;
Song Without End (1960), playing
Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist
Franz Liszt, a flawed film made under the
initial direction of
Charles Vidor
(who died during shooting), and completed by Bogarde's friend
George Cukor, in Bogarde's only
disappointing foray into Hollywood; the campy
The Singer Not the Song (1961),
as a Mexican bandit co-starring
John
Mills as a priest;
H.M.S. Defiant (aka Damn the Defiant!)
(1962), playing sadistic Lieutenant Scott-Padget, in which Bogarde
practically steals the movie from his co-star Sir Alec Guinness; I Could Go On Singing (1963),
co-starring Judy Garland in her final
screen role; The Mind
Benders (1963), an off-beat film where Bogarde plays an
Oxford professor conducting sensory deprivation experiments at
Oxford
University
(precursor to Altered
States (1980)); Hot
Enough for June, (aka Agent 8 3/4) (1964), a
James Bond-type spy spoof co-starring Robert Morley; King & Country (1964), playing
an army lawyer reluctantly defending deserter Tom Courtenay; Modesty Blaise (1966), a
campy spy send-up playing archvillain Gabriel opposite Monica Vitti and Terence Stamp; Our Mother's House (1967), an
off-beat film playing an estranged father of seven children,
directed by Jack Clayton; The Fixer (1968), based on Bernard Malamud's novel, co-starring
Alan Bates; Sebastian (1968), playing a
former Oxford professor heading the all-female decoding office of
British Intelligence, co-starring Sir John
Gielgud, Susannah York, and
Lilli Palmer; 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), in a
rather controversial performance as
Lieutenant General Frederick "Boy"
Browning, also starring
Sean
Connery and an all-star cast;
Providence (1977), directed by
Alain Resnais and co-starring Sir John
Gielgud;
Despair (1978)
directed by
Rainer Werner
Fassbinder; and
Daddy
Nostalgie, (aka
These Foolish Things) (1991)
co-starring
Jane Birkin as his daughter,
Bogarde's final film role.
While a contract performer at the Rank Organisation, Bogarde was
considered for a screen version of
Lawrence Of Arabia, to be
directed by
Anthony Asquith. The
role of Lawrence eventually went to
Peter
O'Toole and was directed by
David
Lean. Not getting the role of Lawrence of Arabia was Bogarde's
greatest screen disappointment. Bogarde was also reportedly
considered for the title role in MGM's
Doctor Zhivago (1965). Earlier,
he declined
Louis Jourdan's role as
Gaston in MGM's
Gigi
(1958). .
Also, according to John Coldstream's
biography Bogarde was offered a stage role at The Chichester
Festival Theatre
by Sir Laurence
Olivier, but had to decline due to film
commitments.
Bogarde was nominated six times as Best Actor by the
British Academy of
Film and Television Arts (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.
Later career and private life
In 1977, Bogarde embarked on his second career as an author.
Starting with a first volume
A Postillion Struck by
Lightning, he wrote a series of autobiographical volumes,
novels and book reviews. As a writer Bogarde displayed a witty,
elegant, highly literate and thoughtful style, though some find his
use of words to be somewhat precious at times.
Bogarde was a life-long bachelor and, during his life, was reported
to be
homosexual. Bogarde's most
serious friendship with a woman was with the
bisexual French actress
Capucine. For many years he shared his homes, first
in Amersham, England, then in France with his manager
Anthony Forwood (a former husband of the
actress
Glynis Johns and the father of
her only child, actor
Gareth
Forwood), but repeatedly denied that their relationship was
anything other than friendship. These denials were understandable,
mainly given that homosexual acts were illegal during most of his
career, and also given his following among female admirers which he
was loath to jeopardise. His brother Gareth Van den Bogaerde
confirmed in a 2004 interview with
Jan Moir
that Bogarde was engaging in homosexual sex at a time when such
acts were illegal, and also that his long-term relationship with
Tony Forwood was more than simply that of a manager and
friend.
Many people believed Bogarde's refusal to enter into a marriage of
convenience in order to cover up his homosexuality was 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 Bogarde
could never come out as gay in later life, after his movie stardom
had ended, because he would not have been able to deal with the
fact that he had been forced to live a lie during his career.
Bogarde starred in the landmark
1961
film Victim, playing a
prominent homosexual barrister in London who fights the
blackmailers of a young man with whom he had an emotional
relationship. The young man commits suicide after being arrested
for embezzlement, rather than ruin the attorney's reputation. In
the process of exposing the ring of extortionists, Bogarde's
character puts at risk his successful legal career and marriage in
order to see that justice is served.
Victim was the first
mainstream British film to treat the subject of homosexuality
seriously and the film helped lead to a
change in English law decriminalising
homosexuality.
Bogarde's controversial film choices later in his career led him to
have something of a
cult following.
The singer
Morrissey was a fan and,
according to
Charlotte Rampling,
Bogarde was approached in 1990 by
Madonna to appear in her video for
Justify My Love, citing
The Night Porter as an inspiration. Bogarde declined the
offer.
In 1984,
Bogarde served as president of the jury at the Cannes Film
Festival
. He was the first Briton ever to serve in
that capacity, and this was an immense honor for Bogarde.
He was
knighted in 1992 for services to
acting, and was the recipient of honorary doctorates from several
universities including St Andrews
and Sussex
.
Formerly a heavy smoker, Bogarde suffered a minor stroke in
November 1987 while Anthony Forwood was dying of
liver cancer and
Parkinson's disease. Never afraid of
voicing his opinion, after witnessing Forwood's protracted death he
became active in promoting
voluntary euthanasia for terminally ill
patients in Britain and toured the UK giving lectures and answering
questions from live audiences on the subject. It was a cause, he
stated, that had been important to him since the war, during which
he had witnessed severely injured men pleading to be put out of
their misery.
In September 1996, he underwent
angioplasty to unblock arteries leading to his
heart and suffered a
pulmonary
embolism following this operation. For the final three years of
his life Bogarde was paralyzed on one side of his body, which
affected his speech and left him wheelchair bound. He managed,
however, to complete a final volume of autobiography, which covered
the stroke and its effect on him. He spent some time the day before
he died with his good friend
Lauren
Bacall. Bogarde died in London from a heart attack on 8 May
1999, aged 78. His ashes were scattered at his former estate of "Le
Haut Clermont" in Grasse, Southern France.
Filmography
Titles preceded by an asterisk (*) are
films made for television.
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, 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
Biography
- The Films of Dirk Bogarde by Margaret Hinxman &
Susan d'Arcy, 1974
- Dirk Bogarde: The Complete Career Illustrated with
Robert Tanitch, 1988.
- Dirk Bogarde, Rank Outsider, by Sheridan Morley, 1996.
- Dirk Bogarde, The Authorised Biography, by John Coldstream, 2004.
- Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters, by John Coldstream,
2008.
References
- John Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde: The Authorised Biography,
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004 (ISBN 0 297 60730 8)),
p.24
- John Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde: The Authorised Biography,
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004 (ISBN 0 297 60730 8),
p.24
-
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20041003/ai_n12591787
- John Carey, "Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters selected and
edited by John Coldstream," The Sunday Times, 10 August
2008, p.2
- John Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde: The Authorised Biography,
(London: Phoenix, 2005), pp.20-21.
- Dirk Bogarde, "Out of the Shadows of Hell," in: For the Time
Being (London: Penguin, 1988)
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071910/
- Review by Mansel Stimpson of Dirk Bogarde: The
Authorised Biography, by John Coldstream
- Jan Moir Gareth Van den Bogaerde interview, The
Telegraph, 2 September 2004
- Coldstream, John Dirk Bogarde: The Authorised
Biography (2004)
- Interview, The Culture Show, BBC2, 17 June 2006
- Voluntary Euthanasia Society Interview
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