Dirk Bogarde
Dirk Bogarde | |
---|---|
Born | Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde 28 March 1921 West Hampstead, London, England |
Died | 8 May 1999 Chelsea, London, England | (aged 78)
Nationality | English |
Occupations |
|
Years active | 1939–1990 |
Military career | |
Allegiance | United Kingdom |
Service/ | British Army |
Rank | Major |
Battles/wars | World War II
|
Website | dirkbogarde.co.uk (Dirk Bogarde Estate) |
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
In a second career, he wrote seven best-selling volumes of memoirs, six novels, and a volume of collected
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,[3] West Hampstead, London, and was baptised on 30 October 1921, at St. Mary's Church, Kilburn.[3] 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.[4]
Conditions in the family home in north London became cramped, so Bogarde was moved to
War service
During the war, Derek "Pip" Bogaerde served in the British Army, initially with the Royal Corps of Signals. He was then commissioned at the age of 22 into the Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey) on 2 April 1943 with the rank of second lieutenant.[7] 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
"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."[9]
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.[11]
"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."[9]
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".[12]
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
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
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
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".[1] 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, to some extent, the illegal status of male homosexual activity.
He again teamed up with Joseph Losey to play Hugo Barrett, a decadent valet, in
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.[17] 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."[18] This led to Bogarde going on an extended hiatus. "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, (orThese Foolish Things) (1991), co-starring Jane Birkin as his daughter.
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
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.[17]
Missed roles
While under contract with the Rank Organisation, Bogarde was set to play the role of
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.[8] 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.[24] Bogarde later said that he regretted declining Olivier's offer and with it the chance to "really learn my craft."[25]
Personal life
For nearly four decades, Bogarde resided in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, and then in Provence. From the 1950s he lived with his manager and long-term partner Anthony 'Tote' Forwood in England, Italy and France until shortly before Forwood's death in 1988 after they had moved back to London.[26]
The critical and commercial failure of
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.[27] 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 heart attack on 8 May 1999, aged 78. His ashes were scattered at his former estate Le Pigeonnier in Grasse, southern France.[28]
Honours and awards
Bogarde was nominated five times as Best Actor by
Bogarde was created a Knight Bachelor in the United Kingdom in 1992, awarded the Commandeur de l'
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.
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1939 | Come On George! | Extra | Uncredited |
1947 | Rope | Charlies Granillo | TV movie |
Power Without Glory | Cliff | TV movie | |
Dancing with Crime | Police Radio Caller | Uncredited | |
1948 | Esther Waters | William Latch | |
Quartet | George Bland (segment "The Alien Corn") | ||
1949 | Once a Jolly Swagman | Bill Fox | |
Dear Mr. Prohack | Charles Prohack | ||
Boys in Brown | Alfie Rawlins | ||
1950 | The Blue Lamp | Tom Riley | |
So Long at the Fair | George Hathaway | ||
The Woman in Question | R.W. (Bob) Baker | ||
1951 | Blackmailed | Stephen Mundy | |
1952 | Hunted | Chris Lloyd | |
Penny Princess | Tony Craig | ||
The Gentle Gunman | Matt Sullivan | ||
1953 | Appointment in London | Wing Commander Tim Mason | |
Desperate Moment | Simon Van Halder | ||
1954 | They Who Dare | Lt. David Graham | |
Doctor in the House | Dr Simon Sparrow | Bogarde's first film with director Ralph Thomas | |
The Sleeping Tiger | Frank Clemmons | Bogarde's first film with director Joseph Losey | |
For Better, for Worse | Tony Howard | ||
The Sea Shall Not Have Them | Flight Sgt. MacKay | ||
1955 | Simba | Alan Howard | |
Doctor at Sea | Dr Simon Sparrow | ||
Cast a Dark Shadow | Edward "Teddy" Bare | ||
1956 | The Spanish Gardener | Jose | |
1957 | Ill Met by Moonlight | Maj. Patrick Leigh Fermor a.k.a. Philedem | |
Doctor at Large | Dr Simon Sparrow | ||
Campbell's Kingdom | Bruce Campbell | ||
1958 | A Tale of Two Cities | Sydney Carton | |
The Wind Cannot Read | Flight Lt Michael Quinn | ||
The Doctor's Dilemma | Louis Dubedat | ||
1959 | Libel | Sir Mark Sebastian Loddon / Frank Welney / Number Fifteen | |
1960 | The Angel Wore Red | Arturo Carrera | |
Song Without End | Franz Liszt | Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy | |
1961 | The Singer Not the Song | Anacleto | |
Victim | Melville Farr | Nominated – BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role | |
1962 | H.M.S. Defiant | 1st Lt. Scott-Padget | |
We Joined the Navy | Dr. Simon Sparrow | Cameo appearance, uncredited | |
The Password Is Courage | Sergeant Major Charles Coward | ||
1963 | The Mind Benders | Dr. Henry Longman | |
I Could Go On Singing | David Donne | ||
Doctor in Distress | Dr Simon Sparrow | ||
The Servant | Hugo Barrett | BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role | |
1964 | Hot Enough for June | Nicholas Whistler | |
King and Country | Capt. Hargreaves | ||
The High Bright Sun | Major McGuire | ||
Little Moon of Alban | Kenneth Boyd | ||
1965 | Darling | Robert Gold | BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role |
1966 | Modesty Blaise | Gabriel | |
Blithe Spirit | Charles Condomine | ||
1967 | Accident | Stephen | Nominated – BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role |
Our Mother's House | Charlie Hook | ||
1968 | Sebastian | Sebastian | |
The Fixer | Bibikov | ||
1969 | Oh! What a Lovely War | Stephen | |
Justine | Pursewarden | ||
The Damned | Frederick Bruckmann | ||
1970 | Upon This Rock | Bonnie Prince Charlie
|
|
1971 | Death in Venice | Gustav von Aschenbach | Nominated – BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role |
1973 | Night Flight from Moscow | Philip Boyle | |
1974 | The Night Porter | Maximilian Theo Aldorfer | |
1975 | Permission to Kill | Alan Curtis | |
1977 | Providence | Claude Langham | |
A Bridge Too Far | Lt. Gen. Frederick 'Boy' Browning | ||
1978 | Despair | Hermann Hermann | |
1981 | The Patricia Neal Story | Roald Dahl | |
1986 | May We Borrow Your Husband? | William Harris | |
1988 | The Vision | James Marriner | |
1990 | Daddy Nostalgie | Daddy | Final film role |
British box office ranking
For several years British film exhibitors voted Bogarde one of the most popular local stars at the box office:[29]
- 1953 – 5th
- 1954 – 2nd (9th-most popular international star)[30]
- 1955 – 1st (also most popular international star)[31]
- 1956 – 3rd
- 1957 – 1st (also most popular international star)[32]
- 1958 – 2nd (also 2nd-most popular international star)[33]
- 1959 – 5th[34]
- 1960 – 9th-most popular international star
- 1961 – 8th-most popular international star
- 1963 – 9th-most popular international star[35]
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)[36]
References
Footnotes
- ^ a b Monks Kaufman, Sophie (23 March 2021). "Why Dirk Bogarde was a truly dangerous film star". BBC. Retrieved 13 October 2022.
- ^ "Drawing - 1945,1208.60". British Museum. Retrieved 23 November 2023.
- ^ a b Coldstream 2004, p. 24.
- ^ a b Moir, Jon. "Dirk could be cruel – but I know why." The Daily Telegraph (London), 2 September 2004. Retrieved: 29 March 2015.
- ^ "Film Review – 1962-63". DirkBogarde.co.uk. Retrieved 13 October 2022.
- ^ "Dirk Bogarde: Biography". dirkbogarde.co.uk.
- ^ "No. 36023". The London Gazette (Supplement). 18 May 1943. pp. 2260–2261.
- ^ a b c d "The MILITARY MAN BEHIND The MATINEE IDOL". KeyMilitary.com. 16 March 2021. Retrieved 31 October 2022.
- ^ a b c Above The Title, Yorkshire Television interview, 1986.
- ^ Bogarde states that before a village was bombed by the RAF they would always drop leaflets warning the inhabitants but that sometimes the leaflets were blown away by the wind. Other air forces allocated to these same tasks, he states, "didn't drop leaflets, they just bombed everything that moved".
- ISBN 9781442615700.
- ^ "Dirk Bogarde » Dirk Bogarde and Belsen".
- ^ Bogarde, Dirk. "Out of the Shadows of Hell". For the Time Being. London: Penguin, 1988.
- IMDb
- ^ a b Morley 1999, pp. 8–9.
- ^ Hinxman, Margaret (10 May 1999). "Sir Dirk Bogarde". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 July 2017.
- ^ a b Kaufman, Sophie Monks (22 March 2021). "Why Dirk Bogarde was a truly dangerous film star". BBC Culture. Retrieved 2 April 2021.
- ^ "About Face: Sir Dirk Bogarde". BBC. 9 October 1992. Retrieved 13 October 2022.
- ^ Hawkins and Attenborough 2009, pp. 152–153.
- ^ Brownlow 1996. p. 407.
- ^ Darlow, Michael (2000). Terence Rattigan – The Man and his Work. London: Quartet Books. p. 354.
- ^ "Doctor Zhivago (Original)". British Film Institute. BFI. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
- ^ "Gigi (1958)". IMDB. Retrieved 13 October 2022.
- ^ Coldstream, John 2004, pp. 361–362.
- ^ Bogarde 1988, p. 169.
- ^ Coldstream, John. Introduction to Ever Dirk, The Bogarde Letters. Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2008, p3.
- The Free Library. Retrieved: 22 September 2013.
- ^ "Obituary: Sir Dirk Bogarde." This is announcements. Retrieved: 22 September 2013.
- ^ Shipman 1972, pp. 56–59.
- ^ "John Wayne Heads Box-Office Poll." The Mercury (Hobart, Tasmania: 1860 - 1954) via National Library of Australia, 31 December 1954, p. 6. Retrieved: 9 July 2012.
- ^ "The Dam Busters", The Times [London, England] 29 December 1955, p. 12 via The Times Digital Archive, 11 July 2012.
- ^ "News in Brief." The Times [London, England] 27 December 1957, p. 9 via The Times Digital Archive. Retrieved: 11 July 2012.
- ^ "Mr. Guinness Heads Film Poll". The Times [London, England], 2 January 1959, p. 4 via The Times Digital Archive, 11 July 2012.
- ^ "Year of Profitable British Films". The Times [London, England], 1 January 1960, p. 13 via The Times Digital Archive, 11 July 2012.
- ^ "Most Popular Films of 1963". The Times [London, England] 3 January 1964, p. 4 via The Times Digital Archive, 11 July 2012.
- ^ 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.)
Bibliography
- Bogarde, Dirk. For The Time Being: Collected Journalism. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: ISBN 978-0-67088-005-8.
- Bogarde, Dirk. Snakes and Ladders. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: ISBN 978-0-14010-539-1.
- Brownlow, Kevin. David Lean: A Biography. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-3121-6810-0.
- Coldstream, John. Dirk Bogarde: The Authorised Biography. London: ISBN 0-297-60730-8.
- Coldstream, John. Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters. London: Phoenix, 2009. ISBN 978-0-75382-589-1.
- Hawkins, Diana and Richard Attenborough. Entirely Up To You, Darling. London: ISBN 978-0-099-50304-0.
- Hinxman, Margaret and Susan d'Arcy. The Films of Dirk Bogarde Richmond, California: Literary Services & Production, 1974. ISBN 978-0-85321-058-0.
- Morley, Sheridan. Dirk Bogarde: Rank Outsider. Pontarddulais, Swansea, UK: Macmillan Distribution Limited, 2000. ISBN 978-0-74754-698-6.
- Shipman, David. The Great Movie Stars: The International Years. London: Macdonald, 1989, p. 55-60 ISBN 978-0-35618-147-9
- Tanitch, Robert. Dirk Bogarde: The Complete Career Illustrated. London: ISBN 978-0-85223-694-9.
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
- Dirk Bogarde at IMDb
- Sir Dirk Bogarde at Facebook [1]
- Dirk Bogarde at the BFI's Screenonline. Biography and credits
- Dirk Bogarde by Neil McNally
- Dirk Bogarde Dirk Bogarde at glbtq.com
- The letters of Dirk Bogarde at Telegraph.co.uk, Part 1 Part 2
- The Spectator Bryan Forbesreviews The letters of Dirk Bogarde
- Interview with Russell Harty in 1986