Dirk Bogarde Biography

Sir Dirk Bogarde (28 March 1921 " 8 May 1999) was an English actor and writer.

Initially a matinée idol in such films as Doctor in the House (1954) and other Rank Organisation pictures, Bogarde later acted in art-house films such as Death in Venice (1971). In a second career, Bogarde wrote seven best-selling volumes of memoirs, six novels and a volume of collected journalism, mainly from his articles in The Daily Telegraph.

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; 1892"1972), was the art editor of The Times and his mother, Margaret Niven (1898"1980), was a former actress. He attended University College School, the former Allan Glen's School in Glasgow (a time he described in his autobiography as unhappy, although others have disputed his account).He later studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design. He began his acting career on stage in 1939, shortly before the start of World War II.

War service

Bogarde served in the Second World War, being commissioned into the Queen's Royal Regimentin 1943. He reached the rank of captain and served in both the European and Pacific theatres, principally as an intelligence officer. Taylor Downing's book "Spies in the Sky" tells of his work with a specialist unit interpreting aerial photo-reconnaissance information, before moving to Normandy with Canadian forces. Bogarde 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 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 the issue of 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 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.

Career

His 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, Bogarde's agent renamed him "Dirk Bogarde" and his good looks helped him begin a career as a film actor. He 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.

Stardom

During the 1950s, Bogarde came to prominence playing a hoodlum who shoots and kills a police constable inThe Blue Lamp (1950) co-starring Jack Warner and Bernard Lee; a handsome artist who comes to rescue of Jean Simmons during the World's Fair in Paris in So Long at the Fair, a film noir thriller; an accidental 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 wing commander in Bomber Command who, against orders, opts to fly his 90th mission with his men in a major air offensive against the Germans; an unjustly imprisoned man who regains hope in clearing his name when he learns his sweetheart, Mai Zetterling, is still alive in Desperate Moment (1953); 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.

In The Sleeping Tiger (1954), Bogarde played 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; as 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), co-starring Michael Hordern, Jon Whiteley, and Cyril Cusack; Doctor at Large (1957), again with Donald Sinden, another entry in theDoctor film series, co-starring later Bond-girl Shirley Eaton; the Powell and Pressburger production Ill Met by Moonlight (1957) co-starring Marius Goring as the German General Kreipe, kidnapped on Crete by Patrick "Paddy" Leigh Fermor (Bogarde) and a fellow band of adventurers based on W. Stanley Moss' real-life account of the WW2 caper; 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.

Later roles

After leaving the Rank Organisation in the early 1960s, Bogarde abandoned his heartthrob image for more challenging parts. He starred in the film Victim (1961), playing a London barrister who fights the blackmailers of a young man with whom he has had an deeply emotional and loving relationship. The young man commits suicide after being arrested for embezzlement, and rather than ruin his beloved's career. In exposing the ring of extortionists, Bogarde's character risks his reputation and marriage in order to see that justice is done. Victim was the first mainstream British film to portray the humiliation Gay people were exposed to via discriminatory law, and as a victimized minority, consequently it had some effect upon a contemporary Sexual Offences Act 1967 change in English punitive prosecution of consensual same-sex affectional expression.

Other later roles included decadent valet Hugo Barrett in The Servant(1963), which garnered him a BAFTA Award, directed by Joseph Losey and written by Harold Pinter;The Mind Benders (1963), a film ahead of its times in which Bogarde plays an Oxford professor conducting sensory deprivation experiments at Oxford University(precursor to Altered States (1980)); the anti-war film King & Country (1964), playing an army lawyer reluctantly defending deserter Tom Courtenay, directed by Joseph Losey; a television broadcaster-writer Robert Gold in Darling (1965), for which Bogarde won a second BAFTA Award, directed by John Schlesinger; Stephen, a bored Oxford University professor, in Losey's Accident, (1967) also written by Pinter; Our Mother's House (1967), an off-beat film-noir directed by Jack Clayton in which Bogarde plays an n'er do well father who descends upon "his" seven children on the death of their mother, British entry at the Venice Film Festival; German industrialist Frederick Bruckmann in Luchino Visconti's La Caduta degli dei, The Damned (1969) co-starring Ingrid Thulin; as ex-Nazi, Max Aldorfer, in the chilling and controversial Il Portiere di notte, The Night Porter (1974), co-starring Charlotte Rampling, directed by Liliana Cavani; and most notably, as Gustav von Aschenbach in Morte a Venezia, Death in Venice (1971), also directed by Visconti; as Claude, the lawyer son of a dying, drunken writer (John Gielgud) in the well-received, multi-dimensional French film Providence (1977), directed by Alain Resnais; as industrialist Hermann Hermann who descends into madness in Despair (1978) directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder; and as Daddy in Bertrand Tavernier's Daddy Nostalgie, (akaThese Foolish Things) (1991), co-starring Jane Birkin as his daughter, Bogarde's final film role.

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, down to demands or limitations set by the studio or their scripts: 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), as 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, the actor'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, co-starring Sir Alec Guinness; I Could Go On Singing (1963), co-starring Judy Garlandin her final screen role; Hot Enough for June, (aka "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), in 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 that he played in the 1977 film A Bridge Too Far. General "Boy" Browning's widow, the author Daphne du Maurier, ferociously attacked his characterization and "the resultant establishment fallout, much of ithomophobic, wrongly convinced [Bogarde] that the newly ennobled Sir Richard [Attenborough] had deliberately contrived to scupper his own chance of a knighthood."

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 memoirs, novels, 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 to be directed by Anthony Asquith. On the eve of production, after one year of preparation by Bogarde and Asquith, the film was scrapped without full explanation to the dismay of Bogarde and Asquith. The abrupt scrapping of Lawrence, a role long researched and keenly anticipated by Bogarde, was among his greatest screen disappointments.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'sGigi (1958).

In 1961, Bogarde was offered the chance to play Hamlet at the recently founded Chichester Festival Theatre by artistic director Sir Laurence Olivier, however, he had to decline due 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

Bogarde was a lifelong bachelor and, during his life, was assumed to be gay. Bogarde's most serious friendship with a woman was with the French actress Capucine. For many years he shared his homes, first in Amersham and then in France, with his manager Anthony Forwood, the former husband of actress Glynis Johns and the father of their only child, actor Gareth Forwood (deceased). Bogarde repeatedly denied that their relationship was anything but platonic. Such denials were understandable, mainly given that consensual same-sex relations were criminalized during most of his career, subject to imprisonment. Rank Studio contracts specified morality clauses that essentially set conditions for termination with its actors, including same-sex relationships, thus potentially putting his career as a major actor at jeopardy, something few actors of the time would risk. It was possible that Bogarde's refusal to enter into a marriage of convenience 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 would not have been able to come out during later life, since this might have too unambiguously demonstrated that he had been forced to camouflage his sexual-orientation during his film career. The actorJohn Fraser however said that "Dirk's life with Forwood had been so respectable, their love for each other so profound and so enduring, it would have been a glorious day for the pursuit of understanding and the promotion of tolerance if he had screwed up the courage..."

Death

Bogarde suffered a minor stroke in November 1987, at a time when his partner, Anthony Forwood, was dying of liver cancer and Parkinson's disease. In September 1996, he underwent angioplasty to unblock arteries leading to his heart and suffered a massive stroke following the operation.Bogarde was paralyzed on one side of his body, which affected his speech and left him in a wheelchair. He managed, however, to complete a final volume of his autobiography, which covered the stroke and its effects as well as an edition of his collected journalism, mainly for The Daily Telegraph. He spent some time the day before he died with his friend Lauren Bacall. Bogarde died in London from a heart attack on 8 May 1999, age 78. His ashes were scattered at his former estate in Grasse, Southern France.

Honours and awards

Bogarde was nominated six 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 and in 1984, he served as President of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. Awarded the British Film InstituteFellowship in 1987, the following year in 1988, Bogarde was honoured with the first BAFTA Tribute Award for an outstanding contribution to cinema in 1988.

Bogarde was honoured by Queen Elizabeth II as a Knight Bachelor in the United Kingdom in 1992, awarded theCommandeur 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. He was the first Briton to serve in this capacity.

Filmography

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

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1939	Come on George!	Extra (uncredited)
1947	Dancing with Crime	Policeman
1948	Esther Waters	William Latch
	Once a Jolly Swagman	Bill Fox
1949	Boys in Brown	Alfie Rawlins
	Quartet	George Bland (segment "The Alien Corn")
	Dear Mr. Prohack	Charles Prohack
1950	The Woman in Question	R.W. (Bob) Baker
	The Blue Lamp	Tom Riley
	Blackmailed	Stephen Mundy
	So Long at the Fair	George Hathaway
1952	Appointment in London	Wing Commander Tim Mason
	Hunted	Chris Lloyd
	Penny Princess	Tony Craig
	The Gentle Gunman	Matt Sullivan
1954	They Who Dare	Lt. Graham
	The Sea Shall Not Have Them	Flight Sgt. MacKay
	For Better, for Worse	Tony Howard
	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
1955	Simba	Alan Howard
	Doctor at Sea	Dr Simon Sparrow
1956	The Spanish Gardener	Jose
1957	Cast a Dark Shadow	Edward "Teddy" Bare
	Ill Met by Moonlight	Maj. Patrick Leigh Fermor aka 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	Song Without End	Franz Liszt	Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
	The Angel Wore Red	Arturo Carrera
1961	Victim	Melville Farr	Nominated "? BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
	The Singer Not the Song	Anacleto
1962	We Joined the Navy	Cameo appearance (Dr. Simon Sparrow)
	H.M.S. Defiant	1st Lt. Scott-Padget
	The Password Is Courage	Sergeant Major Charles Coward
1963	The Mind Benders	Dr. Henry Longman
	I Could Go On Singing	David Donne
	The Servant	Hugo Barrett	BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
	Doctor in Distress	Dr Simon Sparrow
1964	King & Country	Capt. Hargreaves
	Hot Enough for June	Nicholas Whistler
	The High Bright Sun	Major McGuire
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	Nominated "? BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
1968	Sebastian	Sebastian
	The Fixer	Bibikov
1969	La Caduta degli dei (The Damned)	Frederick Bruckmann
	Oh! What a Lovely War	Stephen
	Justine	Pursewarden
1970	*Upon This Rock	Bonnie Prince Charlie
1971	Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice)	Gustav von Aschenbach	Nominated "? BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
1973	Night Flight from Moscow	Philip Boyle
1974	Il Portiere di notte (The Night Porter)	Maximilian Theo Aldorfer
1975	Permission to Kill	Alan Curtis
1977	A Bridge Too Far	Lt. Gen. Frederick 'Boy' Browning
	Providence	Claude Langham
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 Nostalgia	Daddy

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, 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)