Film Review – 1962-63
This year FILM REVIEW selects DIRK BOGAERDE as its STAR OF THE YEAR because of his excellent standard of performance in everything he has done and because of his integrity and courage in accepting the difficult leading role in the controversial film “Victim”.
DIRK BOGARDE was born in London, the son of Ulric van den Bogaerde, art editor of The Times, and Scottish actress Margaret Niven. The Dutch ancestral name means literally “of the orchards”, and the family, which comes from the fruit-growing · region on the Dutch-Belgian frontier, traces its lineage back to Anne of Cleaves.
Winning a scholarship (at the age of sixteen) to the Royal College of Arts, Bogarde decided during the next school year that his basic interests lay in the field of acting rather than design. When he completed his course, he went to several London managers to ask for a chance to appear in a show, even if it was only a walk-on. He finally settled for a back-stage job as tea-boy at seven shillings and sixpence per week. After a while · he earned a place as assistant stage manager, and one day when an actor failed to show up Bogarde (who had privately memorized the lines of this part) had a chance to go on stage. It made him realise that he needed some additional basic training, and he joined a provincial repertory group. Now the war intervened, and Bogarde served with Army Intelligence. He landed in France on D-Day; went through the European campaign. His interest in art had never been completely submerged by his acting ambitions, and he now carried a sketch book wherever he went – two of the drawings he made on D-Day are now in the British War Museum.
After the end of the European phase of the war, Bogarde moved on with his unit to Burma, where he served until Singapore was liberated. He became adjutant to the commander of the Twenty-third Division, editor of an Armed Forces newspaper, and chief British announcer for broadcasting in Java. When he was discharged in 1946 he had reached the rank of major.
Back in London Bogarde obtained a part in the play, Power Without Glory, and in this captured exceptionally good notices. The direct result was several film offers. He decided the best one was with the Rank Organisation, and was given star billing in his first film made for that company, Escher Waters.
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In succession came such pictures as Dear Mr. Prohack, So Long at the Fair, Penny Princess, Desperate Moment, The Sea Shall Not Have Them, the Doctor comedies, The Spanish Gardener, Ill Met by Moonlight, and Campbell’s Kingdom. His interpretation of Sydney Carton in the 1957 production of A Tale of Two Cities was regarded as one of his finest performances. This was followed by The Wind Cannot Read, Shaw’s Doctor’s Dilemmas, and Libel. In Columbia’s Song Without End Bogarde played the role of Franz Liszt, with backgrounds in Austria. The Angel Wore Red was made in Italy, and the star’s two most recent pictures, The Singer Not The Song and Victim were British productions.
Summmertime was the play in which Bogarde starred most recently on the London stage, although he later appeared for a short run in Jezebel at the Oxford Playhouse. He has a strong feeling about the world of films as representing in every way a medium as important as the theatre.
He is unmarried, lives in a home a short distance from London, is fond of travel, and has a special interest in art of all kinds. Goya is his favourite painter. He prefers vacationing in Southern France to any other part of Europe – but there have not been many free intervals for him in recent years. Naturally athletic and fond of outdoor life, he hikes a great deal, is fond of horseback riding, collects antiques from various corners of the world, “plays about” with week-end gardening and likes an occasional game of squash. Bogarde feels that his outstanding creative interest is in the film world, and does not plan to return to the stage until and unless an exceptionally interesting role-even if it shouldn’t be the top starring one-is offered him. He has directorial ambitions, but feels that he still has a good deal to learn about this medium. He is regarded as one of the most painstaking craftsmen in the profession and feels that it is important for an actor to avoid being placed in any “groove” or “type”. In demonstrating this point of view he has played a very wide range of stage and screen roles, ranging from farce-comedy to sombre drama, problem plays, fantasy and historical characterizations.
In his recent role of Scott-Padget in H.M.S. Defiant, Bogarde is seen as a scheming, violently ambitious, subordinate officer who threatens the disciplinary command of the captain of the H.M.S. Defiant (Alec Guinness) during a series of gripping dramatic episodes set against the 18th century era when press gangs roamed British ports to round up and forcibly recruit new sailors.
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1947: Whilst playing a schizophrenic younger son in the psychological tragedy ‘Power Without Glory’ at the Fortune Theatre after its transfer from the New Lindsay Theatre Club, he was seen by film producer Ian Dalrymple and given a contract with the J. Arthur Rank Organisation. 1947/8: ‘ESTHER WATERS’ (Wessex)-produced and directed by Ian Dalrymple and Peter Proud.
1948: ‘QUARTET’ (Gainsborough)-‘ALIEN CORN’-one of the four Somerset Maugham short stories included in the film. ‘ONCE A JOLLY SWAGMAN’ (Wessex). 1948: Returned to the ‘Q’ Theatre to play the lead in ‘For Better or Worse’, by Arthur Watkyn, his first comedy role.
1949: ‘DEAR MR. PROHACK’ (Wessex). Returned to the New Lindsay Theatre to play opposite Patricia Plunkett in Elsa Shelley’s play ‘Foxhole in the Parlour’. ‘BOYS IN BROWN’-(Gainsborough). ‘THE BLUE LAMP’ (Ealing Studios). A Michael Balcon Production. Directed by Basil Dearden and produced by Michael Relph. ‘SO LONG AT THE FAIR’ (Gainsborough). Produced by Betty E. Box, directed by Terrence Fisher and Antony Darnborough.
1950: ‘THE WOMAN IN QUESTION’-A Javelin Film. Produced by teddy Baird and directed by Antony Asquith. ‘BLACKMAILED’- A Harold Huth Production. Produced by Harold Huth and directed by Marc Allegret.
1951: ‘HUNTED’- Independent Artists. Produced by Julian Wintle and directed by Charles Crichton.
1952: ‘PENNY PRINCESS’- Conquest Productions. Produced, directed and written by Val Guest. ‘THE GENTLE GUNMAN’- Ealing Studios. A Michael Balcon Production.
1953: ‘APPOINTMENT IN LONDON’- Mayflower Production. Produced by Aubrey Baring and Maxwell Setton. ‘DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE’- The Rank Organisation. Produced by Betty Box and directed by Ralph Thomas.
1954: ‘SIMBA’- The Rank Organisation. Produced by Peter de Sarigny and directed by Brian Desmond Hurst. ‘THE SEA SHALL NOT HAVE THEM’- A Daniel M. Angel Production. Directed by Lewis Gilbert.
1955: ‘DOCTOR AT SEA’- The Rank Organisation. produced by Betty Box and directed by Ralph Thomas. ‘CAST A DARK SHADOW’- British National Studios, Elstree. Produced by Herbert Mason and directed by Lewis Gilbert. Executive producer Daniel M. Angel.
1956: ‘THE SPANISH GARDENER’- The Rank Organisation. Produced by John Bryan and directed by Phillip Leacock.
1956/7: ‘ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT’- The Rank Organisation. Produced my Michael Powell and directed by Emerie Pressburger.
1956: ‘DOCTOR AT LARGE’- The Rank Organisation. Produced by Betty Box and directed by Ralph Thomas.
1957: ‘CAMPBELL’S KINGDOM’- The Rank Organisation. Produced by Betty Box and directed by Ralph Thomas. ‘A TALE OF TWO CITIES’- The Rank Organisation. Produced by Betty Box and directed by Ralph Thomas.
1958: ‘THE WIND CANNOT READ’- The Rank Organisation. Produced by Betty Box and directed by Ralph Thomas. ‘THE DOCTOR’S DILEMMA’- M-G-M British Production. Produced by Anatole de Grunwald. Directed by Anthony Asquith.
1959: ‘LIBEL’- M-G-M British Production. Produced by Anatole de Grunwald. Associate producer Pierre ROuvre. Directed by Anthony Asquith. Co-starring Olivia de Havilland. ‘SONG WITHOUT END’- Columbia in Hollywood. Produced by William Goetz. Directed by George Cukor. ‘THE ANGEL WORE RED’- A Nunnally Johnson-Titanus Production released by M-G-M. Directed by Nunnally Johnson and co-starring Ava Gardner.
1960: ‘THE SINGER NOT THE SONG’- The Rank Organisation. Produced and directed by Roy Baker. Co-starring Mylene Dermongeot and John Mills. ‘VICTIM’- A Relph-Dearden production for Allied Film Makers. Produced by Michael Relph and directed by Basil Dearden.
1961: “H.M.S DEFIANT” Produced by John Brabourne and directed by Lewis Gilbert for Columbia, Co-starring Alec Guinness and Anthony Quayle.
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It has been a momentous year for Britain’s DIRK BOGAERDE – selected as this year’s Film Review “Star of the Year” (see that feature on a previous page) – for when he accepted the leading role in the Ralph-Dearden production for the Rank Group VICTIM, he and everyone else knew that he was taking a big gamble. For the film was about the delicate subject of homosexuality and Bogarde played the brilliant barrister who risks both his career and his marriage in order to go into the witness box and testify against the gang which have been steadily blackmailing a wide ring of famous men because of past moral indiscretions. With Bogarde in this scene, NOEL HOWLETT.
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Strictly in the new tradition of working class dramas, Anglo-Amalgamated’s A KIND OF LOVING was a magnificently honest story about the “romance” of a factory draughtsman and a silly little typist who attracts him physically and finally traps him, innocently enough, into what will obviously be a sadly routine and unexciting marriage. Filmed on location against evocative Lancashire industrial backgrounds, the film starred ALAN BATES and JUNE RITCHIE.
The opponents-in the Columbia period piece production H.M.S. DEFIANT, a story of the British Navy in Napoleonic times and, more especially, the struggle between the strict disciplinarian but comparatively humane Captain ALEC GUINNESS and his sadistic, ruthlessly power-seeking officer DIRK BOGARDE. And always in the background to their personal duel, the seething unrest of the mutinously-inclined crew.
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(Left) Still running at the Astoria and likely to be running there for a long time to come (even when this book is published), Robert Wise’s U.A. production of the musical WEST SIDE STORY, with RITA MORENO, GEORGE CHAKARIS and NATALIE WOOD.
(Right) Opponents: MARLON BRANDO and TREVOR HOWARD, Mr. Christian and Captain Bligh, in M-G-M’s re-make of THE MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY.
P.O.W.’s DIRK BOGARDE and ALFRED LYNCH in a tight spot in M-G-M’s THE PASSWORD IS COURAGE.
(Left) DIANE CILENTO and SUSAN HAYWARD in Anatole de Grunwald’s M-G-M film I THANK A FOOL.
