Penthouse – August 1968
Penthouse Interview – Dirk Bogarde
On a rare showbiz beat, with a rare interview subject, Penthouse encounters a star whose career reverses the accepted pattern that a leading man lasts as long as his pretty looks. Far from fading, Dirk Bogarde has matured from wide-eyed, hair-slicked-back boy of postwar melodramas into the accomplished and internationally acclaimed professional of outstanding movies like The Servant, Darling, and Accident. After 20 years of filming, he continues to enlarge his reputation with versatile and talented performances. A quiet man with soothing voice, and a manner so patient that it borders on the patronizing, Bogarde shies away from publicity and avoids contact with reporters or photographers. This exclusive Penthouse Interview was conducted by Donald Wiedenman during an interval in filming and, though Bogarde seemed guarded at first, he mellowed as he talked, eventually answering freely and readily as though he had been waiting for just such an opportunity.
Penthouse: What made you go into films after you had been such a success on the stage?
Bogarde: I never wanted to go into the movies at all, but the money was terribly tempting. I didn’t have any money at all and I was being paid about £10 a week. Most of the American film companies offered me enormous contracts- Hal Wallis of Paramount, and the Columbia giants-but it meant seven years and having my teeth fixed. One company wanted to “discover” me as a Spaniard, and I would have had to go “under cover” and learn Spanish. They even had a house for me in California and I even knew the number of my car. After 18 months I would have had to marry one of five women, also under contract, but I didn’t have to actually live with them, even though they said people might think there was something wrong with me if I didn’t. The whole idea was intolerable and I turned down a great deal of money on many accounts. Finally the Rank Organization, then very powerful in this country, offered me a very good part in a film. I agreed to play it because it was a small supporting part of a priest and, after all I’ve always been a character actor. But at the last minute Stewart Granger, who was starring, left the movie because he didn’t like his costumes or something, and I played his part. They liked me in the gear that I wore in the film, and thought I would be great. I had started to like filming by then, and the temptation of all that money was terribly great. So when the Rank Organization offered me a contract I accepted. It didn’t seem too difficult, and I could leave every six months and go back to the theatre to do a play. They offered me over £100,000, which in those days was an astronomical sum. I was 27, and I was getting quite old, and the contract offered me security.
Penthouse: Did you find it difficult to adapt yourself to working in front of a camera after training on the stage?
Bogarde: I couldn’t do it until about 15 years after I started.
Penthouse: A cameraman played an important part in this transition, didn’t he?
Bogarde: Yes. I was coming off the set one day and this cameraman fixed me with a beady eye as he leaned over his camera. I asked him if something were wrong and he just said: “I don’t know how the hell you stuck.” I asked him why and he said, “Because you’re so bloody awful. You’re too thin, you don’t walk right, you don’t do anything right.” I realised what he was telling me was tough, but still it was true. So instead of smashing him between the eyes, as I suppose most people would have done. I asked him what I should do about it.
Penthouse: And what did he teach you?
Bogarde: He told me how many frames went through the camera per second, per minute, per hour.
Penthouse: How does that affect your acting?
Bogarde: In every possible detail. For instance, now I know I cannot move in a certain way because it’s too fast for the camera or too slow for the camera. How I lift a glass, how I move my head–it all depends on the lens. A 9 distorts you, a 50 is reasonable, a 75 is something else. I know them all now, but I didn’t know any of them then. I was doing wonderfully descriptive things with my hands and feet when the camera was cutting at my chin and hairline.
Penthouse: So you have views on technique versus “method”?
Bogarde: I think you’ve got to be a technician. That’s what the man on the camera told me. I mean it’s no good going through a picture just looking pretty. You can do that for a while-with your tight pants and your riding boots and your good profile and all that but something is going to go somewhere. Your face is going to slip and they’re going to get bored with you.
Penthouse: Is it true that sets were once built around your left profile?
Bogarde: They were in fact. I had to be romantic, you know, and it looked great. I was always looking for god-or some lost lady-through tear-rimmed eyes. It’s easy to build a set around one profile. You just start that way from the beginning. I was humiliated when I first found out. They said: ‘Well, that’s your best angle, and we have to make the best of what you’ve got.” And they did too. There was only one side they could use.
Penthouse: Wasn’t it as a set designer that you first got into acting?
Bogarde: That was just a sneaky way of getting in against my parents’ wishes. I wanted to be an actor and since I couldn’t get in in that capacity, I went to art school. I did decor, stage design and costumes. It was simply a shortcut. I always took shortcuts, because I knew exactly where I was going.
Penthouse: And how did you finally get in?
Bogarde: I was painting scenery for a play, and one of the actors became ill. The director yelled. “Who knows the lines?”, and I yelled, “I do”. Actually it was only one line. “Your carriage is outside. Mr. Ackleroyd.”
Penthouse: After you came out of the war, you were literally a star overnight.
Bogarde: God, it’s so boring–i’ve told it so often. I went to an audition for a television show, but I went to the wrong place, and when I finally got to the right place, the show had already been cast. I had no money and the next train didn’t go back into the country for another two hours so I stayed in the hall of this place because it was warm. Suddenly a woman came running down the stairs, hit me, said, “You’re late!”, dragged me upstairs and pushed me into a room. I read what I thought was the script for the television show, but in a few seconds realised it was for something else. So I read it with seven other people sitting in the room and this girl reading the other part. They asked me who I was, and when they found I wasn’t on their list, they were very angry about it. I got out somehow, walked in the snow, phoned my agent, and told him I lost the part in the television show. “Not only that” I said. “but this mad woman caught hold of me and pushed me into another audition, and I’ve lost that too.” But he said that they had liked me and had tried to catch me. They wanted me to do the part. I started rehearsing three days later. It was a play with Kenneth Moore who was also unknown in those days. The opening night was a colossal success. The press was there, a star was born -that kind of thing.
Penthouse: What kind of part were you playing?
Bogarde: It was one of those very easy parts. I had to cry and scream in the second act-and that got me my stardom. Kenneth Moore had the worst part in the play, no screaming or crying or anything, and it wasn’t until five or six years later that he made a name for himself.
Penthouse: Getting back to “method”, your “method”, then is technique?
Bogarde: Right, in a way. I don’t believe there is such a thing as one method. Everyone has their own. But you’ve got to be a technician to forget it all, so you can do the acting on top of it. Take Terence Stamp. He has those very blue eyes which are terribly sensitive to hot lights, and I tried to teach him how to hold them open. It was a muscle trick someone had taught me. It keeps your eyes open but doesn’t make you look like a mad zombie.
Penthouse: When you first began acting, you had a difficult time finding enough to eat all the time. Do you think this helped you become a better actor ?
Bogarde: Yes it did. Because now I know what it’s like to sleep out in the street and what it’s like to steal money. I used to steal tips from under the tables when I was washing up. I had to have the money-it was essential for me to eat. I had a rich and expensive home I could have gone back to, with nannies and maids and cars. And I had brilliant parents who said: “Right. If you want to do this, you go away.” So I did. In two years, I had to make a go of it and if I wasn’t earning enough money by then I had promised to go back. All the odd jobs and the cold nights made me more appreciative. Acting is all observation and storing away things. What it’s like to be cold, what it’s like to not have quite enough money for the rent- all the ordinary, human sort of things. It’s very difficult to imagine unless you’ve experienced it. The one thing I found most difficult, and something I had not experienced, was in Sebastian. I had to take LSD and I never have. I simply could not imagine what it was like.
Penthouse: Experiencing something before you can act it, isn’t that the “method”?
Bogarde: Not really. You don’t have to commit a murder to play a murderer. Naturally I have killed, because I killed in the war. But, I think nearly all of us have at one time come to the point of almost committing murder in a rage-which is close enough to a reaction I might use later on. And more important, it’s something almost everyone in an audience has experienced.
Penthouse: A universal experience-so everyone finds it easy to identify with?
Bogarde: Exactly. In The Servant, for example, when I am playing that horrible game on the stairs. It’s unbelievable how many people have had that happen to them in their childhood when a nannie or a mother or father or older brother drove them to a point of lunacy when they hid in a wardrobe in their own house. I’ve seen the film several times and not once have I ever heard anyone breathe during that scene. It’s a remembrance of things past for most people. In Accident, I used a stutter, only twice, when I was telling a deliberate lie. It happens every day. How many times have you heard someone stutter over something, and immediately known it’s a lie? So I borrow all these experiences, store them up, and use them when the occasion comes along. It’s all part of being an actor.
Penthouse: When you starred in a film called The Doctor’s Dilemma, you changed your views about film acting. Tell us a little about what happened.
Bogarde: Yes, I realized that there was such a thing as a good scriptwriter by the name of George Bernard Shaw. Up to that time, I think most of the scripts had been written by lonely women. It’s only in the last few years that we’ve had good scriptwriters. So I decided that the cinema was important, and that there were great directors and writers. I could then begin to approach a performance on screen that I could be proud of and that an audience would find satisfactory.
Penthouse: Then The Victim came along and you took a part that several other actors had turned down.
Bogarde: Let’s be honest about it. Everyone had turned it down. I’m not ashamed of it-some of my best parts have been turned down by all the others. This part was turned down because everyone said it was revolting, that it was about a homosexual, and that I would have to play a man who was middle-aged. I played it and it was a great success.
Penthouse: What was the reaction from the public?
Bogarde: Well, the kids didn’t like it because I was playing an old man. But there was a special problem because in England, like everywhere else, certain words mean different things in different sections of the country. From a line north of Oxford, if anyone said you were playing a gentleman who was queer, they thought you meant he had ‘flu. So it had no significance whatever north of Oxford.
Penthouse: Then came ‘The Servant‘ which won you critical acclaim both here and abroad. You’ve been quoted as saying that this was easy, straightforward acting. What did you mean?
Bogarde: I had a marvellous director who knew exactly what he wanted, and I knew what I was going to do with the part from the very beginning. I had a wonderful writer who had written the part very simply, very easily. There it was. We had to invent a voice for the character. I had to invent a face. I never wear make-up and I had to decide what I was going to do with my face. From that point of view, it was difficult. But the part-once I got the first two lines down – was dead easy. Strangely enough we shot the movie in sequence and my first shot was when I walked down the street in the opening and pressed the doorbell. At the end of the first take, the director said “That’s him”. I said I thought so, too. It was very simple, whereas Accident was a terribly difficult part. It was layer upon layer of thought and pit after pit into which I could fall. The one thing that man must never have is self-pity, and it is the one indulgence an actor adores. An audience just loves to see it; they like to see a man being sad for himself. Accident was the most full, the most intelligently conceived, the best used performance that I’ve ever given. I’m trying to be modest and dispassionate, but it’s very difficult. The part cost me a great deal, mentally, physically and spiritually.
Penthouse: Do you ever see your films after they are completed?
Bogarde: Not usually. The films Joseph Losey and I make together I see constantly, because I sit in with him right from the first assembly. I’ve seen The Servant about 80 times and I still break up every time I watch it. I think it’s the funniest movie I’ve ever seen.
Penthouse: In the past few years, there has been an abundance of good English films and English actors. Why do you think the best movies are coming out of countries other than America?
Bogarde: I don’t really know. There are some wonderful, marvellous actors in America. They have brilliant technicians and writers. The big studios have known how to make a certain kind of movie-brilliantly-for almost 30 years now. But audiences are changing; their demands are not being satisfied. There is still time for Doris Day and Rock Hudson and that kind of thing, but I wonder for how much longer? There is a freedom of speech in Europe that America doesn’t have. Georgy Girl, for example, is not a very good movie. It’s delightful but it’s not very good, and it rips New York asunder. People are saying things on the screen that Americans didn’t think could be said. It’s a sort of neo-emancipation. They are awfully unsophisticated in New York, the most sophisticated of all cities, and people are very complex. They have guilt feelings, and if they want to invent, they go and buy a psychiatrist. This strange new power that has come out of Europe is only that we are living a much freer existence. We have gone without a war for 25 years-I think that’s got something to do with it. Youth is thrusting like hell-some of it is violent and vicious and crude and ugly, but a lot of it is exciting. Look what has happened to Carnaby Street. It’s outrageous and ridiculous, but still it’s great. It’s better than chains and motorcycles-or another war. Though it will probably take another war to contain all this energy.
Penthouse: Do you think the fact that actors work in repertory and Shakespeare and on stage before they go into films over here is responsible for bringing out such talent?
Bogarde: I think it’s essential. In America there is nothing comparable. There never has been. They have summer stock, but even that at its best is some old star dragging round Call Me Madam or something. I don’t mean to be impolite, because I have a great regard for American actors.
Penthouse: Do you think training in television is good experience?
Bogarde: I think it’s living death and should be avoided at all costs. Television is fourth rate. We have an American gentleman on this film and he wants everything speeded up, everything done in what he calls “quick time”. Of course I can shorten a scene from one minute to five seconds, but it wouldn’t be the same scene, would it? In television, they don’t want screen time, they want scene time. We don’t make films that way in Europe any more. That probably is one of our greatest secrets. And though all our films are American-financed, they too persist in making them over here instead of in America.
Penthouse: English television too?
Bogarde: Television is like television dinners -tinfoil, prepacked in a factory. There is absolutely no respect for television. You can get up and insult the television by going to the loo or making a cup of tea or talking through the bits that bore you. You don’t do this in the theatre, you don’t do this in the opera, you don’t even do this in a movie house. It was a wonderfully exciting medium when it first started, but it’s been vulgarized. You know perfectly well that now the best things that go on television are the old movies. They were never made with the premise that they had to be made in ten minutes. For example, we’ve had a dreadful television series which we’ve suffered for years. It did start off as quite a funny idea, but it was pretty shabby really. Now they are doing it two-maybe three-times a week. Now, what kind of quality can you get from that? They’re even doing it in colour. They have three separate units, three separate crews, and the same poor bloody actors, who are getting elderly anyway.
Penthouse: Do you think films will ever replace live theatre?
Bogarde: My god, I hope not. I think a lot of it will be replaced by a new form of film, a new process of some kind. But the one thing that has stayed all through history has, been the representation of emotion by a human being in front of other human beings. You can be desperately enthralled by a play but if you are sitting a little to one side you can see the actors in the wings, you can see an arc lamp. You know there really isn’t a blue sky behind the people on the stage. Theatre is a condition of the mind that you absolutely accept. No, I don’t think the theatre will ever die. What I think will happen is that someone will drop a bomb somewhere, and we’ll have to go back and make everything all over again.
Penthouse: You treasure your privacy and you don’t make many personal appearances. What about an actor’s obligation to the public?
Bogarde: I think I owe the public nothing more than good entertainment. That’s all they’re paying me for. I don’t think they should know if I use Johnson’s polish on my loo floor or if I sleep with Chinese women. It’s not their business.
Penthouse: Have you had this attitude all along, or is it that you no longer need the public as much as you once did ?
Bogarde: Ever since I started films, I thought the publicity was shame-making, was cheating the audience. I used to go along with these poor little starlets who were dressed in mink and satin. At the end of the evening, the fancy clothes went back to the studio wardrobe and the starlet went home on the subway. I never had that done to me because they thought I was too valuable. But I had my fly sewn up at the side because I was always being groped by women. I was never allowed to be left alone with women between 18 and 45-or even older sometimes. The whole thing was false and ugly and kind of flesh-selling. I didn’t like people saying. “Isn’t he thin?”, or “Isn’t he small”, or “Isn’t he shorter than you thought he would be?” Women wanted their husbands to go up to me and punch me. After all, the cinema is just a form of masturbation.
Penthouse: Why do you say that?
Bogarde: It’s a sexual relief for disappointed people. The letters that I’ve had over the years should be gone into. This is a fantasy land. Women write and say. “I let my husband do it because I think it is you lying on top of me”. Or they kept pictures of me under their pillows or on the ceiling. Every fan is a fanatic-even if they are little teenage girls of 13 or 14. The basic thing about the cinema is sensuality. The only reason audiences have gone roaring out to see films like Georgy Girl, Morgan, and Blow-Up is because there are naked women in them, naked tits, or some eroticism. They’ll sit through it forever. I’m delighted that A man for all seasons has done so well because it just disproves what I have been telling you. There is sex and romanticism. In between that, there is not much else.
Penthouse: Some of your own films, like Modesty Blaise, played up to the sexual instincts.
Bogarde: Yes, it did, but it was hitting below the belt as well. All great art is a stimulation of the senses, and if they are not the sexual senses, they are the senses that stimulate and excite and liberate.
Penthouse: You’ve said that there are better actors going around in second rate theatre than those who are the most popular in films.
Bogarde: Yes, that’s true. There is a great deal of luck involved. For example, a very very good stage actor is a man called Peter O’Toole who, when I knew him, had a craggy nose, marvellous great bones, and reddish hair. He was a strange, exciting, brilliant stage actor. Another one is Albert Finney who I think is the most brilliant of the contemporary young actors. Neither of them was terribly well known, and both were offered the part in Lawrence of Arabia. Now whoever gets Lawrence is going to get five years’ income as a movie star-it’s the nature of things. Albert said no to it because he wouldn’t tie himself up with a contract, O’Toole said yes. And now Peter O’Toole is a big star. If a film makes a fortune, if it wins Oscars, then the star goes rocketing along with it. I don’t know how O’Toole was found by Lean, and I don’t know where he was lucky, but he was lucky in the sense that he got it. Now there probably was another actor-Joe Boakes somewhere-who is just as good and magnificent and all that, but he wasn’t around. That’s one explanation of how it happens.
Penthouse: What advice would you give to young actors who are trying to get into films?
Bogarde: I suppose I would say “Try and get into repertory”. You just can’t get into films these days unless you are Miss World with four breasts or something, and they only get in because they are pretty. They really can’t do anything. There is no short cut. You have to be doing something or be seen at a party. David Hemmings is the new great star. Some people think he started overnight. He didn’t at all. I think the best thing is to get into theatre or go to drama school, though that can be bad for some people-acting is very much a matter of personality, and sometimes personalities just can’t be moulded into the type of actor a school wants. They all came out of drama school in my day talking like Sir Laurence Olivier. God knows who they talk like now-Jerry Lewis, I don’t know. You can’t just suddenly go into films unless you want to get in on the technical side as a washer-up or an errand boy.
Penthouse: How would you spot a bad actor?
Bogarde: A bad actor is one that is always “on”, and I hate “on” actors. They don’t even know they are doing it-not even in real life. I don’t know when they are serious-maybe on the toilet. Even in the bath, they’re not. They just sort of sit there and contemplate their essence of beauty and look at themselves and think how great they are. They never seem to get out of this kind of plastic in which they are encased.
Penthouse: Do you plan to return to the English stage?
Bogarde: No. I’ve been here far too long. They know me too well. I see no point in doing it. I’ve got a very nice house in the country, and it’s too far to come to London to do a play. Now, films are different. Films are exciting, and I can stop and go for a beer or get a breath of fresh air, or relax between takes. In the theatre the only exciting part is opening night. Most people absolutely dread opening nights but I love them. All I want to do is open, get the reviews and finish the play. That’s much too glib-actually the first three months of the play are exciting. The people who want to see you-the intelligent audiences-come in the first three months. After that, we’re left with coach tours.
Penthouse: How ever do people cope who spend two and three years doing the same play?
Bogarde: One of my closest friends almost lost his mind. Towards the end of his run, he was always going into oxygen tents before the performance started. Actually the tent didn’t do anything for him, as much good as taking a deep breath of fresh air from his window. It was psychological. He thought he was being well taken care of. I had the same thing happen to to me in a play that ran for a year in London. It was an extremely emotional and difficult part. Towards the end of the run, I had a doctor standing by because I had proof that the walls of my dressing room were moving in while I was on stage. I knew, because I put paper all around the edges, and, sure enough, when I came back the papers were scattered. So the walls had moved and gone back again. Part of my brain said, “This is insanity, you are heading for a breakdown. You know perfectly well the walls are built of brick and cannot move”, and another part of my brain said, “Don’t be a fool. They moved“. The doctor was-can you imagine?- a child psychiatrist of some brilliance whom I had known before. I asked him to be there in the wings just in case. I told him I thought I was going mad. He told me not to worry too much about it because he had something I could take. I asked him it if were a drug and he said yes, and I knew I mustn’t take drugs on stage. The doctor said he was terrified of giving it to me because it was habit-forming, but that he would if I really needed it. He said it would give me complete confidence, but that it would be a desperate measure. The time did come when I was actually physically ill on stage. I blacked out. I couldn’t even see. I heard my voice going on with my lines, but I couldn’t see anything. I was led off, and the doctor gave me the pill. It worked in about 25 minutes. They held the curtain and I gave a stunning performance that night, and for the next five days.
Penthouse: What was the pill?
Bogarde: Aspirin. It was all psychological. That’s why I don’t really want to go back to all that. I’m too old.
Penthouse: Who has been the most exciting actress you’ve ever worked with?
Bogarde: Julie Christie. I’ve never met anyone like her on stage before. I’ve never seen anyone with such blinding talent. In Darling, we learned all the lines, rehearsed all our movements and directions, and then just before the take the director said: “Forget all about the lines. You know what you’ve got to say. You know what your moves are and where the lighting is.” So we did. I think it worked wonderfully well. Films are a very disciplined thing, really, and there isn’t much chance for this sort of thing. Darling worked well because a lot of it was improvisation. And a lot of the charm and magic of Julie was her improvisation. She’s wonderful to play with, wonderful to be with. And it’s funny, Julie’s been around for a long time before Darling. She’d done bits in films about racing cars-the British sex image. Then she did Billy Liar which brought notice to her. After Darling I wrote her and told her what was going to happen to her, and that it was a shame we’d never be able to work together again. And I was right. She’s an international star now, certainly out of my range. I imagine they’ll play her with Paul Scofield or Peter O’Toole or Richard Burton, you know-the big boys. Still, it’s nice for Julie, and bloody nice for them.
Penthouse: What are your own plans for the future?
Bogarde: I’d like to direct one day, but I don’t know enough about it now. Above all, I hope I remain an actor all my life. It’s my only dream.
Penthouse: Mr. Bogarde, thank you.
