Photoplay – Aug 1963
Why Dirk is back as Dr. Sparrow
by Ken Ferguson
“I feel I’ve been asleep for seven years”, he says
Seven years have lapsed since Dirk Bogarde vowed that he would never make another Doctor film. He had completed Doctor At Large and, as far as he was concerned, Dr. Simon Sparrow had had his day.
The other afternoon I watched Dirk shooting a scene on Windsor Central station. The film? Doctor in Distress. The part he was playing? Dr. Simon Sparrow!
I had come to Windsor to ask him why he had changed his mind. In his caravan-trailer, parked in the station, he sipped a Guinness and told me.
“I’ve more or less been forced to!” he began with a smile. “I’ve been asked over and over again to make another Doctor film. The series is still fantastically popular. I asked director Ralph Thomas, who has made all the Doctor films with Betty Box, if I could do another one and he agreed – we wanted to work together again.”
Since Dirk last played Dr. Sparrow, he has developed tremendously as an actor. In films like Victim, H.M.S. Defiant, The Mind Benders and his recent picture, The Servant (which he considers to be the best he has ever made) he proved that he was more than just the blue-eyed boy of the Rank Organisation.
But although Dirk has achieved artistic success, and won the admiration of even his sternest critics, his popularity at the box-office has slumped. Obviously the public preferred him in the lighter roles.
“I have always believed an actor should make the kind of films he wants to make and those he feels should be made,” he said. “I wanted to do more with my career than play light comedy roles. I was beginning to make a name as a romantic leading man. The romantic ‘image’ as they call it today. I hate the word ‘image.’ I never wanted it stuck to me. I’ve always thought of myself as a character actor. I soon realised there were far more interesting films to be made and I wanted to make them.
“Naturally, one hopes they will be a success, but, quite frankly, the satisfaction of making them means more to me. Of course, an actor should consider the public. I’m not saying he should dedicate himself to them, but he must be aware of what they do and do not want.” “How do you feel about coming back to Sparrow after all this time? ” I asked him. “I feel I’ve been asleep for seven years,” he replied. “Nothing has changed. The same team, the same studio, the same everything. It’s like coming home on leave. And I’m enjoying it.”
“What were your main reasons for deserting Dr. Sparrow seven years ago?”
“I felt that the films were beginning to slip into farce and I’m hopeless at farce,” he explained. “I made a farce called Penny Princess some years ago and for me it was a disaster. I thought never again. Then Betty Box offered me Doctor In The House. They’d been looking for a quiet chap to play Dr. Sparrow and decided on me.
“I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t think I could. The thought of playing comedy scared me. In the end Betty persuaded me to take the role and, thank heavens, I got through it. We were all surprised by its success at the box office, but, even then, we didn’t imagine we’d be making another one.
“There was another reason I dropped Sparrow. I had made eight films in a row with Betty and Ralph and we felt we were getting to know each other too well. We had to break away. There was a danger of us becoming stale.”
Now the team is back again and, no doubt, Doctor In Distress will be as big a success as Doctor In The House, Doctor At Sea, Doctor At Large and Doctor In Love (which starred Michael Craig instead of Dirk).
“Everyone’ likes a good belly laugh,” said Dirk. “They always get it when they go to see a Doctor film. There are some aspects of the medical profession we treat seriously, but on the whole we tend to send it up. I can’t” see anything wrong in that. After all there is a gay side to hospital life. I suppose we all share this rather morbid curiosity as to what goes on in hospitals. But I think those television hospital films tend to take it all too seriously.
“We try to mike people less frightened of going into hospital. Personally, I dread it. Apart from the entertainment people get by seeing a Doctor film, I think they do put the public more at ease when they face the prospect of going into hospital. I had a letter from a young woman who said that for years she had been trying to get her mother to go in to hospital. Then one day she took her to see one of the Doctor films, which finally did the trick.”
Doctor In Distress is likely to become Dirk’s biggest box-office hit for quite a while, but it may be some time before he makes another. He has a full schedule ahead.
Shortly after leaving the security Of the Rank Organisation two Years ago, Dirk bought John Harris’s novel,”Covenant With Death.” He is reported to have paid £10,000 for it. His intention was not to star in the film but direct it.
“I consider this story one of the finest ever written about World War I or any other war,” he said. “It is a story that must be filmed.”
I asked him why he hadn’t made it yet.
“A simple matter of £800,000!” he explained. “I couldn’t make the film for anything less. It is the story of the Battle of the River Somme, which took place on July 1, 1916. Forty-two thousand of our boys died between 10.15 a.m. and 1 p.m. slaughtered by the Germans. Everyone of them under 26. There was hardly a family in the country who didn’t have at least one relative at the front that day. It was one of the most appalling disasters in our history – the result of stupidity on a high level.
“I’ve been to the actual scene of the battle, and even today, in this beautiful countryside setting, you can feel an uncanny atmosphere of death. When I make the film it will have to be shot right there, on the actual spot it happened.”
Is Dirk likely to get the £800,000 to make the film?
“I’ve tried everything,” he said. “I can’t raise the money at the moment. But I haven’t given up hope.”
“Who would you like to star in the film?”
“Actors like Tony, Newley, Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney would be marvellous for it,” he told me. “Not long ago I tried to interest American companies in it, but they didn’t want to know. One company did show a little interest, but they said they wanted to re-set the whole thing in Korea. I told them what they could do!”
It was time for Dirk to continue shooting scenes for Doctor In Distress.
“These films are fun,” he said finally. “It’s true there are other things I want to do. But, for the time being, they’ll just have to wait!” And then he was back on the set as Dr. Simon Sparrow.
