Picturegoer – Dec 17th 1955
Bogarde gets the Ray Mob Plus and he just can’t understand it
by Godfrey Morgan
Surprised? That’s not the half of it. Dirk Bogarde was astounded. More so, even, than the taxi driver whose cab headlamps were wrenched off in the clamour. More so than the nine policemen and one mountie called in to help the star struggle out of the theatre. More so than the old cabbie who deliberately ran towards the screeching fans, explaining: “It’s the only way to make ’em move, guv.”
More so than the theatre manager who gasped: “I’ve never known anything like it … not for Johnnie Ray, not for Sinatra and … crikey … not even for the Oliviers.”
What’s the fuss about? Simple: Dirk Bogarde has had the Johnnie Ray treatment plus. It started when he took the Ugo Betti comedy, “Summertime,” out into the provinces, before it opened at London’s Apollo Theatre.
“I knew I had a following not too modest to admit it. I think I still get the biggest fan mail of the Rank stars,” says Bogarde. “But I’d no idea this could happen to me. It’s astonishing. And frightening. Dash it … it’s not the sort of thing I want.
It certainly isn’t. Bogarde is the most fan shy of all Britain’s screen stars. He keeps a bull in his garden to discourage over-adventurous fans from trampling his shrubbery. He has spoken out against fan antics, to the embarrassment of Rank publicity men, who know him as the star who won’t do as they’d like.
Though all Rank stars have contract clauses that they must make personal appearances and must co-operate publicity- wise, Bogarde is, unofficially, exempted.
Too Risky For Them
In Manchester, where the Johnnie Ray treatment reached its peak, Bogarde asked newspapermen not to take pictures of the scrum. “I don’t want that sort of publicity,” he explained. Then he allowed one man to take a few shots – “after all, it’s the first time it’s happened and it will probably be the last.”
Is this fan treatment really so bad as Bogarde suggests? “Worse,” he says.
“Frightening. I kept thinking that, if the police cordon broke, the girls – they were mostly girls in the front would be trampled to death.
“In Manchester, after one cab was damaged, I couldn’t get another. Too risky, the drivers said. Eventually I found a bloke who said he knew how to treat the fans. I was terrified when he just drove right at them.
“I heard of at least four girls who were hurt in a “scrum.” Carted off to hospital in an ambulance, I gather. In Cardiff there were some girls sitting together in the gallery. One of them – my manager heard this – said: “I’m going to marry him”
” One of the other girls said: ‘You’re not … I am’ and promptly fainted. Senseless? It’s stupid. Another girl didn’t take her eyes off me. right through the play.”
Some of the fans, and their antics, are “barmy” or just can’t be explained by the seldom-at-a-loss-for words Bogarde. They’re the ones who turn up at the stage door night after night, for no apparent reason. Then there’s Mabel, an elderly woman who’s often around.
“A Kiss Or I’ll Boo”
“First time I saw her was when I was in a play, years ago,” says Bogarde. “She said: ‘Give me a kiss or I’ll boo you tonight.’ I told her to go ahead and boo. She did, from the gallery. Sounded as though she had her friends with her, too.”
One incident delighted the otherwise scowling Bogarde. Locked in a seething crowd he spoke to one of the girls nearest to him. “It’s the first time I’ve ever been in a theatre,” she said.
Had she liked the play? “Lovely,” said the girl. “When the curtain went up, it was like fairyland. I’m glad I saved up to come.”
“That,” says Bogarde, “was nice. And heartening.”
In March, Bogarde is set to star in The Spanish Gardener, film version of an A. J. Cronin story. What would he most like to do on the screen, this star who’s having the Johnnie Ray treatment? He’d like a Tony Curtis rô1e.
And that seems to me the surest way of whipping up the fans again. For the Curtis treatment is just about the same as the Ray treatment. Have you thought about that. Mr. Bogarde?
