The Sunday Telegraph – Aug 3rd 2008

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‘Terror Lurks Not Far Beneath This Cool Facade’

EXCLUSIVE IN PUBLIC, DIRK BOGARDE WAS SHY, RESERVED, POLITE TO A FAULT. BUT IN PRIVATE, HE WAS FAR MORE ENTERTAINING. IN THE FIRST OF TWO EXTRACTS FROM A NEW COLLECTION OF HIS MOST INTIMATE, WICKEDLY FUNNY PERSONAL LETTERS, WE REVEAL DIRK AS HE REALLY WAS

In his last passport, Derek Van den Bogaerde, otherwise Dirk Bogarde, described himself simply as ‘actor’. Which is odd, because from the late 1970s, his success in a second, parallel, profession – that of writer – gave him just as much pride and fulfilment. In 1969, his matinee-idol days left firmly behind him, and frustrated by the lack of fulfilling work in the British cinema, Dirk had left for the Continent with Anthony (‘Tote’) Forwood, who managed his career and shared his life for 40 years. At their cherished farmhouse in Provence, Dirk produced the first of 15 bestsellers, one of which, A Particular Friendship (1989), revealed him as a scintillating correspondent. When he wrote, the shyness which beset him in public – and in overcoming which he could sometimes appear almost unrecognisable to those who knew him privately – lay dormant. Misspelt, eccentrically punctuated and paragraphed, his typed letters became essays. That his spelling should have been so bad is puzzling. Here was a man of wide knowledge and fierce intelligence – surely he could simply have reached for the dictionary? No; to John Charlton, his patient and meticulous editor, Dirk admitted: ‘I just “bash” along I fear, and things get left behind rather.’

In this first letter, Dirk, 55, has just dubbed his dialogue on Alain Resnais’s ‘Providence’ and completed his role in Richard Attenborough’s ‘A Bridge Too Far’. While still ‘reacting’ to a period of intensive work, ht recounts his exploits to tht screenwriter and producer Bet (‘Snowflake’) Gilbert.

To Bee Gilbert, Clermont, 13 September, 1976
Dearest Sno’
What a lovely long letter to cheer me up on my return, three days ago, from a hellish week oflooping in Paris. I got there to find that I had to loop the entire f– ing film .. . 200 loops. The sound engineers were dreadful (from Telly natch) and the birds, dogs and airoplanes which scattered across the locations screwd us up even more. Well. . . it is done now. Am home again for a couple of weeks before returning to Old Father Attenboroughs Disney-Arnhem. Which I dread. Ah well. It will make a bomb, with all those Stars how can it fail? Adored Sean C and worked very happily indeed with him … and made a surprising new mate in Ryan O’Neil who could not be nicer, jollier and brighter! That WAS a surprise. Tote says it was because he was so bloody respectful to me all the time … but I just liked the bloke. And he’s good too. And THAT was a surprise. Gene Hackman was a bit Methody and got cross if the camera operator was on the set while he was rehearsing … but was very pleasant to me and quite good, not more, when it came to the Acting.

Mike Cain pulled the Movie Star bit a bit much … the big cigar, black glasses and fat Cadillac … but he was pleasant if dull and has to have the ugliest voice in the business … and pop eyes. And that was a surprise too. I dont think I could go through it again for anything. Even the lolly. A woman from The New York Times ruefully mumbled that doing some- thing as crappy for so much loot left ‘a kind of stain.’ I wonder if she was right. Holland was hell. Apart from the van Goghs, Rembrants and the Vermeers it is all a lot of crappy horror … We stayed in a ‘dainty’ little hotel in a wood where dtnner started at 6.30pm and was off at 8.45. THAT went down like a cup of cold sick as you may imagine. Especially as the prices were identicle to the Lancaster in Paris! However we had three weeks there and flew back on a beastly Caravelle, which bounced all the way to Nice …

We have had, unlike you, a soakmg summer… everything green and lush … while the great trees in the Luxumbourg Gardens are all dead. And now Tote is out mowing acres of white daisies and autumn crocus and I think I’d better go and help him … regretfully. I am so lazy and full of reaction … odd.

God bless you, pretty Sno … all love as ever for ever . . . as you know.

In the late 1970s, Dirk began a second career as an author. Two volumes of memoirs were published to acclaim in 1977 and 1978, respectively; and a first novel, ‘A Gentle Occupation’, had been accepted with a £15,000 advance in August 1979. A second was ‘on the go’ when he wrote to Kathleen Tynan, who had befriended Dirk and Tony, 11 years earlier, while she and the photographer Patrick Lichfield covered the shooting of Justine’ in Tunisia.

To Kathleen Tynan, Clermont, 11 October, 1979
Dearest Kath –

I have just received your mammoth-thing on a postcard which clearly states that you have not heard from this side for a long time. And thats maddening: because I wrote you a long letter in July. A glorious, hot, rain-less summer … we lived outside all the time and ate and drank vast quantities of food and wine, which seemed to cost the bloody earth. And did!

Filming has faded away, thankfully. I really do detest it and the uglies who surround it . . . the last thing I was asked to do … was the ‘Emperor of Iran’ or ‘The Shah’s Story’ … unbelievable. With Claudia Cardinale as the ruddy Empress . . . I went through the whole thing in tight bandages, as far as I could see, and when they were finally removed, in the last 10 minutes of the script, guess what? It was just me, all the time underneath. I ask you.

And now that I seem to be making some loot from sitting up here on my arse and bashing away at this machine, I really, on the whole, prefer it all. I dont have to trail about from Hotel to Hotel.. . or fuss about a ghastly script … or the New Young Director… or the New Young Leading Lady or, finally, the critics. Attenborough is breathing fire about his forthcoming ‘Ghandi’ and I walk in dread that he’ll ask me to read ‘the first draft’. I know there is a middle aged clergyman lurking about in the pages which is ‘a simply marvellous part, Dirkie’ … the idea of India, Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson and Attenborough all beating it up for Ghandi makes me ill.

How to avoid reading and passing comment? Or accepting! By getting on with the second ‘buke’. The second ‘buke’ is two chapters long and reads like sub Evelyn Waugh. So THAT wont do. I search desperatly for an alternative plot … thats the hardest part. Every time I think I have a perfectly super original idea I read a cross review for it in the Sunday Observer. And have to start again. Ah well …

Tote is well … after HIS bout of ‘flu. (The air up here is too rarefied l think.) … and is busy writing his memoirs. Having seen how I can make a bit of scratch from just sitting up here for the day he has reverted to his machine. At lunch time he arrives at the bar staggering, glassy eyed, and reaches a trembling hand out for the Campari . . . it is beginning to dawn on him that it aint so easy!

I think I’ve said all there is to say on this dullish day … rain and low cloud and ham and mushrooms and eggs and baked beans for lunch. That do? Wish you were here to share them really.

To his surprise, Dirk was invited to preside over the jury for the 1984 Cannes film festival. His panel, which included the actress Isabelle Huppert and tlte director Stanley Donen, gave the Palme d’Or to Wim Wenders, ‘Paris, Texas’. The judging process was not without controversy.

To Kathleen Tynan, Clermont, 9 June, 1984
My dearest Kathleen –
[ … ] It was quite fun, actually, Cannes. I was locked up hermetically in a very pleasant suite in the Majestic (on account of secrecy) when I was’nt at the Movies … 24 in 12 days, starting at 8.15am! I got rather to like it all … but some pretty crummy movies flashed over the screen I assure you! And if I have to look at another pubic-hair or another shot of a cow being slaughtered, a horse being drowned, a fat man having his orgasm, I’ll choke. All that, I may add, jammed with Lesbian-Love scenes of extreme explicicy, at eight of a morning is really not adorable.

‘Mike Cain pulled the Movie Star bit a bit much… the big cigar, black glasses and fat Cadillac… but he was pleasant if dull’

There was the usual Political Nonsense. I put paid to that! I had a super jury: very adult and all successful, and not one dotty novelist on the list. American, Italian, Hungarian, Russian, French, etc. I got on terrifically well with the Russians … it is so sad that one can make warm friends in two weeks and forget the Sakharovs and all, simply because we are united as Film People. God! I detest bloody politicians. They are disposable. But do appalling harm before dropping out. I behaved rather like a British Officer dealing with the wogs in Aden! Snap, and a certain amount of table-banging. It worked splendidly.

We were, or rather I was, (as President) informed long before that we were to award prizes to ‘commercial films and players, not to Art Subjects or players who are un-known generally. This must be a Family Festival, not a political one’. So much for my personal brief; coupled with the vague suggestion, most delicatly put, that

John Huston had been PROMISED the Palme d’Or for Under the Voltano, Finney Best Actor, and Jacqueline Bissett, (not half bad, but not good enough) was to be best Actress.

Well: Volcano stands or falls on the performance of the actor who plays ‘Firman’. And it fell. I regret to say that it only got rwo votes in all the sessions which I held (Secret ballots, so I never knew who had voted for what! which I think was quite bright of me. And I’m not given to brightness.)

Finally the Festival Organisers were appalled when we voted Best Actor to two brilliant Spanish gentlemen [Alfredo Landa and Francisco Rahal). And Helen Mirren [Best Actress] sent them into a sort of foaming fit! ‘Who IS she!’ they cried, ‘What film is she in?’ The final announcements, made by me, in frog, on the stage to an audience of 3,000 on the final night, were received with cheers and shouts of joy! They were quick to catch on that $25 million dollars does not nescessarily, mean a good film has been made. The reverse. Have you seen The Bounty by any chance?

We did . .. oh dearie me, oh dearie me … When I announced the Palme d’Or for Wenders I rather thought that they would wreck the theater with their delight, and he was exceptionally moved. And deserved it.

The US Majors slunk away in cold fury. I think it might be hard to get them back next year, but – that is not my problem! They dislike being judged, they said, by ‘a European jury’. Well: they bloody well were this year: and found wanting.

The interesting thing is that the voting for Paris, Texas was absolutely clear. Eight out of 10 … seven out of 10 for Mirren, and nine out of 10 for the two Spaniards … both well into their sixties and sheer magic. When we made the final announcement, before leaving for the theater, to the Organizators, there was hell let loose! They admitted, or one of them did to be fair, that Huston had been promised that he’d win everything .. . ‘You have to award Huston SOMETHING!’ they, (he), yelled with a face crimson with rage. A silence fell among us. There was nothing TO award. Then the spokesman said ‘After all, be reasonable, he has had to come 7,000 miles for this evening’. To whlch Stanley Donen, the US member of the Jury, said in his high, dry voice: ‘You do not get a f—in’ Palme d’Or for TRAVELLING!’Which ended the session neatly.

In the end we accorded him an ‘Hommage’ … which was moving and very spontanious … the house stood to acclaim him. I insisted that he got no ugly present, but just the applause and gratitude for his long years of work from a live audience. I think he was pleased. I have no way of telling.

Now I am back to laying the f—ing table, splitting logs (it has rained here for 15 weeks solidly) and feeding the dog … Cinderella-Land. DO write soonish and let me know about August: but in any case we will guard a case of Moet . . . I got given presents at Cannes and by the German TV Network who have done a three day ‘in depth interview’ here. I cant think what for. But like the Moet! End of paper – but not, ever, end of love –
Dirk XXXOX

In 1987, Dirk and Tony returned unhappily to London because of the latter’s deteriorating health. Later that year, Dirk sulfered a minor stroke. Tony died the following May. The scriptwriter and novelist Penelope Mortimer, with whom Dirk had carried on an intermittent, but forthright, correspondence since 1971, took him to a screening of’A Summer Story’, which she had adapted from Galsworlhy.

To Penelope Mortimer, Cadogan Gardens, 29 October, 1988
My dearest P
And of course, you wont get this until Tuesday. But it is to say what a splendid evening I had. Really.

I know that you were wincing with shame and all those Mortimer Agonies (quite unwarrented, as usual) but I was facinated to be able to watch a fillum which had absolutely nothing what ever to do with me. No responsibilities. And that is usually what happens when I go to the flicks. Responsibility. Either my work as an actor, as a writer or to the Cast and the ruddy Director … and how often I have heaved with fury when the prop men have used enough smoke in a cottage chimney to rival Battersea Power Stauon at full blast. Yesterday I merely thought, ‘Silly farts. Is the kitchen on fire?’ But there was another part of it all which pleased me so, the evening I mean; first time in years I had gone to a cinema … first time I’d tried sitting with this still-slightly-wonky leg … first time I’d gone out, as it were, ‘on my own’ … and given that my hostess was you whome I love anyway, and that I had a smashing ride in a super motor with Terry Someone and a delicious, relaxed and paid-for supper with all the whisky I could require, I mean, really, what more could I ask.

Even the girl beside me in the cinema offered me her Malteaser. Was’nt that pleasing? I scowled at her of course. I always do. Terror lurks not very far beneath this apparently cool facade. I’m as cool as a microwave oven really. But thank you.
With love, always,
Dirk.

By 1991 Dirk had found success in a third career, as a regular book reviewer for ‘The Daily Telegraph’ and occasional contributor to this, its Sunday sister. Polemical pieces on euthanasia and the Holocaust led to him being in demand by charitable bodies and schools, either as a figurehead, or as a speaker, or both. He was asked what made the real Dirk Bogarde tick …

To Penelope Mort1mer, Cadogan Gardens, 19 September, 1991
[ … ] In order of your anxiety-questions. I am as content as a clam. If they are content. Anyway, content. I have come to terms with catastrophe at least, and tucked it all away very neatly into the compost of my life. I have absolutely no fear whatsoever. About anything. Except, I suppose, cancer or one of those things. Senile dementia … but I’ll come to terms with those, I reckon. If you can come to terms with Senile Dementia?

As I am Vice President of the Voulantry Euthanisa Society, and now lecture on it to irate, pleased, agreeing, disagreeing, cross, calm, women in the National Council of Women of GB (or something like that) and lecture to 15-18 year olds on, of all things, the Holocaust, as I am also a founder member of BACUP, the organisation which helps people with cancer, and their families, to come to ‘terms’ with it … as I read for the blind … and give Workshops at the Vic and Guildhall, write for the Telegraph each Saturday . . . and do Platforms at the National every now and again, I really dont feel that I can complain about a lack of things to do! Honestly! I am making use of my life in the only way I can, that is by helping people one way or another without being soppy and pious. I am about the most irreverant fellow you could meet.

It did not just ‘happen’ to me. Arriving back here with a dying man, pretending that he was’nt, buying a house here, realising my roots had been torn up at 66 … finding that leaving Provence, France, was not a severance but an amputation … all that, plus death and 50 years of friendship bumpmg down a too-small staircase in a body-bag and a swiping stroke on top, did not make anything easy. The Press sniped. The tabloids shrilled. I crept about my daily tasks, eating, shopping, buying my beer, managing my money, cashing a cheque, in a haze of fear and a terror of shyness.

At first I only went out in the very early mornings, was pretty pissed by noon, slept that awful sleep all afternoon, watched TV and, sometimes, bought the Standard from Europa Foods across the street. Not far to go; no one to recognise one. And then, as the healing almost started, someone on the Telegraph asked me to review a book. I had never done such a thing before … but I tried. And I won. And I now have a contract with them and almost no time to do all the things I have to do!

If all this sounds utterly nauseating, and I bet it does, it is just to TRY to give you some idea of what I am. So there you are. No reserve, no suspicion, no need to stay intact or hide. I am me. Wide out in the open. The only thing about which I DO have a feeling of guilt, and it is not that strong, is that a short time after I got back on my feet, moved into this flat, took a deep breath and knocked off the booze, I was pounced upon by my old contemporaries. Some rich, some famous, all hideiously boring, narrow, dull, and marking time into a pit.

I have dropped them all Deliberatly, and without givmg them any real reason. Any reason at all. Dont want ’em. Useless. They drain me … I have far more to give others and younger ones. And if the tide runs out for me and I am left bereft in a chair, then that’ll

‘If the tide runs out for me and I am left bereft in a chair, then that’ll be fine. I am fond of me, and I get on well with me. I make me laugh … ‘

be fine. I am very fond of me, as I have told you, and I get on well with me. I make me laugh … make me shudder at the waste of good food when I cook a meal for six because I cant work out how to modify the recipe for two … I know I’m a twat. But who cares?

People quite like that … and I just like being kissed by the girls in the shops. Why not? I like people to smile at me, even though they dont address me, I like smiling back. and I love taxi drivers who yell out at me in the street, ‘OK, Dirk? Look great for your age mate … ‘

Yeah. I like that .

Will that do? Impassioned answers impassioned. OK? If you never write again I’d really understand! And still love you!
DXXX

. . . and Pmelop~ Mortimer did not give up easily. (She had also written an adaptation of (The Sioux’, a 1965 novel by the actress Irene Handl, which Dirk passed to a loyal friend, the stage and film producer Robert Fox, then married to Natasha Richardson.)

To Penelope Mortimer, Cadogan Gardens, 24 September, 1991
Bloody hell, you are difficult. I TOLD you that you would find my letter nausiating, people like you, those who see everything in dusk-tones, would. I AM a sort of Pollyanna … and after years of just keeping away from people on account of millions came to me to watch my cavorting, living a secluded life in my small- holding I suddenly got shoved into FULL LIFE with no protection and in a Foreign Land.

After a time of, shall we say reflection?, I decided that having had one stroke and not much liking the effects, I could very well have another, had to live in filthy UK … had to live in London … where better to be than where I started off at 16 as a Student at Chelsea Poly? Parents had been students there too. And the Slade. I felt ‘right’ in the area. Coming to terms was difficult. To terms with walking quite unprotected in streets jammed with curious people.
‘I think it is. Look!’
‘You ask him. Go on. He cant bite you?’
‘Were you Dirk Bogarde?’
‘Left France, have you?’
‘I remember your face but not the name? Humphry someone … ‘
I ducked into my anorak and tried to walk, as I told you, only at dusk or just when shops had opened. Fewer people. No standing with curious, autograph hunting, housewives in lines at the Check Outs. Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose were soon abandoned. People followed one.
‘He’s buying tinned tomatos.’
‘Thinner than I imagined.’
‘Smaller.’
‘And balding … see?’
‘Pity. But after 50, you know … ‘
‘Could you sign this? Not for me, for my neice, grandmother, wife, son, sister, baby-sitter, cousin Agnes, Eileen, with two e’s please, Anne with an “e, … ‘

No one, ever, in France behaved like this. Not even in Paris … unless they were British. I felt, all the time, as if my c— was hanging out of my pants: I hunched my shoulders, wore a Purdy cap, scuttled (as far as I could scuttle with a wonky leg) and my doctor thought that it might be ‘obesessional’. Might it? I’d never had an obsession before, save for lizards, frogs, birds, and those kinds of things. So I decided to either go mad or face up to it. I faced up to it. Took off the cap … walk INTO the Check out … smile at everyone because they SMILE at me! Memory jogs them . . . of some time in which I must have figured m their private lives somewhere … at any age from 10 to 70. My films are always on TV on Sunday. I am counted as a friend. 0k. I’ll settle for that. It is far better than hiding in this flat wondering what to do, how to die gracefully.

RAGE.Yes.You make the error of thinking that RAGE has to be manifest, that one shouts and screams with what you call ‘fury’. Balls. RAGE is sometimes inside. Heard of a Rage To Live? You react to one puny sentence in my letter about 50 years and body-bags on a too small stair-case. But RAGE did’nt remotely come NEAR the thing. Acceptance, humility, fear of’ what now’, relief that three years of almost unendurable suspense, of desperate distress physically, of loss but relief that it was over. Knowing is so much better, I promise you, than wondering: and hope is pretty hollow when it leaves.

No sense of injustice. Helplessness, yes. To a point. But one is forced by distress and need to rally. No fury. At all. Why? It happens; we are born to die. When Anna, the Night Nurse, and I tried to turn the patient [Tony Forwood] he said, and I could only hear by putting my head against his chest and ‘took’ the vibrations, ‘If you did this to a dog they’d arrest you’. Right. He was being ‘jokey’.

But he was right. Which is why I am now the Vice President of VES . . . and sticking my neck out against Catholics and British Manners and Members of the BMA. IN public. But no Rage. I had the most wonderous 50 years of my life. So did my partner. WE both knew that we’d have to pay. And did. OK? I have come to terms with my life, I only have an active 10 years reasonably left. Christ! Why waste them? I have just written to Radio Drama. TV [sic] and refused, politely, their kind offer to write a play, or a series, for them. I have quoted the things I watched for homework. ‘Tittmuss’, House of Elliot, Trainer and some dire thing, they adored, which starred my (once) deeply respected Tom Courtney. Impossible to believe any of them. Lowest-Common-Watcher. I’d rather stay with my Telegraph Readers. At least they write back intelligently. I’m off to do a bit of Auschwitch again: then there is RAGE. Then, my love. Will that do? Hope that you are not vexed that I shoved R. Fox the Handle? It’s only a nudge of course. But he’s bright, clever, and very sharp. Also his track record is amazing, and his wife is to die [for,] she is so adorable, tough, beautiful and can act! Wow!
Love
D.

‘Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters’, selected and edited by John Coldstream, Weidenfeld & Nicolson