by Dirk Bogarde
“What are you doing in Rome?”
“Finishing off a job.”
“Happy with it?”
“I think so. Can’t tell. It was a sweat. Good, ultimately.”
“What next, something fun?”
“What the hell is fun? Do you know?”
“Just asking. Nothing then?”
“Nope. You?”
“A film with Judy Garland. Then something with Dearden.”
“You’ll never get rich that way.”
“I’m trying.
He laughed gently. “So you’re unavailable then, I take it?”
“Not after the Dearden thing. Then there’s a big, big void. I’m on my own now. No Rank … free …”
“Happy?”
“Chilly. I wish we could find something to do together again …”
“And I. But what?”
“Joe. Joe, remember that book you found, ages ago? A slight thing, novella more than a novel. You thought it might make a film when we were doing “Sleeping Tiger”.
There was a long pause, when he answered his voice was not quite as flat.
“You mean the Robin Maugham thing? About the manservant?”
“ ‘The Servant’. That’s it. What about that? Do you think it’s still available?”
“I don’t know, let me check it out. But Christ! You’re too old now to play the boy.”
“I know that, but I could produce it or something with you, couldn’t I?”
“Producers have to be bright. Anyway … let me check it … I’ll call you later.”
When he called it was to say that the book was still available, that it had been bought by someone, scripted by Harold Pinter, abandoned, and that for a certain sum we could secure the rights; he didn’t like the present version, had had long discussions with Pinter and they had found a new formula together. If, he said, I was really serious he would start negotiations right away.
“Of course I’m serious; could I produce it with you?”
“God no. I’ve got a producer, you can play the servant.”
“No, we need someone like Ralph Richardson …”
“I need a movie name; they tell me you are what is laughingly called ‘hot’, so you play the servant; we won’t get finance otherwise, yes or no? There’s a lot of work to do.”
“Yes, of course. When will there be something to read?”
“Not in time for you to change your mind. Late summer, after you have gotten through with being a movie star. I’ll keep in touch.”
The bay of Cannes lay before me, blue, still, calm in the September sun. The sand was hot, the beer iced, the rattan shades slatted shadows across the pages and made it difficult to read; it was difficult enough anyway (I had never read Pinter before), but I knew instinctively, which is how I have always worked, that what I presently held in my sandy hands on the hot morning beach, was not merely a script, but rather a key. The key to a door in my long corridor which only awaited the courage of my turning; and keeping to my dangerous track.
Chapter 11
Elizabeth came and squatted down beside me, spilling a handful of bulbs into my lap. “Those are the last, no more. November is a bit late for tulips, isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be October or something?”
“Better late than never; didn’t have the time. Actually I forgot really.”
She got up and stretched, swivelling to look out over the fish pool through the bare chestnuts. “I’m so stiff. Getting old. I do think it’s pretty here, the prettiest house you’ve ever had. The last place, The Palace, was a bit film starry; not really you, if you know what I mean.”
I pushed in the last of the bulbs, raked the earth over them, wrote “Carrara” on the wooden marker and got up.
“Everything is white.”
“It’s the White Garden, that’s why.”
“I expect you forgot them because of all that business in Cuba. I was so frightened, I wouldn’t even listen to the News.”
“Perhaps that’s why.”
“It really was nearly war, wasn’t it? I don’t think I could have managed another one, could you? I mean so soon after.”
“No. I had enough last time.”
“I was thinking of the children, and George, not so much myself this time.”
We stood together and looked down across the Weald. To the right Chanctonbury Ring; far, far away, like a slit in the canvas of the sky, Shoreham Gap, glinting. Magpies stalked importantly, like judges, through the stubble across the sunken lane. It was cool, still, white doves clattered down in a covey and bobbed gently to each other.
She sighed; almost a laugh. “I don’t think I could have. Do you remember how worried we both were about growing up; after ours? I didn’t think I’d know how to do it.”
“I remember. Took me a long time.”
She put her arm round my shoulder and scuffed the November leaves into flurries. “Do you think we have now? Oh, I know I have. That hotel in Hove we ran, for Allied ex-Service men, a sort of rehabilitation centre really; our first job after we got married. You know how hard it was to start again. George and I did all the cooking, and the boilers: we couldn’t get help, one old woman who came in sometimes. We were doing the beds, cleaning, cooking, washing up. I’d never ever had to do anything like that before. Sheltered little thing. I grew up all right. I felt so old at the end of it that I was just like that lady in the Shangri La thing; you know, the one who turned to dust in the end … she was so terribly old really? That was just how I felt. Dust.”
I pulled her down the steep bank, among the leaves and we started up towards the house through the chestnut walk.
“I was so thick,” I said, “that I tried to be an adolescent all the time; to recapture what I had never really had. Very boring for people who had to deal with a twenty-six-year-old eighteen. Do you know what I mean?”
“No. Not really. You were pretty awful sometimes; isn’t it funny that we didn’t actually grow up in the war, just when you’d expect it, with all the killing and bombs and things. It all happened in the peace; not what you imagine really.” She stopped suddenly and scrabbled about in the leaves for some conkers and put them in her pocket. “They’re for Mark, champion conker killer … or something idiotic. Conkers on a bit of string. Isn’t it silly? We grow up but we don’t much change do we, inside I mean. I’d quite like to play conkers again; you were awfully good, weren’t you? Champion as well. I look at the children, I look at George, look at myself in the mirror and I know I’ve only got older. I don’t suppose we’ll ever really grow up truthfully, I mean like real people, do you?”
“Don’t suppose so. Don’t know, don’t care now.”
We reached the oak gate leading on to the ribbon-smooth lawns, worm casts like Pontefract cakes, neat box hedges, the house glowing in the winter sun. She clambered on to the gate and sat there, brushing dried earth from her hands; I heaved myself up beside her.
“I was saying to Pa the other evening that I think I could put my roots down here, you know.”
She looked vaguely across the lawns. “Your roots?”
“Yes … for good.”
“Have you got a super job coming or something?”
“In January, perhaps. A film by Pinter; with Losey.”
“The Red Indian-looking man?”
“Yes.”
“Will you get lots of money?”
“No. Nothing really, it’s a small budget.”
“How much?” Always deadly curious.
“Seven thousand pounds, about.”
She looked at me with surprise, her eyes smiling. “Seven thousand pounds? That’s all you’ll make?”
“About … it’s a difficult film, no one wants to do it, you know.”
“Do you?”
“We all do … yes, of course … more than anything. But the money-men don’t want to.”
“Why don’t they want to make it then?”
“It’s not commercial, they won’t risk the loot.”
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“Will anyone ever go to see it, if you do make it?”
“Not many perhaps … it’s difficult, you know.”
“Don’t keep on saying ‘you know’—I don’t.”
“Sorry.”
“You must be dotty.”
“Why?”
“Well …” She polished a conker briskly on her sleeve. “You say you think you can put your roots down here. How can you for seven thousand pounds in a film no one wants to make and no one will go to see? Of course, you’re dotty! Why don’t you do something like, oh I don’t know, ‘Cleopatra’ or something.” She laughed and her breath wisped into the still morning air. “It really isn’t very sensible, is it? I mean if you do want to put down roots or whatever you call it.”
I slid off the gate and it wobbled, she dropped her conker to hold on.
“Don’t do that! You are vile! I could have fallen off easily. Now I’ve lost Mark’s best conker.” She clambered down beside me, searching for it in the cropped grass. “If you want to be in that kind of film you ought to live in a little flat like the one you had in Hasker Street. With two suitcases.” She found the conker and caught me up walking towards the house. “You shouldn’t have all this. It’s silly.” She waved her arms wide, embracing lawns, hedges, dovecote, house.
“Shut up!”
She threw the conker high in the air, waited for it to fall, caught it.
“I don’t think you have grown up,” she said flatly.
* * *
But I did, I think. The four films which I made with Losey between ’62 and ’66 saw to that. Each one was a bitter, exhausting, desperate battle. It never got any better; only Loscy’s obstinacy, determination, belief, optimism and unflagging courage managed to get us through; that coupled with a crew who also believed and a growing company, as he called it, of actors who were also prepared to put money second to career. In order to get any of these films made we all had to work for very modest salaries with the vague promises of percentages which we were seldom to see. No one got rich, in any possible degree from these enterprises. But we were enriched in our values; and that is what mattered most to us all; however, our values at no time matched the values of the Distributors or the Money. As Losey said, “The Money isn’t even smart, even about money.” But we fought, and we fought, until eventually they beat us in the battle between Art and Profit; and Art is the ugliest word you can use in their limited vocabulary.
We wrestled “The Servant” to the screen. It was on and off with the frequency of a conjuror’s hat. If I had found Pinter’s script difficult to read, then the Distributors and Money found it utterly incomprehensible and shied away from it like frightened horses, but a series of odd coincidences gave us courage.
With myself set to play the servant, Losey knew that he must bolster my name in such a delicate enterprise with a sound female one. He had in mind a new and very exciting girl called Sarah Miles. She, we both knew, was the ideal choice. But, it appeared, others had the same ideas about her, and she was greatly in demand. It seemed unlikely that she would accept such a modest assignment. She read it, said she liked it, but … One night I switched on the television to watch the News and, quite by chance, tuned into the wrong channel. A small one-act play of not much interest except for the sudden astonishing appearance of a young man who was instantly, beyond any shadow of doubt, the one actor we had to have for the third, exceptionally difficult part. I had never seen nor heard of him before. His name was Maurice Oliver. I called Losey, who hung up to watch, and our mutual agent, Robin Fox who was, as it happened, watching already. Since Maurice Oliver was in fact James Fox, and his own son. Losey agreed that Oliver-Fox was ideal-looking, but was worried that his inexperience (this was his first acting role as it happened) might be a strain on such a complicated, subtle, part.
We were starting. And then the slender hopes were dashed when we learned that Sarah Miles was now committed to a more commercial project for a great deal more money than we could ever hope to pay her. Even though, at this juncture, we had no money; only high hopes. Not quite enough. Once again the conjuror doffed his hat, the film folded its timorous wings, and settled down with a dull thump. Without her we were lost. Not only was she the only conceivable actress for the part, she was also the only bait we had to offer the Money.
Some days later, much against my wishes, and only under constant prodding from Forwood, I was forced, and that is the word, to attend an important premiere and go to the supper which was to follow. Something which I absolutely detested. I found my own premieres bad enough but someone else’s intolerable. Forwood insisted that it would be the gravest of ill-manners not to accept the invitation which came from an extremely powerful producer who had, quite recently, been making polite overtures about a couple of not-very-interesting but commercial subjects. I was made to see, eventually, that I was not in the position to play the role of recluse at this juncture, nor to refuse the offered hand. So I went. It was a tedious event except for one fact, which made it depressing as well. In the seats in front of me were Sarah Miles and the golden-haired Fox boy. Together. Coincidence of a saddening kind. The supper which followed was the usual affair of many round tables and rounder producers and money-men, but at the table to which I was bidden I found myself, surprisingly, beside Joseph Losey, more of a stranger at this kind of junket than I myself. We smiled wanly, and spoke little. Both of us depressed. Forwood on the other hand was sitting at a table some distance away and found himself beside Sarah Miles, whom he did not know, except by sight. Across from him, to his mild astonishment, was Fox. He decided to meddle.
“It’s awfully sad that you can’t do ‘The Servant’,” he said. “You’d be marvellous.”
Sarah looked vaguely surprised. “I simply long to do it! What do you mean?”
“But I hear you are committed elsewhere?”
“No … no that’s all nonsense. I love ‘The Servant’, I’m mad about it, really.” She nodded her head across the table to Fox. “And wouldn’t he be super as ‘Tony’!” she said happily.
“That’s who we want for Tony.”
“I don’t believe it! How marvellous! Oh! Goodness … he’s my very best friend.”
“I think,” said Forwood, “that we ought to go and have a word with Mr Losey … he’s sitting over there.”
The next morning, at half past ten, we all met together in my apartment at the Connaught, and over coffee and Bloody Marys “The Servant” unfolded its wings again, Losey was back in battle, successfully tested the boy, and I had once again been steered towards another door.
* * *
With Sarah we eventually got some money; not much, but a start. We also had, therefore, a distributor. One important part remained to be cast, and I suggested a much underestimated actress called Wendy Craig who had played a very minor role with me in the ill-fated Dearden film, “The Mind Benders”. Thus we had the cast. But not the final, ready-to-shoot-with money. Robin Fox, now rather heavily committed in the project, much to his surprise, with a son and three clients busting to start, one memorable afternoon at the Connaught, made a swift, desperate, and final telephone call to Leslie Grade; who came to the rescue and provided the necessary cash. Losey has called Mr Grade noble, I cannot better the word. After the weeks and weeks of battle and strain, of high hope and shattering disappointment almost hourly, Losey was a weakened man, and exactly one week after we started shooting on our film he collapsed, in the coldest winter we had had for years, with pneumonia.
“It’s a bitch. Got to stay put until I’m better. Maybe three or four weeks: and that’s that. I’m sorry.” His voice was weak, whispery, agonised.
“But, Joe … surely we can do something?”
“Nothing. What can we do? They’ll abandon; never wanted to make it in the first place, this is an excellent chance; collect the insurance money and forget all about it. It often happens.” He was so weak that he could hardly speak, and I could hardly hear him, but I did hear the softest word
which he managed to add.
“Unless …”
“Unless what?”
“Could you take over?”
“And direct?”
“Yes … I could give you instructions by telephone. I’ve worked a lot of it out.”
The next day, with a thudding heart and a willing, loyal cast and crew, I nervously picked up his baton, and we were off again.
For ten days, with almost hourly calls to Losey’s bedside for explicit and detailed instructions which he never failed to give, however ill, we carried on with the film. My authority and decisions were never doubted, my suggestions examined and either accepted or, otherwise, discussed and modified, I never strayed from Losey’s style, and the work went along at a good pace. They did not abandon. I was immeasurably proud, not of myself, ever, but of the crew and cast who so eagerly moved to help a man they greatly respected, almost revered in fact, who lay so despairingly ill and whose super-human efforts and beliefs now seemed to be in jeopardy. It was one of the most extraordinary expressions of loyalty and devotion that I have witnessed in this sometimes tawdry profession; and when he broke the rule, yet again, by staggering back to the Studio far too soon, gaunt, grey, painfully weak, the heartfelt applause which greeted his arrival was deeply moving. He is not, however, a sentimental man. Lying on an iron bed, wrapped in blankets and a long woollen scarf which Wendy Craig had bought for him, smothered in hot water bottles and attended by a slightly bewildered, and ignored, nurse, he got on with the job. The only concession he made to his state of health was that we were asked to refrain from smoking since it made him cough. That evening, again breaking doctor’s orders, he attended, with me, a full running of all the material which I had shot during his absence. He made no comment, other than hoicking and spitting into a steadily mounting pile of paper handkerchiefs, and was eventually led by his worried nurse through the bitter February wind to his car. “See you tomorrow,” he croaked, and was driven away.