Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  A week of unbelievable hell … of cliche’s … bon mots … boredome and incessant chatter .... ‘Do you remember the Wigwool-Smothersons? He was the son of old Joshua Sproat who lived over at Thurleigh Down and she was SIMPLY NOT our Class and was a rather poor creature .. Hetty Blythson-Walters .... they came from Tidworth and had a ripping house in the Kenya Highlands …’

  Night after night after night.…

  ‘Well .... their daughter, Amanda, is riding at the Horse Of The Year Show on one of Douglass Bunns Horses! What about that!’

  What about it?

  We thought that by sticking her in the pub up the road we could be rid of her for at least a couple of hours between say, five pm and seven … have an early dinner and shove her home in a taxi until the trip to Grasse next morning. Not a hope in hell. She arrived on the steps of her Pension with a wig-box … a sweater in a Marks and Sparks plastic bag .. a book .. and her slippers … ours for twelve hours .... and so it was to be. We dragged her up and down the Gorge de Loupe … ‘Glorious! Oh! Gracious me! What a Pretty Spot.’ … trailed her round a glass factory … ‘Not as good as the one I saw with the Harvey-Kellers in Venice .. but of course that was the real McCoy … you know!’ … in and out of Monoprix … ‘Littlewoods in Twickenham are really JUST as good you know dear … not the range of cheeses … but much the same value …’ and in and out of one hill top village after another … ‘When I was with the Winston-Bouveries in Nnnndobbigie up in the Kenya Highlands we saw many of the native villages. Too pretty for words … but they did smell so terribly [ … ]’

  I took three tranqualisers per day .. and had chronic indegestion and High Blood Pressure .... Tote struggled through but daily got to look more and more like McMillan … his eyes hooped with boredom and exhaustion .. We desperatly went and bought a colour Telly to try and shut her up. But it did’nt work. She had seen all the films before … liked Morecombe and Wise and was’nt dead keen on the de Gaullists … we read all the sunday papers from the Gardening advertising to the Rubber Wear For Play and Fun, through Anne Edwards and Jilly Coopers and the most detailed reviews of books on the Battle Of The Nile … anything so that we could seem to be concentrating … but it always ended with a polite cough and ‘I KNOW that you are reading, but do you remember Kitty Hogs-heads awful time with the will and the codacil? Well the same thing happened again in a place near Axminster. It’s in the “Telegraph” … is’nt that EXTRAORDINARY?’

  We bunged her on the plane on Tuesday red eyed with grief and age (we – not she!) … we waved her across the tarmac and onto the plane .. even in the backlash of a Jet that sodding wig did’nt move … and as far as we know she is safely home [ … ] but never again. Also it rained for three days of the eight .. and we were stuck with her in the house … her mouth open snoring after lunch taking her ‘little sleepybye’ … and the snores roaring down to Antibes.

  Never take pity on anyone ever! Remember what I say! [ … ] God! Help me from the defeated … I have learned my lesson.

  This note is really to explain why we have not answered your letters and so on, and you can, I hope, readily see why now .... but time is a great healer, they say … and soon we will be better and back to the typewriters again sensibly.

  Autumn has hit us wallop! Mistral and rain .. torrential … the garden golden and red, muddy and clear .. the sea silver and streaked with sullen golden lights .... our new Cow Shed is super and the fellers can have a real piss now with a door and a bowl and a wash place and a view over the pond … and we have a colour telly too.

  Coming for Christmas?

  [ … ] Love in haste from your devoted and exhausted chum.

  Dirk.

  Daisy has got the runs and has just done it on the rush carpet in the Studio … now to wash it down, and try not to heave, slurping it into last week’s ‘Nice Matin’ .... Tote has gone out to wash a car.

  Natch.

  Love.

  D

  Since 1963 Edward Thompson, a director of Heinemann Educational Books, had tried spasmodically to persuade Dirk to write a work of non-fiction. Encouraged further by his correspondence with Dorothy Gordon, Dirk began in August to plan a memoir under the provisional title of A Movement Afoot, inspired by a backstage expostulation reported to him some years earlier: ‘My God! There is a movement afoot to take Dirk Bogarde Seriously!’ (See page 160).

  To Edward Thompson Clermont

  27 November 1971

  Edward:

  Not a word have I put to paper … not a word. I am not like J.G1 who seems to positivly ooze with energy and can write between acts of Shaw.… I just sit in a sort of heap, sipping beer, and thinking that I really ought to be clipping back the large white dasies before the evening frost catches me by surprise .... and I have no ready apologies. I just am too damned lazy. Also I have been reading a lot of recent ‘Film Actors’ books .... and ‘Actors’ too. Sybil Thorndikes one, by some lady called Spriggs, and Hildegard Kneffs1 … and they all have a frightning sort of similarity. I think nothing would be achieved by my cashing in on the past … it really has been pretty well raked over you know: from the internal squabbles at the Rank Org … to ‘getting the break’ … to the improper, and bizaar, propositions from retured Colonels in the respectability (!) of Frimley Green … well; it has all been done … and too much pain could be caused to too many people still around.

  So I must try another tack … and see what can be done. Hope you had a lovely grub-up with Kozintsev2 … and I bet he was nice: you really have to be to be that good .... only poor actors/directors/Writers are nasty. The others have all achieved. No need to be unpleasant or unkind or rude. Pity the world is so full of the failed.

  Golden sun here but last week was Artic and we feared for the garden again. But today is blue, warm and gentle … and I dont want to do a stroke of work … but will have to sooner or later … like opening a bottle of beer .... for myself.

  Lazy sod.

  Thanks for your letter of ‘encouragement’ … I am really

  a

  bit

  of

  a

  bore.

  Dirk

  Penelope Mortimer, novelist and screenwriter, had offered to write a script for Bette Davis who she felt was being wasted on sub-Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? material. Miss Davis replied enthusiastically, saying her last remaining ambition was to act with Dirk Bogarde …

  To Penelope Mortimer Clermont

  1 December 1971

  Dear Penelope Mortimer

  Did you ever know that I tried desperatly to buy ‘Pumpkin’ and then that chap Wolf1 bought it for a ‘friend’ … and finally when Jack Clayton sort of asked if I would like to play ‘Jake’ … it was too late and I could’nt and Wolf did’nt want me anyway. So that was a sad saga.

  Then this morning, under my mistral-stripped vine .. in the golden light, the postman came with three early Christmas cards, a Telephone bill and your letter.

  What a smashing surprise! I dont mean the letter only .. that was very nice indeed, all that blue Basildon Bond … but the idea about Miss D. It is so odd, you know, because a few weeks ago I got a perfectly ghastly script about God knows what … except that she was going to do it. I could’nt believe it really … it was so awful.

  She was playing Aunt Cecelia who seemed to spend a great deal of her time running about the railway lines in Geneva .... and one of the conditions which she – B.D. – made was that I should be in it too! I was to play ‘a suave man of the world with a Franco-Greek accent and a way with women.’ Literal description. I also spent a great deal of time nipping about the railway lines myself … when I was’nt Feaverishly Unbuttoning Aunt Cecilias Neices Knickers … or that sort of thing. I go on at length about this quite horrid experience simply to tell you that she insisted on me: it was what you so rightly call Hammer/Horror and WE NEVER HAD A SCENE or even a SHOT together in the whole thing!

  Well .. I found all that a bit odd … and said ‘no’ but had to say it
with terrific tact for I was in fear that she might think that I was judging her judgement, if you know what I mean … However I dont think any offence was given, and as far as one can judge she’s not doing it .... if your letter from her was dated Westport … (The rest2 I don’t believe either!)

  But, seriously, it is a marvellous and flattering idea. God only knows how we could team … I’m not young any more … and not that old … it makes it tough but very interesting. Since ‘Death In Venice’ I am only asked ever to do senile old sex-perverts or schoolteachers in love with their nymphetts … or whatever they are called … so I have called a halt for the time … almost two years now … and prefer to sit up here on my hill and regret nothing … rather than make all that awful crap and regret it all.

  I go on and on … you asked a simple question and the simple answer is that it would be splendour to work with her. There are’nt many of the Masters left. PTO

  Sorry; I cant be bothered trailing up to the top of the house for the second sheet of blank paper .. so forgive my laziness and try and read this side too.

  I feel, as you do, that you simply MUST see her before you even started such a project … because who is she really one wonders? How exciting to find out … and then to write her down, as it were … I think your plan is absolutely spot on .... goodness! Why does she do all that Aunt Cecelia Tripe … Lolly, lack of choice, or is she a bit bonkers? Who can tell until you find out. Good fortune to you.

  Anyway the answer is Yes … a marvellous honour .. and a thrilling idea.

  Now you can start being ‘scared’ and ‘overwhelmed’ if you want to … you said that you would if I said ‘yes ..’

  I have.

  Dirk Bogarde

  P.S. Someone has just dumped a pregnant doe Rabbit in a basket on the doorstep here! Is this a record?

  P.S. Perhaps she is a bit bonkers – I mean wanting to do a film with me in which we never, ever, met! – I mean – why.

  To Penelope Mortimer Clermont

  7 December 1971

  Penelope M –

  White Basildon Bond! Whatever next .... a pinkie bent over the Royal Doulton? Brown sugar for your coffee … or multicoloured? A nodding Alsation in the back window of your Mini … gracious me! The mind is flooded with delights White Basildon Bond brings along .... beech leaves and bluebells in a copper jug … and how to arrange them.

  One part glycerine to two parts water for three weeks and then place them (your actual beech leaves that is to say.) under the carpet for a month … and frost them for a ‘pleasing’ look at Christmas. I love that word ‘Pleasing’, dont you? .. its rather like ‘acceptable’: how the bloody hell do THEY know?

  Anyway cut the piddle. I’m afraid that I have been rather rude .. but in fun rude … and you were so nice today on your W.B.B admiring this lousy German Bastard which cant, as you see, keep to it’s spacing. But then the Germans never really could I suppose. (Here we go again .. single line. Shit.)

  And your letter was lovely in the middle of Christmas Cards and a glass of beer .. Christmas Cards. God … they are worse than the pinkie and the doulton bit.

  I am surprised, only a little, that the ‘Pumpkin’ bit ‘amazed’ you … but then you probably never knew that I ached to direct ‘Daddys’ Gone a Hunting’1 either? Agents are shitty things for the most part .... however thats all past and no skin off your nose really. Who’s got the one about the birdseed breast.…? I wonder.

  I am sorry that my beloved Aschenbach ‘gets in the way a bit ..’ he really needent … I was simply staggering about with a funny walk and a couple of twitches .. he’s not me … nor am I any part of him … remotely. And whatever you saw up there on the screen in the Kensington Odeon is nothing to do with me on my hill here: and you must come and see me on it. Tonight the sun has died like an Emperor … great scarlet arcs of silk … saffron .. green … crimson .. and the blaze of Venus to remind one of the absolute and infinite … and along the lower rim of beauty lay the hard, harsh, line of the hills …

  Someone said the other evening that these were the most beautiful five minutes of the day … and should be watched and not ‘talked’ through .... he was a shepherd in the field next to mine … this evening I yelled to Marie and Henri1 .. (Who look after me and are Frog and ancient ..) to come and watch the sky. And they stuck heads from windows … and we watched. And no one ‘talked’ through it .... and suddenly it was night … a Venus brilliant as [a] lighthouse. Oh! It is so good here .... you’ll like it … it’s not a bit posh. Port Out Starboard Home … a gloriously idiot relic word of the middleclasses from the Raj days … anyway it is’nt … perhaps you like posh. All that David Niven stuff down on the Coast … pools and cocktails and those fake Bauerhaus chairs filled with friends of Grace and Ranier … anyway thats as maybe … the grub is ok and the chairs need a bit of a clean .. and I do polish me own floor because H. and M are a bit long in the tooth.

  This has nothing to do with anything except it would be lovely to see you here covered, the two of us, in shyness and spikes .... possibly. Letters are so much easier.

  Losey, I think, would be marvellous with Madam2 … he likes working with fellows, you see, and although he has a terrible private record of ladies of all sorts, he does’nt terribly adore them on his Floor … unless they are Signoret .. or Moreau .. or Taylor .. ballsey ladies if you see what I mean. So I reckon he’d go a bundle on Mum.

  And, since you ask, I did’nt do Trotsky because it was a lousy script and it seemed to me a bit of a ‘faux’ to bash away at another old man … I had just come out of the absolute haze created by Mann and Visconti … and shook still at that time. I really did’nt want to do it all again so soon .... grannyglasses and a beard.

  But I was sad as hell when I found the alternative casting … poor Joe. Anyway they finished shooting last Friday … and he seems happy and I’ll be speaking to him again soon .. we are never altogether very far apart. We have been through too much together since 1950 ..... One does’nt loose sight of those things.

  Rabbits were all still born … and I gave her away this evening in her super home made hutch, smothered in last night’s ‘Daily Telegraph’ and lettuce leaves. A nice little boy called Thomas1 … thinks she’s ‘belle’ … his mother, I fear, had a sort of rage glimmering in her eyes … but I pretended not to notice. Children NEED animals, dont they?

  Wonder how your letter went down at Crooked Mile? Rum.

  Someone who worked with her ages ago said that it was like coming through Hell and he needed Intensive Care until a year ago … he almost fell into his Moules at lunch when I mentioned her name .. and his wife is quite ill still.

  Because you said so … I’ll be

  Dirk

  P.S. Almost forgot – last week, in N.Y – on Telly, she was asked if she had a final ambition – & said ‘Yes – to work with D.B’– Do you think it could still be The Change? D.B.

  To Bee Gilbert and Ian Holm Clermont

  December 19th. [1971] Saturday.2

  My dearest S & I –

  Most nasty day. Henri and Marie went on their annual holiday (3 weeks!!) this morning at six am .. and the Housework has to start .. and I dont care one little bit for polishing .. laying fires, washing up and laying tables. I just want to sit in a heap, booze silently, and read old copies of ‘Country Life’. Intently.

  Fat Friend is now busy with a Hoover Polisher doing all the floors in the studio … so I cant hear the BBC and find out what is happening in Daccar or what the Gnomes are doing […] We had a super frost this morning … white as icing sugar and all the vine whitewashed with silver glitter … it melted in the sun instantly … but it was a titchy reminder than our worst two months are ahead! I have, unlike old Jacko Holme, swept all my leaves away .. and pruned the fuschias and covered the dasies and geraniums in plastic french letters … which reminds me [ … ] I have had to hide those snaps3 … supposing Marie were to find them?

  Nick And Alexander1 … called ‘The Little Bleeder’ lo
cally … is a flopt, as we call it, in the U.S. too … so I dont think that you should feel a whiff of any kind of jealousy at all .... thats not going to help the Lady and Gentleman much I fear .. and the only awful thing about it all is that everytime a big movie takes a plunge and goes down like the Titanic … we all stand to loose jobs in the after wash, if you know what I mean by that? Malcom Mcdowell has had THE smash notices of the year in ‘Clockwork Orange’ .. and ‘Time’ magazine calls him ‘the new Superstar …’ Well .... I dont know. Will Success Spoil Mcdowell .... and to think that a film like ‘Percy’ made more money at the box office than any other film this year in Britain. Goodness me.

  Appropos all that. Arthur Miller2 .. (I always confuse him with the Dancing Gentleman who teaches people things in a hurry3 ..) must have been a night of toil and tribulation … I have been there myself in the past. It is an anguishing decision to take … the only thing is, and this is terribly important, is to really know, I mean REALLY, know what one wants and … most important WHO one is. Personal life has always seemed to me to be the most important thing ever. Over career, personal success, fame, lolly, achievement … the only achievement I truthfully believe in is Personal Achievement .. life and the way that one is able to live it … I have never sacrificed anything to that. Really and truly. And if all in the world of the Theatre or Cinema fails me now, as indeed it could, I would have no sense of failure at all .. because my life has been the Career I wanted and planned and worked to have. And, as far as I am concerned, that has been pretty bloody good .... but, if on the other hand, one wants more the successful theatre life, the fame and the fortune the heights and the lows which go with it … the lonliness .. the worry … the terrors of a failure, of growing too old, of loosing to a younger man, of chucking up a solid background of untold happiness … then if one wants all this I suppose a trip to America and all the filth that that entails … is what one should do .... and certainly it should be when one is twenty … or under .. but after? Personal choice. But I think that Life, and with that I also mean Love, comes first .... it’s the only thing that one has in the final seconds … the knowledge that one has had time, and sense, to live, breath, love and enjoy the time one has been given …