Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  Been through Aggers and Missers, as Connie Willis2 used to say, with ABTF and [Richard Attenborough] got me into the shit over Browning, and I find it hard to forgive him .. since he refused to listen to my complaints that Browning, whome I knew, was not a cunt and never ever made the frightful balls up the film suggests. It all got a bit up-tight and I was on the point of returning my Fee (small in comparison to the Yanks) to Lady Browning for some Charity. Felt I could’nt take money for dishonouring a dead man. You know? However I got talked out of that since everyone said it would cause a scandal and so on. But I refused to have [Dick] near me for a while, until I simmered down. Eventually, reluctantly, I did .. and we made a sort-of patch up. He and she were simply shattered by the effects on the Critics and many of the Public who wrote bitterly complaining. I dont think he really thought it could ever happen to him. I actually DID feel a bit sorry for them, white, shaking [ … ] However; there you go.1

  And it’s not doing all that well I gather … here or in the U.S and Bond and ‘Star Wars’ are scooping up the lolly. It was a silly, silly film to have made at such expense. Who CARES about that old war anyway. And a Fuck Up to boot! I am doubtful about ‘Magic’2 also … thats all been done before, and [Dick] is better with crowds than individual Actors; as I know. Anyway. Good luck and have a smashing time in L.A. I know just what you mean about wanting to work there. It’s like, we used to say, ‘not fucking the Maid’ .... you really must work once in L.A. Even if you hate it [ … ]

  Returning to your letter and a question you make about Fassbinder, he is now considered THE leading Director in German [sic] and in Europe. Of his age. And I agree. He is actually like a little edition, young yet, of Visconti … the same feeling for actors, for texture, for light for timing … and his Camera work is dizzying! We shot the whole thing on real locations all the time .. except for one stint in the Studios, with an Ari-Panavision. Fantastic! Talk about mobility! I was half dead with just getting to my marks on time! Let alone learning the fucking words … the same with Resnais in ‘Providence’ all ten minute takes and at least fifteen to twenty Camera Marks … the Dolly Pushers are all paid fortunes and deserve to be.

  But I have decided to pull out again for a couple of years or so. I’m stale, and I think that my work is becoming ‘mannered’ … and I am dead bored playing these ‘suffering’ men of fifty something … be they Dons, Proffesors, Ageing Musicians or ex-Nazis … or, like last time, refugee Chocolate Manufactures from St Petersburg! I want a lovely, elegant, sophisticated, comedy … with a big grand piano and bowls of real sweet peas and wisteria .... and glass floors and marble pillars and all the crap. Surely there must be ONE before I hit sixty!

  So the books take up my time now … I really find it facinating but terribly hard work … it takes me ages. I’m lucky if I get 1,800 words down a day … sometimes it ‘goes’ well … and at other times I just sit in a hump staring out the window here across the valley to the hills and feel glum.

  [ … ] Now I really must clear off .... I hate not being in touch with you …it has been a long time! Do you know I started thirty years ago on my first days work1 [ … ] at Epsome, on August 12th! Goodness me today .... and you have23 years. Where the hell did they go? The years …

  [ … ] All love as ever

  Dirk.

  James Cairncross, a fellow actor, wrote to commend Postillion and to explain that he had met Dirk twice: in the wings at Wyndham’s Theatre in January 1941, when Dirk was appearing in Diversion No.2, and some twenty-five years later at the Oxford Playhouse where he (JC) was in a play for which Gareth Forwood, an assistant stage manager, had suddenly to ‘go on’, learning a scene at half an hour’s notice.

  To James Cairncross Clermont

  17 August 1977

  Dear Mr Cairncross –

  Oh dear! You make me blush.

  And more than that I’ll make you blush now. It was you, I believe, who said one evening at Farnham Rep. ‘My God! There is a movement afoot to take Dirk Bogarde Seriously!’.2 Everything is repeated, rightly or wrongly, but if this is rightly I love you for it; for it spurred me on to work like nothing else ever has! Honestly! And in Book Two, which I am now wading through (trying to avoid libel all the time) I am using it as a sort of Preface … it worked. It was so valuable. And thank you.

  I don’t remember the Diversion bit … I was too green and far too shy and timid and silly … but I do remember how patient, if you insist that you were not ‘kind’, you were to my God Son … Gareth F. And I knew what bloody hell you must have gone through3 .... we all do, dont we, we Actors. I DO wish that THEY knew. I mean ‘civilians’ and all that lot.

  What a glamorous start to war you had. So much more warming than mine. Yvonne [Mitchell] found me this house … lovely, laughing Yvonne .. and smashing James Donald … how good he is, was … (I am so out of touch I dont know if they still do it or are dead or something) .. Alec and Merula [Guinness] I have not clapped eyes on since the ‘grand days’ when I met them in Rome going to Mass. The Pope, alas, was ‘off’ that Christmas and Alec was v. cross. Mathew, are there two t’s? Matthew1 … (looks better). Was about sixteen.…

  Time, as J. Standing2 might say, is a Fuck Pig. It goes so fast … at this minute I have nephews lying all over the fields in the sun grumbling that there is not enough ice for the Ricarde, and that petrol is so expensive. They were not even thought of when you and I started on this worrying road to the Theater … and worse than that, Daddy was almost four.

  Christ.

  I could hug your Mr Lavery3 too. Absolutely right. But is’nt it hard to keep out of things? To live in solitude? To sit by the edge of evening and watch night come sweeping across the hills … as it does here. And have no conversation anywhere … only the early owl having a chitter in the big olive tree, second on the right … and then to go up and start the night for oneself. Table laid, salad tossed, and, at this exact moment, the promise of Lady Curzon to follow, softly from the pages,4 in the lamp light. I always thought she was merely a soup. It is so exciting to know that she was not.

  Obsessional privacy. Terribly grand and difficult and tiresome for ones friends … thank you so much for understanding; and shareing. And for the quote I treasure!

  Yes: it is a lost world. But are’nt you glad that we had it?

  With warmest wishes and gratitude …

  Dirk Bogarde

  To Rainer Werner Fassbinder Clermont

  24 September 1977

  Reiner –

  Now I have had time to ‘digest’ the film.5 And only now am I able to write to you clearly about it. Forgive the delay … but it is such a difficult thing to discuss a film in which you have worked and with which you have been ‘so in love’.

  I love the film. I am proud, immensley, of it, of you and of Andrea, Klaus [Löwitsch] and even of my own work … which I always find impossible to judge or discuss. I am, like you, never really satisfied; but this time I think that I can honestly say that you have enabled me to do my best work for the Cinema. It is not perfect. But it is the best I have done. Thank you.

  Even though I saw it in black and white and in bad condition, I was immediatly struck by the power it holds … and I think you have done a fantastic job in the editing. God knows what it would have been like if it had been left to Reggie Beck … who is brilliant for some people1 but not for you … The clips the next day in colour, however brief, made me realise the full value of the film, and I now long to see it with sound and music and titles! Bring it to Nice when it is done and let us run it at Victorine .. and have a HUGE party afterwards. Before the Critics destroy us!

  There is one extremely bad performance in the film which I feel sure you could safely loose .. and just have voice over for … that is the shot of poor Ossie in the post office saying ‘Your Pushkin Letter’ it is so BAD that everyone laughed, and it is not the place, or the time, for laughter … can you cut him out? DO TRY!

  Stoppard called yesterday and I was happy to be able to make
him so happy … he is now convinced that we have done a marvellous film, and is very excited. I told him that he would be shocked here and there the first time around, but that he would be immesurably proud the second time … I hope this is correct. For my part I am tremendously happy that I was asked to be in it, and proud too … and I cannot thank you [enough] for such a marvellous chance and experience. I once told you, early in the film, at Interlaken, that it was ‘paradise’ working with you. I dont know if you remember? But it still is true. I will follow you to Alaska if you ask me … and even if you dont, be assured that you will always have my deepest respect, gratitude, and love …

  Always

  Dirk

  P.S. Try NOT to open the film in New York first.

  Have a Berlin or Paris opening first – anywhere in Europe. NOT the U.S. D.

  To Ann Skinner Clermont

  18 October 1977

  Annie love –

  What a lovely letter and packet of ‘goodies’.

  [ … ] I’m in a sort of whirl myself … age stealing gently up … I have a nephew of 19 now living with me here in Europe to study French for four months.2 Actually he originally came for a weeks holiday (from Chicago where Gareth, his father, now lives permanently) decided he liked Europe best, and we worked out an Educational Scheme which his father has agreed to me following. So I am now a Guardian … rather like something out of ‘Jane Eyre’. Oh dear! My days are now filled with bleating questions like ‘Have you had your Weetabix for breakfast?’ ‘Washed your socks?’ ‘Done your homework?’ ‘Written to Dad, Sarah, Rupert, etcetera.’ Meanwhile he is working his ass off at the Berlitz in Cannes and rather loving it all. Thank God. The course costs over £2.000, much to my slack jawed horror, so it is just as well.

  Life about the house has, naturally, had to change a bit. I am used now to nig-nogs screaming protest songs, Elton John doing something else, and I know, BY HEART, the theme from ‘The Deep’ and ‘Star Wars’ … and sing them mindlessly in my sleep … gone, for ever?, is Mozart, Franck, Mahler .... did someone say that the young kept one young? Must have made a mistake the cunts.

  Seriously, though, it is all a lot of fun … and showing a young man who wants to learn about life is pretty thrilling. It was shattering for me to realise that although he had actually graduated from his High School in Chicago … with top honours and a mortar board hat .. (idiots) .. he knew not a word of French, had never heard of Napoleon, and thought that St Moritz was a brand of cigarettes. So SOMETHING had to be done, tactfully ..... starting out with Paris. The fucking Louvre, Versailles and etcetera. He glutted .... so that was encouraging enough to start off a European Education. And hence the Uncle-Talk daily.…

  […] I’m battering along, inbetween feeding Weetabix, at the second book … got to deliver by Febuary. Last one opened in N.Y last week with a rather good spread in the N.Y. Times … but it remains to be seen if anyone buys a copy. No Harold Robbins am I. We ‘open’ in France in a good translation, next month … very distinguished cover … a stormy sky with buttercups! And no ‘snaps’ inside because they think it will appear to be ‘more classical’ without them … funny old things Frogs. ‘Despair’ is, I think cut and edited [ … ] I think, with due modesty, it is my best work to date … you DO need young directors [ …] ‘Despair’ is strange, sad, and exciting cinema … wonderfully shot; what H. Fassbinder can do with a Camera would shame everyone else I have worked with except perhaps Losey and Visconti … he is nearer Fellini … but has a very individual style of his own. Tremendously exciting .... and, by the way, the Krauts dont use a Script Girl! Odd and a bit scary … they have a lady who keeps track of footage, numbers and etcetera … and a Dialogue Director who’s job it is to check Script errors, and to write in moves … all a bit confusing .. but it seemed to work. No one does Continuity! Except you yourself that is, and the Operator is responsible for that .... you can see them all at Shepperton or Pinewood!

  Anyway ‘Despair’ is my last for some time … I really do not care for it now, the Movies … however with Brocks Weetabix and Fees and Toe-Ointment, I have no doubt I’ll be back sometime next year. Ah well … but like you, I feel the whole thing disenchanting … except that I DO get the chance to work with the young, and not the halt and the lame .....

  The dogs are barking … someone must have come up the lane, so I’d better hop off and see who, or what, it is …

  Golden hot days here now, after a mouldey summer … off I go, but with a big fat kiss to you as ever.

  For ever! There!

  Your loving mate

  Dirk.

  To Norah Smallwood Clermont

  30 October 1977

  Norah dear –

  A note to say that I finished the book you sent from General Hackett,1 and was’nt all that impressed. In spite, I hasten to add, of my weariness with the Christian Fellow personally! Jolly brave fellow, no doubt about that, but lots of others were also; one is not sent into a ‘spin’ […]

  However it WAS a saluatory bit of homework for me; I almost decided (did in fact) to chuck my present work after I had waded through that. Shoved the whole lot in a drawer and had a splendid two days holiday burning last summers weeds and bedding plants. However my nephew was playing an early Judy Garland record the other evening … and I remembered something she had said, and felt a bit encouraged and went and wrote it down and more or less started again. But I have’nt much heart for it .... what the devil is it all about eventually?Who cares? I am not capable of writing Intellectually about my work … since my work is totally instinctive most of the time … and a list of my boring films and all that can be done long after I am dead; by some ernest Student Of The Cinema who, I am sure, would handle it all far better than I. And I would’nt have to read it, either by then!

  One thing I might do, later on, is write a nice bit of Porn; and send it to Briggs and Blond or whatever they are called … and then I need’nt worry any more.

  Not a cheep from the U.S.A. so far! I feel that I was unhappily right … not their kind of book.2 And I have’nt even had proofs from Paris yet … they start the thing November 15 … apparently without the cover I approved … I hear it is all pink and yellow now, and retitled.

  I really dont give a damn. I should never have started this caper! Not at all what I thought it would be.

  Anyway; thanks for Hackett … I am much preferring the Indian book. ‘The Golden Honyecomb’1 … Lally would have said it was a ‘jolly good read.’ And I agree ..

  Love

  Dirk

  Its Sunday Morning – hence the errors – I’m head Cook and Bottle Washer today – my [daily] ‘Lady’ is capering about with pots of flowers in the local Cemetary. It’s the Day of the Dead – feels like it too! D.

  To Gareth and Lucilla Van den Bogaerde Clermont

  20 November 1977

  Sunday, 11 am.

  Progress Report No. 72

  After six days of Mistral we are now bathed in still sunny light: the garden a ruin, Brocks prodigious weekly-wash flutters on the line, and he is in his bed snoring, or whatever, after the hectic joys of whatever he did at His Club in Cannes last night. I think this time there was no problem with the damned accelerator cable … and he was home about two thirtyish … the porch light was out at three, when I got up for a pee … we shall doubtless get the whole saga over the gigot at lunch.

  Well; we are half way through; tomorrow starts the New Course, or the Second Half rather … and he is apparently coping extremely well. This Club on Saturdays has been useful, at least there are pretty girls and he has to talk French to them even though the nicest one went to Birmingham U, for a couple of years … but he understands Telly very well now … really follows the thing from Kojak, to The Rivers Of The World and the Commercials for soap and ‘softer than silk’ lavatory paper. He sits in a heap with a thing screwd into his ear, which can only be described as a sort of posh Deaf Aid, not so much to save us the interminable-harangue in French Dubbing, but also, as he
says, to get it drummed into his head. This seems to be working excellently. And he has, this week end, to write his first essay … he has chosen the Dance as his subject because he feels that he can write an amusing paper on the ‘Bi-Sexuality in Ballet.’ Which sounds original if complicated! He is, I can see, determined to raise Mlle Fouquetts eyebrows if it kills him. She is his Lady Teacher and most of the effort seems to be to charm, or shock if the latter fails … she is a sort of Aunt Figure. And wont be either; maybe the Essay will help to close the gap? Who can tell? I timidly suggested that a simpler subject might be easier for him with a still somewhat, limited vocabulary .. but there was a wicked gleam and a curled lip … and Mlle Fouquet is going to get her deserts tomorrow. If he gets up today, that is to say.

  I venture to hope that Brock has learned a good deal more than French, which after all was the main part of my excercise. He has really behaved extraordinarily well and valiently; allowing himself to be corrected on small points of behaviour which will be important to him when he gets into that shitty outside world … recieving sensible, one prays, answers to every question he poises from Dissidents to the State of Israel, the way to leave a table if a lady is present, why to shake hands, easily, with EVERY Frenchman he meets no matter who they are … and so on. Trivia perhaps … but all of it is strength for him. He was, or did hold rather, the attitude when he first came here that ‘it did’nt matter any more in these days’ to either speak correctly or show any form of manners in public. Especially among his own group. That has rather gone now; he finds that his own group rather like his, what he calls, ‘Old Fashioned’ manner, and he is delighted with the words he has discovered! He has this amazing ability to retain everything he hears or sees. Wish to God I had had it … and he is out to get his share of life; and how! Which is quite marvellous. One comes against so many people of his age who conform to their own group-ideoligy and close their minds to anything else unless it is sung to Folk Music. Do you know what I mean? Not Brock. Now that we are half way through not only the Course, but living together, I have to confess that he is really a very parfait gentle knight … although he would probably scorn such a high falutin’ title! No easy matter to come out here and join us in an already well settled existance. I imagine he must have felt a bit like I did when I was sent up to Glasgow to live with those sodding relatives for three years.