Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  I only trust that he has never been made to suffer, and I use the word quite advisedly, as I did with those two well-meaning monsters.1 We have discussed it at length and he assures me that it has never been like that; so much the better! And if he has been homesick, which he MUST have been from time to time, he has never once shown it or voiced it … a damned good effort.

  He has always had a vast resovoir of charm; which has always been useful to him in general Company. Now he has developed another line … which is splendid; people want to talk to him, to listen to him, and discuss a mass of small, and large, issues. It is very exciting to see the change! When he first met the Attenboroughs, for example, he disliked Dickie deeply … because he THOUGHT, inaccuratly as it happened, that he was being patronised .. now, since he feels he belongs here, and since Dickie is often in or out for a meal, he has quite reversed his opinions and is, I think, extremely fond of Dick. Who is equally fond of him and respects him tremendously. And as I pointed out to Brock … that cant be bad! Since D. is about the most influential fellow, at the moment anyway, in a number of lines … from Chelsea Footbal, Capitol Radio, the Cinema and Buckingham Palace! Anyway … it is all a wonderful change of attitude, and he has made two new, and lasting I know, friendships with people he really faintly despised before. It is rewarding all round.

  […] I really think I’d better get him up … this essay worries me a bit! He feels confident that he can ‘dash it off’ pretty easily … but I hae’ me doots that it’ll be that easy; especially if we have to plough all through Larousse for sexual, medical and balletic terms!

  Off to the airport. Hope you get this next week …

  Love to you both as always Dirk.

  To George Cukor Clermont

  7 January 1978

  My dearest George –

  I am overwhelmed! Just what I longed to have arrived from you this morning. A real Cukor Lecture and a suitably humble Student.1

  Dearest George, how good of you … and how infinatly generous of you to supply your own caption! I trust you will allow me to use it … for how could I, a mere mortal Actor, hope to better the very succinct phrases which you use … oh! I wish you had written your own book. You are MUCH funnier than Lambert2 was …

  You were dear and kind to bother; and your very generous comments on my humble first attempt warmed my heart. I really was a bit amazed myself that it ever got to Press. Since I cannot spell or do that punctuation business. I have a splendid lady in Hitchen (Hertfordshire!) who does all that for me. She is named Sally and gets very cross indeed.

  Was’nt it nice about Cathleen Nesbitt getting her award3 … rather like Gladys; too little and too late … but still. We have all been gunning our idiotic P.M. to award Lynnie Lunt [Lynn Fontanne] a damehood … but to no avail. I think they dont realise that she is a good old Enfield (Essex) girl … and one of the greatest actresses of our time. But we did try … a goodly number of us, by writing letters to the idiot at No. 10 .... however Isobel Baillie1 got it … wenone of us know why. Madness. Lynn had the MOST fantastic reception here in London in the summer at some big Jubilee thing at Her Majesties … Prince Charles gave her his box, and the entire Audience stood and roared an ovation for almost five minutes! She had taken them by surprise by her presence … I have no doubt that they took her by surprise by the loving warmth of their welcome.

  Forwood and I are well if exhausted from a huge family Christmas .. fourteen .. neices and nephews and a lot of rather awful, but nostalgic, Home Movies … I have had my brothers middle son here from Chicago studying French. He leaves tomorrow after six months. I shall be sad but glad too. I can see him from the window at this moment wandering about saying goodbye to each and every olive tree. Chicago is a very different world. Ah well. He is eighteen, and I am sure will recover. Although there will be severe adjustments to make when he gets to Princeton, or whatever University he gets into.

  I must get on with the final pages of Volume 2 .. it has to be delivered by the end of this month, which is a bit of a strain. How I wish, how I do, that– we could do a film together from the very start … we never had a chance, did we?2 Not really … and I long to be under your wing again … perhaps one day I’ll be Box Office in America … you never know.

  Meanwhile, my love, my gratitude, and my deepest affection as always … and great happiness and health in this rather worrying new year.

  Always,

  Dirk

  To Tom Stoppard Clermont

  9 January 1978

  Stoppard dear –

  I am not starting a two-way letter chat thing; so have no fear … this does’nt need an answer at all.

  I was just a bit more cheerful on reciept of your, extremely vulgar, letter. Anita Eckberg! Really … whatever next I ask myself.3

  Anyway [ … ] you were more than kind to lift the veil of sadness which has enveloped me since well before Christmas. One hates to have made a ‘lemon’ of a job.1

  The letter was doubly saddening when it came, for only a night before I had been on the telephone for hours and hours to Mrs Lovely Tynan who was in equal misery over what ‘they had gone and done’ to her script of ‘Agatha’ … which was pretty dire. Far worse, I venture to guess, than anything we have done to yours. I mean, at least we did’nt bring on two other writers and start in from scratch .. even if we did fuck up your ‘tempo’ and ‘trim’ for vision as opposed to Play terms … anyway, with the two of you in distress, and both loved, it was a cruel Christmas. I did’nt even dare read a motto from a single Cracker. So there. I presume that SOMEBODY must write those too? Oh .. it was a wretched time. However you have made me happier … I suppose by your keen generosity as much as anything? You may, of course, be dreadfully right eventually. We shall know by May.

  One final remark on the English Voice. You are absolutely korreckt when you mention Romeo and Juliet and reading M. Nabakov … but it did sound utterly dreadful speaking my lovely, and noted, Sloan Square among a solid group of ‘funny accents’ which they were all, of neseccity, using. The only possible thing, and it was considered most carefully by us all, was that I should have to join them since I could not beat them and tended to sound rather like a refugee from Romford rather than Russia. So that is why we did that. And I spent a great deal of time learning the fucking accent with an Egyptian Expert on accents. Who was, oddly enough, brilliant and my first ever, after more than sixty movies. Voice Coach. He was, however, a garstly actor …

  Anyway, dear Tom … ta. Pippip and all … and perhaps if you come to see us in May … which I suppose you’ll not … you can either make a protest or pretend that you knew it all the time.

  I had heard, some time ago in Munich, about the ‘Lolita’ thing … did you know that there is to be a Toe Ballet about it too? Nabakov Junior was very chuffed … and with the re-make of the film! He’ll be rich … anyway I liked him because he liked the film … and said it carried out, truthfully, his fathers intentions. But that may have been a bit of flannel to persuade Andrea Ferreol into his Maseratti and his Art Deco flat. We shall never know.

  My love to the lady in the conservatory … and love to you too. I had a very exhausting Christmas … fourteen family, lots of nostalgic Home Movies and everyone got flu by Boxing Day except me. I have never cut so many lemons, no pun intended, and boiled up quarts of Honey, in my life.

  I’m going to have a rest now.

  Dirk

  Susan Owens, a mother-of-five from Cheshire, had been seriously ill with pneumonia, followed by Bell’s palsy. Knowing she had been a fan of Dirk from the age of eight, and searching for a way to cheer her up, her family had written to him. His reply was the start of another remarkable, enduring and ‘particular’ friendship with someone whom he would meet only occasionally, and then briefly, at book-signings. She asked his advice on naming the family’s new dog.

  To Susan Owens

  (Postcard) [Clermont]

  28 January 1978

  Right off I’d call her ‘Daisy’ –
I like peoples names for dogs! My Boxer is called that – and it becomes ‘DAZE’ for short! Or else ‘Amber’ or perhaps ‘Capucine’– (French for Nasturtium) & for short ‘Capp’ – But really its up to you. What does she ‘look’ like? Perhaps just ‘Annie’ – ‘Beth’ – or even ‘Mutt’!

  Yrs. D.B.

  To Dilys Powell Clermont

  20 February 1978

  Dilys dear –

  [ … ] It was very sweet of you to bother to alert me1 .... but honestly I am not sitting here twisting a handkerchief for your verdict on ‘P’! Just because I was a bit ‘pushy’ and dedicated (what a silly word) it to you … which I did with love and gratitude, does’nt mean that you are to write and say just what you think immediatly. Or ever, even. It’s yours, if you know what I mean, and every frame was very much made with an image of you in an audience. But that is not to say that I ask your approbation … or even that I suggest that you like it! Lots of English people HATE the bugger. Pretentious, dull, incomprehensible, cold and vulgar. I could go on … Mrs Kael did alas. And she, one gathers, is American. However they have no nuance … so …

  Actually John G. and I were jolly hard put to understand much of what we said! ‘Cant understand a word, dear!’ he used to cry .. ‘It really does’nt make sense Alain … I’ll say it, but I have’nt the foggiest notion of what it means.’

  Mind you, he actually claims that he does’nt understand half of Shakespeare and had, or has, to get ‘Dadie’ Rylands in to explain things to him. I quite believe him and admire him all the more! Anyway, whatever else ‘P’ is or is not it IS a whacking great Memorial TO Johns work … and Alain has said that. Takes a Frenchman to honour perhaps our greatest living Actor. So see it for his work, and Alains tribute to it … and if you can cope, stay to the end … not that you would do other … but the end is very important and there is a rather interesting change of face and pace. It opens, by the way, after March … April I think. It’s all such a hell of a muddle. And really it is almost old hat by now. Alain is deep into his new script of ‘Mon Oncle d’Amerique’ and has seven coveted Oscars1 … so he is really perfectly happy. And we are released again all over Paris and the rest of the Country … Anyway; dont fuss about it. You dont have to like it; I’m really not at all sure, now, that I do even! I much prefer ‘Despair’ ….

  […] Much love as ever …

  Always Dirk

  To Kathleen Tynan Clermont

  3 March 1978

  Kathleen love –

  It was splendid to get your ‘crazed’ letter today. I think that you almost felt the way I WAS that night at the Connaught when I got so terribly pissed from total-exposure and exhaustion. Too well one knows the feeling … and you still have the other 28.000 to do. Crikey! It’s a long book.2 Of course she was a long-lived lady I suppose.

  But I am happy that the on-dit is good; of course it does’nt always follow that it will be right … but it is FAR better than the other, very usual, way round. Incidentally, not my business at all, but I think you’d be dotty not to cash in immediatly and get onto another Script even if you do hate the idea. It’s just the time to do it; while the chatter is good and your name used in daily conversation. When the thing comes out it MIGHT get a pasting and you’ll not be asked so eagerly again. Do it now, and have something in hand for the success, or otherwise, of the first. Thats what I always did in the Great Days of my Cinema Work. Kept one ahead always, so that if one went off half-cock there was still another on the stocks as a second chance.

  Know what I mean? Books dont make money, unless you are Ustinov, Jilly Cooper, or that blasted Edwardian Lady who did the Flower Diary3 and should, as she did, have fallen into the Thames near Putney picking ‘chestnut buds.’ But normally speaking we dont make a bomb with your actual book. Scripts yes. And lots of residuals and things … I know that you may well be feeling jaundiced at this moment ‘in time’ (will they ever learn to speak English in the States?) but would remind you that this whole enterprise of yours was yours alone from it’s inception. And look what it has done for you already. If you have another idea lurking under that Alexandre-Wig1 for a script set it down. Even in rough draft. I really would’nt let the chance you have now slip away so easily for a book or even an adaptation … although thats not a bad idea either.

  Lecture over. That part anyway.

  I have, swank-pots, handed my oeuvre over to Chatto. Publishing October. I have doubts … libel and so on … so hard to write the truth about people who are still alive and prickley … and even about oneself for that matter! I am far, far too long … about 400 pages (book-wise) God knows how many words … too many I venture to think. I now have to sit here and go through it all with a red plume and try to cut stuff. Repitition, over discription, adjectives and verbs. Hell. I’m quite bored with it already. Bits are good I think. Kate Kendall and Judy G … Losey .. Cukor … Visconti (the Star really) and some of the potted-war on which Chatto insisted. I had to do a whole extra fucking chapter, about 9.500 words, compressing four active years of battle. That is to say not training and all that stuff. Frightfully tiresome. I dont, as it happens, care to remember a good deal … it was’nt all jolly … and I dont, being me, remember Regiments or Divisions or even Ranks and names and numbers … and so on. However a sort of pastiche has been acheived and is okish. I found, fortunatly, a small battered diary which I had studiously kept from D Day until the finali, for me, in Java .... very earnest, very ‘young’ (was twenty four at the time for God’s sake!) and FULL of some strange code which I cant, of course, now remember! However enough was there.

  Anyway thats that … for the moment … after I have to do an immense index. And after that I’ll start a novel. Easier than trying to write about oneself … and far less boring. I have refused a mass of tedious Film Work … I refuse to ‘go back’ to ‘Justines’ or any of that crap. And I am constantly being asked now to play parts which Alec G. or John G. dont want, or have now got a bit too old for. With dashing ‘Stars’ to support such as poor M. York, or McDowall or names I have never even heard of! Nothing really super seems to be employable these days … they are deep into the Uglies. Oh for a Cary Grant instead of Mike Caine … for Cooper instead of Pacino … a sign of age I grant you … but even T. Power was better than the homogonised sexlessness of York or Fawcett Major2… she sounds like a Public School or some village in green Wiltshire. Is she?

  So; The summer is, hopefully, free .... except that we are already taking the bookings for Your Room. It seems endless. It would be super to see you. But what a lot of decisions you appear to have to be making. Golly. It’s the kids mainly I suppose. Education … better come back. But not to England surely? And France may well be so far Left that Ken would be uncomfortable even. We rather wonder what will happen in two weeks time.1 No one seems a bit sure here; mind you, Provence pretends that it is NOT France … but the new Mayor of Grasse is Communist and busy erecting workers-flats for the Arabs and Portugese among all the elegant villas of the rich. So Provence aint that far away from France. I dont think I’d mind Communisim if it was’nt so spiteful, humourless, and repressive. Anyway I’ll stick it here until, as might happen, they boot us out .... or off to the Gulag. I’ll not go back to England. Although we are off for the Yearly Trip to Mummy next week … and I really do dread it. Connaught notwithstanding. Taking the car so that we can fill the ‘trunk’ with Saxbys Pork pies, tinned tongue, Marks and Sparks goodies, Hatchards books and some other bits and pieces. Useful in a Camp.

  Spain […] is madly cheap and still very lux. Although the ‘natives’ are a bit restless now under Freedome .. and keep on striking during dinner in resturants and so on. They come back off strike for an excessive tip. [ … ] Good, of course, for Ken’s Wheezes and so on … and all that Flamenco and Charisma in the Bull Rings … Do you think Hemmingway was a Dyke? I do.

  ‘Providence’ won seven ‘Oscars’2 and that was nice … and Johnny G. got the N.Y Critics award which was even nicer … and it may, we are
not sure, open after all in London at the Academy. Unbelievable. It has been running, if you please, to packed houses in both Cape Town and Johnnesburg for a year, broken house records in Tokio … and everywhere else. What CAN be the matter with London? I mean it may not be the best movie in the world … nor the easiest to cope with .. (Mercer never is, I find) … but it has some staggering work from John … and it is proudly English in it’s writing … however pretensious, it IS true English and the words are used like jewels in a watch ..... Ah. Fuck ’em.

  Cold and wet here. I collect Toads in bin-loads and daily dump them in a local stream. We have upset ecology by making a pond where there never, in all time, was one … and toads, like eels, come back to where they were born. Which is very tedious of them indeed. Thirty pairs a day … and if you ever thought sex was luducrous to watch take a gander at Toads doing it. You’d join a closed Order right away.