Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  A terrible moan, I agree. And selfish. But since (as) you started the ball rolling towards the hole marked ‘WIN’ I am fearful to tread on alone. Or should I say ‘roll’; as I use the symbol of a ball?

  This is, of course, just a momentary grab of nerves .. due to the inclement weather and the fact that the studio is dark and gloomy and the heater is up to Mark 2! It’ll be alright soon .. I have got some ideas rolling about in my empty head, and I’ll set them down on paper. Never fear.

  The next ‘buke’ will be an ortobiographical-effort. There!

  Novels are fun to write, in a way, but they dont, I think, sell as well as ‘ortobios’. So I am going to persue that line .. there is, after all, a good deal that I have NOT written about … and if old Compton M.1 could mine his seam so thoroughly, then so can I. Although I am deeply aware of the difference in age and ability!

  And L. v. d. P2 has done much the same, I think.

  Ones life is not tidily stacked, it is a sprawl of experience, so one can riffle about among the discarded bits and brush them up.

  I am only writing all this down, presently, so that I gain courage. It is one thing to say, another to put into practice.

  This week I am being made so acutely aware of June [6]th .. forty years ago.3 The various Media-Machines are hotting up now, and reminding one of lost time. I can recall that day so vividly, so clearly, so sharply, it really is as if it had been yesterday, and I feel the same emotion now, as I did then. And not a whit older!

  The appalling thing is looking at the photographs of men then and now! The unrecognisable faces of elderly gentlemen who, one feels, could NEVER have been ‘boys’. One sees the wattles on ones own face! And one aches when one kneels for too long, as I know only too well. It was not yesterday .. but a long time ago. History in truth .. and so much since then has altered life. How pleasant it was before.

  Never to come back.

  A terribly gloomy letter indeed. All to be blamed, for I must lay blame! on the appalling weather beyond these two small windows.

  Forwood has made a sensible, I think, suggestion. We shall drive down to the airport and get the Sunday Papers! What a treat that will be, huddled round the stove, in cashmere or woollen cardie, reading the exciting news about Strikes and [Arthur] Scargill.4

  Enclosed a clipping from ‘Jours de France’5 … not because it is the best, but because it is the worst … a silly little paper with a vast circulation. But I thought that you might be amused to see what a twelve hour session with the jury did to me on the final day! I had exactly twenty five minutes to change into dinner jacket, to make my list of the ‘winners’, and to get onto the stage for a small audience, all over Europe (except, of course GB!) of fifty millions and break the tidings. We did it well. [Isabelle] Huppert, on my right, is the most adorable, sensible, grown-up, VERY brilliant, actress I have met in years. I immediatly made her Vice President of the Jury .. and it was an excellent idea. But we both look, as we were, absolutely exhausted. However: a job well and truthfully (unusual) done.

  I’m off to the airport. Rain torrenting, mist thick, shall we ever get there I wonder?

  With my love, and always my affection and respect.

  Your devoted Dirk XXXXXX

  To Kathleen Tynan Clermont

  9 June 1984

  My dearest Kathleen –

  [ … ] I’m glad that ‘West of Sunset’ was alright .. It is the most awful cheek for a foreigner to write about a city he knows as little, really, as I do. I shall probably get the chop when it comes out in the Fall on your side. L.A. Magazine (?) is printing a chunk in August, I think. But I am not certain if they are sending me up, or taking it straight!

  Time enough for that!

  Wim Wenders film, ‘Paris, Texas’1 is super. It has the typical longeurs which Wenders uses always, a kind of slow mastubation. But it is a wonderful foreigners-view of an America that too many Americans ignore or dont even see. And the performance from Karen Blacks child, Hunter [Carson], is not to be believed! He is absolutely magical. We tried hard to give him a special award at Cannes, but no such Prize exists … stupidly.

  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 … twenty four in twelve days, starting at eight fifteen am!

  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, or however it is spelled, I’ll choke. All that, I may add, jammed with Lesbian-Love scenes of extreme explicity, at eight of a morning is really not adorable.

  However there were compensations: Wenders was one .. ‘Another Country’2 one other, and a modest, excellent little film about the Irish Business for which, to my delight (and astonishment) Helen Mirren won Best Actress, was splendidly done. Terribly moving, taut, and horrifying. It’s called ‘Cal’,1 and I don’t suppose the Americans will ever see it … too many American Irish.

  There was, as there always is, 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 Russians2 .. 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 Volcano’, 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’.3 And it fell. I regret to say that it only got two 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 Organizers were appalled when we voted Best Actor to two brilliant Spanish gentlemen.4 And Helen Mirren 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 recieved 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’5 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 U.S 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 ten .. seven out of ten for Mirren, and nine out of ten for the two Spaniards, Rabel and Landa … 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 seven thousand miles for this evening’. To which Stanley Donen, the U.S member of the jury, said in his high, dry voice: ‘You do not get a fuckin’ 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 fucking table, splitting logs (it has rained here for fifteen 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

  Joseph Losey died on Friday 22 June. Dirk was on the telephone, inquiring after his friend’s health, at the moment of death.

  To Patricia Losey Clermont

  22 June 1984

  Patricia –

  These letters are always bloody to write and nearly always trite.

  I’m writing this only because today has been like a great black hole, and I find it difficult to settle: rather like a dog who knows that ‘something is up’.

  I did’nt expect Joe to die, for some silly reason. I suppose I thought that because he had been so very much a part of my life he would stay on, the grumpy, cantankerous, loving genius that he was.

  But that is not, to coin a phrase, ‘life’. And Joe was after all a mortal man, though I often doubted that fact at times in the past.

  I cant write a letter of ‘sympathy’. That would be both irritating and a waste of your time. You know anyway how much I grieve for you, and how much you are in my thoughts.

  I suppose, in a way, that this should be a letter of reminder: to us both, of all the good and wonderful things which he brought, in very different ways, to us both.

  A celebration of the happy, extraordinarily happy, times we have all shared.

  I will always remember you washing up coffee mugs in, was it Markham Street, and me calling you, for the last time ever! Pat.

  ‘I’m NOT Pat’ you said fiercely. ‘I’m Patricia if you dont mind.’ I did’nt. And we made more coffee for the Cast crouched about in the little sitting room upstairs.

  The tremendous ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ of ‘The Servant’ which we shared. The wonderful joy when it was a success. Joe often told me, in a rather gentle manner, that my account of the party I gave at the Connaught after the First Night was not exact. But it was. In my mind anyway!

  I shall never forget Basil Dearden kneeling on the carpet before Joe and paying him hommage. Sincerely, honestly, meant. What a funny evening it was […]

  The time we all went to Venice and got stinking on Bloody Mary’s on the Golden Arrow, the days at Taormina on the beach with the Dankworths.

  So many things.

  And there were other things, less happy, which we shared. The other side of a Joe who could be petty minded at times, and spiteful.

  Oh I know about all that. I remember the business in Rome about ‘Under The Volcano’ .. and found it hard to rid myself of anger and bitter amazement. But I did: in the end. One does!

  He had a quite extraordinary capacity for making enemies of those who liked him, and respected him. His behaviour with that tame millionair who offered me five million quid to make ‘any film you can think of’ was bewildering! I remember that after their first meeting, at which you were probably present, at the Georges V, Joe spent half an hour on the telephone complaining about the service, the drink, and, finally, the blasted Poule au Pot! And days later the millionair, a pleasant enough fellow really, called me to say that he found it impossible to ‘get on’ with Losey, but that I must not worry about it, because he knew that Losey was a genius. And all genius were rude or difficult!

  Nevertheless: we lost five million smackers!

  But of all times I suppose that I remember the Early Joe. The tall, exceptionally fine looking American in blue jeans and a jeans-shirt, which we had hardly seen in England at that time, standing about in a bar on some location, in cowboy boots and wearing a red handkerchief knotted at his throat. We had started ‘The Sleeping Tiger’.

  He was ‘Victor Hanbury’ then: and Tony and I had a hell of a job to get him alternative accomodation when, at The Ship in Shepperton, where he was staying, he was spotted by Ginger Rogers mother with a scream of horror! I got him smuggled, literally, into an hotel at Windsor. We got him two rooms, one they turned into a private sitting room for him at great effort. And when we proudly took him there, hidden in the back of my car under a rug (can you believe!) he complained bitterly about the noise.

  The noise came from a gentle weir in the Thames some distance across the gardens. It was then, I suppose, that I knew I’d got a problem for a friend.

  But a friend I had. And a friend, inspite of some pretty hefty hiccups here and there, he stayed. I know that he knew that I respected him: I think that he knew how deeply I loved him too, and that I knew most of his dirty tricks and still did’nt care. He was who he was; and either one left him strictly alone, or one stayed the course. Often hanging on by the eyelashes! I stayed.

  Your support, your courage, your innate good manners and good sense, did such a lot to smooth over difficult patches in his life.

  You certainly helped greatly to smooth ruffled feathers of pride or risen hackles of anger … as well you know.

  Without you beside him, whatever the cost it often was for you, Joe could not have survived the onslaughts of fate .. many of which he brought down on his own arrogant head, as we both know. But you were there, thank God! and I know that he loved you, for he told me that often enough, and he was not a desperatly ‘loving’ man, really.

  For myself I know that he enriched my life beyond measure.

  He gave me the courage to extend myself in my work: he never told me what to do, but watched closely what I did and asked for more .. extending, demanding, fullfilling me as an actor, helping me to expand and to experiment. And the pleasure was intense: and rewarding; as were the letters which he wrote after each film .. noticing things which I had thought that perhaps he had not seen: but old Joe had seen all, nothing escaped him.

  I remember, with constant joy, the day he showed me his Cartier watch from Liz Taylor and his enraged re action when I said that I liked him better in the days when he wore a ‘tin one’[.] He knew just what I meant by the remark, and finally, ruefully, he removed the watch and put it into the pocket of that huge house-coat thing he used to wear. I know the watch went back on the moment I left the room! But the one thing I will always, always, remember him for was his blinding courage, his passion for the Cinema and good players and good Crew, and his burning determination to make magic on the screen.

  That he did. He has at least four Great Movies to his credit.

  They will last longer than any of us, and will be argued about and discussed, long after we have gone our way, and those Movies were made despite every known problem set in his way; health, money, Money Men and all the rest. He won out. Four Great Movies may seem a small sum for such a rich life: but they were Movies which altered the way all Movies were to be made in the future. I think thats a pretty wonderful record: and maybe four is too modest an assumption on my part … but it’s enough to be going on with.

  Clever sod! Shitty bugger! Goodness HOW I shall miss him.

  Ever

  Dirk

  To Julian Barnes Clermont

  7 July 1984

  Julien –

  I sat in stupefied awe: not so much at the staggering wealth of vegetable-provision your photograph displays but at the care and attention to the captions!1

  If you tell me that the arrow was bought, ready s
tick-able, I’ll practically never speak to you again.

  I have a vision (innacurate?) of you with rule and pencil and tongue hanging out, drawing, then cutting, and finally sticking this veritable work-of-art across the top left hand edge of your very own beetroots. (Alright if you like them: but desperatly greedy and in need of ‘swelling space’ and prodigious amounts of water to glut them.)

  It gave, as you will gather, the greatest pleasure.

  I have a worrying feeling that perhaps, only perhaps, you have got everything packed a bit close. And ‘close’ means mildew and mould and aphids. But you know Dartmouth Park better than I do.

  I can only speak from my local miseries and over-eagerness to have too much of everything.

  Finally I did: and could’nt give away the produce. Lettuce I sold for a half-penny EACH! Before they flew up into spirals of seed.

  The watering, the mulching, the manure (a very costly item here where we dont have many horses and fewer cows … so it’s either pig or goat droppings: both vile and over acid anyway) finally got me down and I chucked it all in after ten exhausting years. Where was once my potager, oh Lord? Where in deed. Indeed, I mean.

  A mass of turbulant bramble and broom, ignored by all save the magpies and oriels.

  I go now to the market and buy the lot. Cheaper and less tiring.

  But dont stop! It is the most marvellous feeling, the first time, to be able to say, smugly, ‘from our own garden’.

  Then it pales.

  I find, to my distress, that many of my London friends are quite certain that everything is grown and culled by my own peasant hand. But since (as) many of them cant tell a strawberry from a cabbage what the hell.