Extract from Wikipedia Early years and war service
Bogarde was born in West Hampstead, London, of mixed Flemish and Scottish ancestry. His father, Ulric van den Bogaerde (born in Perry Barr, Birmingham), was the art editor of The Times and his mother Margaret Niven was a former actress. He attended the former Allan Glen's School in Glasgow, a time he described in his autobiography as unhappy, although others have disputed his account. Bogarde served in World War II, reaching the rank of captain and served in both the European and Pacific theatres, principally as an intelligence officer. In April 1945 he claimed he was one of the first Allied officers to reach the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, an experience that had the most profound effect on him and about which he found it difficult to speak for many years afterward. His horror and revulsion at the cruelty and inhumanity that he witnessed in Belsen left him with a deep-seated hostility towards Germany; he wrote in the 1990s that he would disembark from an elevator rather than ride with a German. Nevertheless, three of his more memorable film roles were as Germans, one of them as a former SS officer. He was most vocal, toward the end of his life, on the issue of voluntary euthanasia, of which he became a staunch proponent after witnessing the protracted death of Anthony Forwood in 1988. He gave an interview to John Hofsess, London executive director of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society:
"My views were formulated as a 24-year-old officer in Normandy … On one occasion the Jeep ahead hit a mine … Next thing I knew, there was this chap in the long grass beside me. A bloody bundle, shrapnel-ripped, legless, one arm only. The one arm reached out to me, white eyeballs wide, unseeing, in the bloody mask that had been a face. A gurgling voice said, 'Help. Kill me.' With shaking hands I reached for my small pouch to load my revolver … I had to look for my bullets - by which time somebody else had already taken care of him. I heard the shot. I still remember that gurgling sound. A voice pleading for death …
"During the war I saw more wounded men being 'taken care of' than I saw being rescued. Because sometimes you were too far from a dressing station, sometimes you couldn't get them out. And they were pumping blood or whatever; they were in such a wreck, the only thing to do was to shoot them. And they were, so don't think they weren't. That hardens you: You get used to the fact that it can happen. And that it is the only sensible thing to do."
Film career
After the war, Bogarde's good looks helped him begin a career as a film actor, contracted to The Rank Organisation. His 1950 appearance as the criminal, Tom Riley, who shoots Police Constable George Dixon in The Blue Lamp launched him as a lead player, but it was the comedy, Doctor in the House (1954), produced by Betty Box, directed by Ralph Thomas and co-starring Kenneth More, Donald Sinden, and James Robertson Justice as his crabby mentor, which made Bogarde a star.
During the 1950s, he also starred as a murderer who befriends a young boy in Hunted (aka The Stranger in Between) (1952); Appointment in London (1953) as a young airman in Bomber Command who, against orders, joins a major offensive against the Germans; The Sea Shall Not Have Them (1954), playing a flight sergeant trapped in a dinghy with Sir Michael Redgrave; The Sleeping Tiger (1954), playing a neurotic criminal with co-star Alexis Smith in fine form, and Bogarde's first film for American expatriate director Joseph Losey; Doctor at Sea (1955), co-starring Brigitte Bardot in one of her first film roles; Cast a Dark Shadow (1955), as a man who marries women for money and then kills them; The Spanish Gardener (1956), co-starring Cyril Cusack and Bernard Lee; Doctor at Large (1957), another entry in the "Doctor series", co-starring Shirley Eaton; A Tale of Two Cities (1958), a faithful retelling of Charles Dickens' classic; The Doctor's Dilemma (1959), by George Bernard Shaw and co-starring Leslie Caron and Robert Morley, not a part of the "Doctor series"; and Libel (1959), playing three separate roles and co-starring Olivia de Havilland. Bogarde quickly became a matinee idol and was Britain's number one box office draw of the 1950s, gaining the title of "The Matinee Idol of the Odeon."
After 1960, Bogarde abandoned his heart-throb image for more challenging parts, such as barrister Melville Farr in Victim (1961); decadent valet Hugo Barrett in The Servant (1963) (directed by Joseph Losey); television reporter Robert Gold in Darling (1965); Stephen, a bored Oxford University professor, in Accident (1967); German industrialist Frederick Bruckman in Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969); the ex-Nazi, Max, in the chilling and controversial The Night Porter (1974) directed by Liliana Cavani; and, most notably, as Gustav von Aschenbach in Death in Venice (1971) also directed by Luchino Visconti, now probably his best-remembered role.
Other films during the 1960s and 1970s were The Angel Wore Red (1960), playing an unfrocked priest who falls in love with cabaret entertainer Ava Gardner during the Spanish Civil War; Song Without End (1960), playing Franz Liszt and directed by George Cukor; The Singer Not the Song (1961), as a Mexican bandit and co-starring Sir John Mills as a priest; HMS Defiant (aka Damn the Defiant!) (1962), playing sadistic Lieutenant Scott-Padget and stealing the movie from co-star Sir Alec Guinness; I Could Go On Singing (1963), co-starring Judy Garland in her final screen role; The Mind Benders (1963), an off-beat film about sensory deprivation experiments at Oxford University (precursor to Altered States (1980)); Hot Enough For June, (aka Agent 8 3/4) (1964), a James Bond-type spy spoof; King And Country (1964), playing an army lawyer reluctantly defending deserter Tom Courtenay; Modesty Blaise (1966), a camp spy send-up playing the archvillain Gabriel; Our Mother's House (1967), an off-beat film playing an estranged father of seven children and directed by Jack Clayton; The Fixer (1968), based on Bernard Malamud's novel, co-starring Alan Bates; Sebastian (1968), co-starring Sir John Gielgud, Susannah York, and Lilli Palmer; Oh! What A Lovely War (1969), co-starring Sir John Gielgud and directed by Sir Richard Attenborough; Justine (1969), directed by George Cukor; Le Serpent (1973), co-starring Henry Fonda and Yul Brynner; A Bridge Too Far (1977), in a rather controversial performance as Lieutenant General Frederick "Boy" Browning; Providence (1977), co-starring Sir John Gielgud; Despair (1978); and Daddy Nostalgie (1991) co-starring Jane Birkin, Bogarde's final film role.
Bogarde was nominated six times as Best Actor by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), winning twice, for The Servant in 1963, and for Darling in 1965. He also received the London Film Critics Circle Lifetime Award in 1991. He made a total of 63 films between 1939 and 1991.
Later career and private life
In 1977 Bogarde embarked on his second career - as an author. Starting with a first volume A Postillion Struck by Lightning, he wrote a series of autobiographical volumes, novels and book reviews. As a writer Bogarde displayed a witty, elegant, highly literate and thoughtful style, though some find his style to be somewhat precious at times.
Bogarde was a life-long bachelor and, during his life, was reported to be homosexual. For many years he shared his homes, first in Amersham, England, then in France with his manager Anthony Forwood (a former husband of the actress Glynis Johns and the father of her only child, actor Gareth Forwood), but repeatedly denied that their relationship was anything other than friendship. Bogarde's most serious relationship with a female was with the bisexual French actress Capucine.
Bogarde starred in the landmark 1961 film Victim, playing a prominent homosexual barrister in London who fights the blackmailers of a young man with whom he had an emotional relationship. The young man commits suicide after being arrested for embezzlement, rather than ruining the attorney's reputation. In the process of exposing the ring of extortionists, Bogarde's character puts at risk his successful legal career and marriage in order to see that justice is served. Victim was the first mainstream British film to treat the subject of homosexuality seriously and the film helped lead to the changing of the law.
As Britain's leading box-office star of the 1950s, Bogarde displayed enormous personal courage in appearing in such a controversial film as Victim, which could have destroyed his career at that time. However, his performance opened a path to more challenging roles that gained him respect as one of the leading actors in the intellectual ("art house") film genre. Bogarde's decision to appear in Victim appears even more daring today, given that many contemporary film stars are afraid to portray a serious gay character because of the perceived public reaction and effect on their career that such a role could have.
Despite the stereotyping his performance in Victim could have brought him, during his career Bogarde portrayed heterosexual single or married men in the majority of his films, with the exception of his roles in Victim, The Servant, Modesty Blaise, and Death in Venice, although even those roles could be considered as being more bisexual than homosexual in nature.
Bogarde's controversial film choices later in his career led him to have something of a cult following. The singer Morrissey was a fan and, according to Charlotte Rampling[3], Bogarde was approached in 1990 by Madonna to appear in her video for Justify My Love, citing The Night Porter as an inspiration. Bogarde declined the offer.
In 1984 Bogarde served as president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. He was the first Briton ever to serve in that capacity, and this represented an immense honor for Bogarde. Dirk Bogarde was knighted in 1992 for his services to acting, and was the recipient of several honorary doctorates, including from St Andrews and Sussex universities.
Formerly a heavy smoker, Bogarde suffered a minor stroke in November 1987 while Anthony Forwood was dying of liver cancer and Parkinson's disease. Never afraid of voicing his opinion, after witnessing Forwood's protracted death he became active in promoting voluntary euthanasia for terminally ill patients in Britain and toured the UK giving lectures and answering questions from live audiences on the subject. It was a cause, he stated, that had been important to him since the war, during which he had witnessed severely injured men pleading to be put out of their misery.
In September 1996 he underwent angioplasty to widen arteries leading to his heart and suffered a pulmonary embolism following this operation. For the final three years of his life Bogarde was paralyzed on one side of his body, which affected his speech. He managed, however, to complete a final volume of autobiography, which covered the stroke and its effect on him. He spent some time the day before he died with his good friend Lauren Bacall. Sir Dirk Bogarde died in London from a heart attack on May 8, 1999, aged 78. His ashes were scattered at his former beloved estate of "Le Haut Clermont" in Grasse, Southern France. Can you help? Please contact me with any information you may have. |