"This was a way of getting out a message" says Coldstream. The obvious danger was that Bogarde was gay and living with his partner Anthony 'Tote' Forwood, as he would until Forwood died in 1988. In a letter written by Victim's producer Michael Relph to its co-writer Janet Green at the time, Relph notes: "In spite of the obvious dangers for, he jumped at it." He backed out, and the part was turned down by two more actors, James Mason and Stewart Granger, before the idea dawned on Pinewood bigwig, Earl St John, to offer it to Bogarde. Under the original working title Boy Barrett, Jack Hawkins was cast as Farr. Then, in 1961 with his contract at Rank coming to an end, Bogarde took the role of barrister Melville Farr in Basil Dearden's Victim, a black-and-white thriller about gay men being blackmailed under threat of exposure and jail time, which was made six years before the Sexual Offences Act decriminalised "homosexual acts in private between consenting adults" in the UK. He had been an above-the-title name since playing a seductive footman in Esther Waters (1948), and by the early 1950s, he was a big face in the celebrity industrial complex, placing highly in best movie star polls – indeed, as relayed by Coldstream in his biography, Olwen Evans, a shorthand typist from Kent "won" a date with Bogarde, in the Daily Mirror's Teen Queen contest. Contracted to British studio The Rank Organisation since 1948, he was busting out movies at a rate of three to four a year, and his status seemed set as a crowd-pleasing A-lister. Sparrow captured the public imagination, and it was rare to find a film magazine in the 50s that didn't feature Dirk frowning under a soft forelock of dark hair. His Simon is quietly dashing, a soulful presence in contrast with brasher peers, whose nurse-ogling is played for laughs and so has not aged well. Bogarde was cast as shy medical student Simon Sparrow, a role he played a further three times in Doctor At Sea (1955), Doctor At Large (1957), and Doctor in Distress (1963). "Presenting Britain's most popular star" shouts the trailer to the 1958 Charles Dickens adaptation A Tale of Two Cities, cutting to a figure who is every inch the romantic gentleman with a cravat, top hat and furrowed brow: "Dirk Bogarde as Sydney Carton".īogarde was, as his official biographer John Coldstream tells BBC Culture, "box-office catnip" and had been since 1954's Doctor in the House, a lightweight comedy about hijinx in a London hospital. In other words: he didn’t believe his own hype, even though there sure was a lot of it not to believe. By the time he became an actor he had experienced enough of the heaviness of life to take fame lightly. As we approach the centenary of his birth this weekend, it's interesting to reflect on a unique star whose legacy is a clarion call to pursue creative freedom.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |