Dirk Bogarde

At 78 years old, Dirk Bogarde has this physical status:

Sir Derek Jules Gaspard (28 March 1921 – 8 May 1999), better known as Dirk Bogarde, was an English actor and writer.

He appeared in art-house films as a matinée idol in films like Doctor in the House (1954) for the Rank Organisation.

He wrote seven best-selling volumes of memoirs, six books, and a collection of collected journalism, mainly from newspaper papers. Bogarde appeared in films including The Blue Lamp in the early 1950s before appearing in the popular Doctor film series (1954–1963).

For The Servant (1963) and Darling (1965), he twice received the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

Victim (1961), The Accident (1967), Death in Venice (1971), The Night Porter (1974), A Bridge Too Far (1977), and Despair (1978).

In 1990, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and a Knight Bachelor in 1992.

Early years and education

Bogarde was the eldest of three children born to Ulric van den Bogaerde (1892–1972) and Margaret Niven (1898–1980). Ulric was born in Perry Barr, Birmingham, of Flemish ancestry, and he was art editor of The Times. Margaret Niven, a Glasgow actor, was born in Scotland. Dirk Bogarde was born in a West Hampstead, London, nursing home, and was baptized on October 30th 1921 at St. Mary's Church, Kilburn. Elizabeth (born 1924) and Gareth Ulric Van Den Bogaerde, an advertisement film producer, were both born in Hendon in July 1933.

Bogarde was moved to Glasgow to remain with his relatives. He remained there for more than three years after returning to 1937 at the end of 1937. He attended University College School and the former Allan Glen's High School of Science in Glasgow, a time he referred to in his autobiography as an unhappy one. He won a scholarship to the Royal College of Arts, completed his two-year degree, and started "a back-stage job as a tea-boy at seven shillings and sixpence per week." Bogarde was told that "he needed more basic training and joined a provincial repertory group" in order to function as a stand-in." Come On George, George Formby's first on-screen appearance was as an uncredited extra. (1939) - (39).

Personal life

Bogarde lived in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, and later in France, with Anthony Forwood, who had been married to actor Glynis Johns during the 1940s. They were together until Forwood's death in 1988. Bogarde denied that his Forwood friendship was anything other than platonic. Given that male homosexual offences were unlawful during the majority of his career, there was a lot of speculation as to whether this was really the case. It could result in arrest and prison. Rank Studio deals came with morality guarantees, which provided for termination in the event of "immoral conduct" on the actor's part. These were similar-sex relationships, potentially endangering the actor's career and endangering his future.

Bogarde's refusal to enter into a marriage of convenience may have been a major reason for his failure to become a celebrity in Hollywood, as well as the ineffective and commercial failure of Song Without End. Helena Bonham Carter regretted that he did not come out in later life because doing so would have unashamedly underscored his regret for being compelled to mask his sexual orientation during his film career.

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Career

Bogarde's debut at theatre in the West End was in 1939, with the stage name "Derek Bogaerde" in J. Cornelius, the play by B. Priestley. He began shooting roles using the name "Dirk Bogarde" after the war. In the 1949 film When a Jolly Swagman, where he played a daring speedway ace, riding for the Cobras, one of Bogarde's earliest acting roles was performed by the Cobras. This was shot at New Cross Speedway, in South East London, during one of the postwar years, in which speedway was the most popular spectator sport in the United Kingdom.

Bogarde was hired by the Rank Organisation, the prolific independent film producer Betty Box, who made the majority of his early films and was instrumental in establishing his matinée idol image. Following his appearance in Esther Waters (1948), his first acknowledged role, replacing Stewart Granger, his rank contract began. In The Blue Lamp (1950), a film noir set in So Long At the Fair (1950), he played a hoodlum who shoots and kills a police constable (Jack Warner). He played in Hunted (or The Stranger in Between 1952), a young wing commander in Bomber Command in London (1953), and Desperate Moment (1953), a misincarcerated man who regains hope of releasing his name when he learns his sweetheart, Mai Zetterling, is still alive, and in Between (or Both, 1953).

In a film that made him one of the 1950s' most popular British actors, Bogarde appeared as a medical student in Doctor in the House (1954). Kenneth More and Donald Sinden appeared in the film, with James Robertson Justice as their crabby mentor. Betty Box, who had gathered a copy of the book at Crewe during a long rail journey and had imagined it as a film, started the project. Box and Ralph Thomas had trouble convincing Rank executives that people would watch a film about doctors and that Bogarde, who played characters from the start of the film, had sex appeal and could play light comedy. They were given a modest budget and were allowed to use only existing Rank contract artists. This was the first of the Doctor film series based on Richard Gordon's books.

Bogarde played a neurotic criminal with co-star Alexis Smith in The Sleeping Tiger (1954). It was Bogarde's first film for American expatriate director Joseph Losey. He starred in two Doctor film roles, including Martha McKenna and Robert Morley; Doctor at Sea (1955), a faithful retelling of Charles Dickens' classic; and A Tale of Two Cities (1956), a co-starring Brigitte Bardote (1954), a father of two women's ashes; and Doctor at Large (1959), based on George Bernard Shaw's story "Moist" and later starring Richard Morley; Andremur starring Richard de's

Bogarde departed the Rank Organisation in the early 1960s and "chose roles that challenged received morality and expanded the field of cinema." He appeared in the film Victim (1961), portraying a London barrister who combats the blackmailers of a young man with whom he has a long and personal relationship. Rather than ruining his beloved's future, the young man commits suicide after being arrested for embezzlement rather than ruining his beloved's. Bogarde's reputation and marriage are jeopardized in exposing the ring of extortionists to ensure that justice is done. Victim was the first British film to depict misogyny to which gay people were exposed through discriminatory legislation and as a victimized group; it is believed that it had some effect on the later Sexual Offence Act 1967, which abolished male homosexuality, which had no effect on the unconstitutional status of homosexual conduct.

Hugo Barrett, a decadent valet, appeared in The Servant (1963), a BAFTA Award-winning script that earned Bogarde a BAFTA Award. The Mind Benders, a psychologist who participated in sensory deprivation experiments at Oxford University, were also released that year (and which anticipates Altered States (1980)). In the film King & Country, Bogarde played an army officer at a court-martial, reluctantly protecting deserter Tom Courtenay. In Darling (1965), directed by John Schlesinger, he received his second BAFTA for his role as a television broadcaster-writer Robert Gold. Bogarde, Losey, and Pinter were reunited for Accident (1967), which chronicled Stephen's struggle as a bored Oxford University professor.

Our Mother's House (1967) is an off-beat film noir and the British entry to the Venice Film Festival, directed by Jack Clayton, in which Bogarde plays a ne'er-do-well father who descends upon "his" seven children on the death of their mother. Bogarde, The Damned (1969), played German industrialist Friedrich Bruckmann alongside Ingrid Thulin in his first collaboration with Luchino Visconti (1969). Visconti was back at the helm of the ship in Bogarde's Morte a Venezia, Death in Venice two years later when the actor portrayed Gustav von Aschenbach. Bogarde was cast as an ex-Nazi, Max Aldorfer, co-starring Charlotte Rampling, and directed by Liliana Cavani in 1974. In the well-received, multidimensional French film Providence (1977), directed by Alain Resnais and industryist Hermann Hermann, who descends into madness in Despair (1978), directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, he played Claude, the lawyer son of a dying, inebriated writer (John Gield). Later, he recalled, "It was the best performance I've ever had in my life." "Fassbinder... really screwed the movie up." "Using a scissors, he ripped it to pieces." Bogarde's experience culminated in a long and painful illness. "I thought, 'OK." Give it a try.' So I gave it up and knew I didn't do another film for fourteen years." In Bertrand Tavernier's Daddy Nostalgie (1991), he appeared as Daddy, and Jane Birkin played his daughter.

Bogarde appeared opposite several well-known celebrities in the 1960s and 1970s. During the Spanish Civil War, Bogarde played an unfrocked priest who falls in love with cabaret entertainer Ava Gardner. He portrayed Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt in Song Without End, a film directed by Charles Vidor (who died during filming) and finished by Bogarde's colleague George Cukor, which was the actor's first foray into Hollywood. Bogarde appeared as a Mexican bandit in The Singer Not the Song (1961), with John Mills as a priest.

Defiant (or Damn the Defiant!)

Lieutenant General Frederick "Boy" Browning appeared in a Bridge Too Far (1977), a film starring Sean Connery and an all-star cast, and Richard Attenborough directed him. Bogarde claimed to have known General Browning from his time on Field Marshal Montgomery's troops during the war, but had reservations about the general's generally negative portrayal of him as he participated in A Bridge Too Far. Browning's widow, author Dame Daphne du Maurier, scuffed his characterisation and "the resultant establishment fell out, much of it homophobic, and incorrectly told [Bogarde] that Sir Richard [Attenborough] had deliberately contrived to scupper his own chance of a knighthood."

Bogarde started his second career as an author in 1977. He started with a first volume A Postillion Struck by Lightning (an allusion to the phrase My postillion has been struck by lightning), a series of 15 best-selling books, as well as essays, literature, and collected journalism, beginning with A.S. Bogarde, a writer, had a snarky, elegant, literate, and thoughtful style.

Bogarde was due to appear in a new Lawrence scripted by Terrence Rattigan and directed by Anthony Asquith while under rank Organisation service. The film was cancelled without fully explaining—ostensibly for budgetary reasons—on the eve of its release, to the dismay of the three men. Lawrence's unexpected demise, which Bogarde had long researched and eagerly awaited, was one of his greatest screen disappointments. (Rattigan rewritten the script as a play, Ross, which opened to a lot of success in 1960, with Alec Guinness playing Lawrence.) Bogarde was also considered for the title role in MGM's Doctor Zhivago (1965). Louis Jourdan had dismissed Louis Jourdan's role as Gaston in MGM's Gigi (1958).

Born in 1961, Bogarde was given the opportunity to perform Hamlet at the newly opened Chichester Festival Theatre by artistic director Sir Laurence Olivier, but she was forced to cancel due to film commitments. Bogarde later regretted losing Olivier's invitation and with it the opportunity to "actually learn my art."

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