Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  While Dirk and Tony were on location, Elizabeth and her family minded the fort at Clermont. As on other occasions, her husband George brought to bear his expertise in landscape gardening and tree surgery.

  To Elizabeth Goodings La Chapelle St Martin

  Par Nieul, Près Limoges

  15 May 1976. Sunday.

  My dearest Girl –

  Another Sunday: another cold and wet and low-clouds and no sign of a change. Goodness knows what happens next week … we have John G. coming back from London for eight days crucial work in the gardens. A huge lunch party … if it’s dull we are finished! I dare not contemplate it. Oh dear! This is a very odd count[r]y; some days golden and hot, a few hours later freezing and foggy! Thats why everything is so gloriously green and lush … sheep everywhere, great hedges, fat beech forests, rivers and streams and ponds … it’s so beautiful, very like our old fashioned England before the war … lots of birds, frogs, and millions of beautiful wild flowers everywhere – miles and miles of open countryside and neat little villages lost in time. But oh! the damn weather. How I grumble. Yesterday we drove down to a pleasant town called Uzeses [Uzerche] .... and had lunch at the village hotel. Twenty years ago we stayed there with Ma and Ully on our way to Spain to start the ‘Spanish Gardner’. Had’nt changed much … red table cloths, little lamps and not too good grub. Ully I remember liked the local wine, and dissapeared the next morning JUST as we were about to start off for Barcelona … the longest haul of the trip … looking for a special brand of cigarettes which had not been made in France since 1917. We could have hit him with a shovel. I found her1 a p.c. of the pub and sent it off. She wont remember, but might think she does … anyway it was something to say to her … it is difficult to write to her as you know.

  Today I have had to invite Ellen Burstyn and her friend Blossom Plum (really her name!)2 to lunch … they are stuck in a beastly modern hotel in the town, all plastic and nylon carpets, with a Telly in the lounge bar and peeling paint. Their choice. They can call America. From this hotel you can hardly call yourself. It depends who is in the kitchen when you want to get through. And our nice little girl, who was so pretty, fell down with an Epyleptic fit the other morning and got carted off in a straight-jacket. Bought her some toilet water yesterday … but she was a bit brighter than the rest of the house. It’s all very casually run by a young couple, very ‘smart’ … she wears culottes and he wears a different half-belted jacket every evening and says that everything on the menu is ‘Extraiordanary!’ when it is mostly frozen or overcooked … the house and furnishings are pretty … but it is all a bit chi chi for me … fresh flowers on the tables but no potatoes on the menue and too many sorts of sauces to disguise a bad chefs cooking … anyway Burstyn better enjoy it. Later we might take them up the road to terrible Oradour.3 They are both very full of ‘progressivness and the moral language of Man’ and all that crap. It might do them good to see just what man can do to man … and only thirty years ago. I think Blossom will take a turn when she sees the village well into which they stuffed fifty of the men and boys that hot June day … I said to Tote .. ‘What’ll we do if they come over queer and start sobbing?’ and he said ‘Let’s sit in the car till we are ready. That’ll teach them.’ So perhaps we will! On the other hand they may be as saddened and moved as we were … and now that I know all the story I act as a sort of guide. We have taken quite a few of the younger members of the Crew up there … in their early twenties and mid twenties. I think it is important that that age should see something as frightful as this. The smell of ashes and burnt brick still hangs in the air … the bullet holes are still in the doors which were not burned … the skeletons of Singer Sewing machines, and clocks on the walls still … the cooking pots in the fireplaces, the scorched refrigerators and twisted iron bedsteads … everything that would not burn, still remain inside the shells of the houses … and the gardens have been carefully preserved, the bushes trimmed, lawns cut, lilac heavy in blossom, trees all pruned. And totally deserted, silent except for the birds and the distant bleat of the sheep in the lush green fields which surround this hateful, sad, ruined little town.

  Thats enough of that. Tote is trying to draw a version of our O.M.1 Between us we have got it more or less right … and I have now to copy it and send it off to Chatto. By the way I thought it might be a nice thing to do to give Lally the first 100 pounds I might get for the book … dont you? And a percentage of the ‘take’ from then on in .... I feel she deserves it more than Ma at this time who at least has ‘enough’ .... Lally has simply nothing. So thats what I’ll do … if there is 100 pounds that is to say! I rather doubt it but you cant really tell.

  After that I have to turn up a pair of slacks I bought yesterday in our local Nouvelle Galleries .... got my little ‘housewife’ with needles and thread and things and am not very sure HOW to turn things up without the stitches showing! Have a go. Things here are a third cheaper than on the Coast. Cognac is 30 Francs .. (at the Superette 38–42) and clothes and things are much cheaper in Monoprix and other shops … just goes to show that the further south you go the more you have to pay … even meals are cheaper … and Kleenex!

  I’m listening to BBC 2 at the moment … we can get it here since there are no mountains between us and London … and that awful Sunday Request Programme where the DJ screams ‘Goodbyeeee’ all the time. I think I’ll go bonkers. And the slush they all want .. the favourite song seems to be something called ‘The Queen Of The Mardi Gras’ and it is as sicky as ‘Happy Anniversary My Darling’ which really makes you throw up! God! The trivial minds of most people … it makes you sad. They are all Madame Martinez2 … key-rings and plastic ash trays … some of the famous Limoge China on sale in the town is worse, by far, than the stuff in Vallauris .... ghastly! Crinoline ladies covered in spangles and gold, awful doggies, and cake stands made out of twisty gold wire and covered in china fruits and birds .. and of course they sell. Ducks on the wall .... where will it all end? Mediocraty everywhere.

  Now I’d better stop this and let Tote use it for a letter to the Swiss Bank … I do hope you are being sensible about your spending. The money in the bank is for you all to USE you know .... I have a terrible vision of you economising Uncle Dirks money by making one packet of fish fingers do for all .. and eating salade niceoise until you will all look like one. Do be good and eat properly, and use the wine in the cellar, if you can bear it, that was bottled for you … and it’ll only go ‘off’ if you dont use it … not that it matters, but PLEASE enjoy yourselves in between painting out rooms and toiling in the garden!!! it is not your job! But I do love you for doing it! All my love as ever, for ever ..

  Dirk XXXXXX and millions more –

  To Elizabeth Goodings La Chapelle St Martin

  Sunday. 30 May [1976]

  Darling one –

  We are sweating a bit this week. Supposed to finish the whole Location before Thursday in the gardens of the Chateau1…. this morning I awake to thick fog! Yesterday it was dull and rained … what on earth will it be like tomorrow? I can see me sticking it out until the day before I have to go to Holland!2 Which means that I would’nt be back at Clermont until the middle of August at the earliest … and my heart sinks. We have had enough of it already … hotel rooms, resturants, washing the ‘smalls’ in the bathroom, and trying to find something to do on these interminable ‘day off’s’ ..... However I am being a bit gloomy, probably because of the fog this morning. Anyway we HAVE to quit this hotel by Saturday morning … he cant keep us longer; the summer bookings have started .... we should, if all went well, start up to Paris that day for the Lancaster … but if the wether fucks things up we’ll have to stay over until Tuesday at least because Monday is ANOTHER bloody holiday … so is the Sat and the Sun … so where we shall find a room at that time, in the middle of Whitsun, God alone knows. Anyway: maybe something lovely will happen. Like sunshine for five days and then we’ll be off. But I have grave doubts.

  Otherwise there is noth
ing to tell you since our gossip the other day. I am calling Leon,3 I hope, this morning … could’nt before. Lines jammed and etc … we are really up in the hills here … and the staff are overworked .... today we cant even have our table for lunch! They are booked out solid and the landlord, who left a very large bottle of cognac in my room yesterday with a very nice card saying how much they all admired my ‘simplicity, kindness, and humility …’ I was rather toutched. And of course they have got it a bit wrong. Still: a nice gesture anyway. (Anyway he said he could’nt give us a table for 4.) So. We have to take John G. out to lunch, he is a bit fed up and lonely stuck in a terrible modern hotel in town … so instead of having an elegant, comfortable, expensive, and not very good, meal here we have to drive him up to a lake some twenty miles away to a hotel which we have found and which is pleasant, on the lake, and not going to be crowded. It is a bit of a bore because he loves to reminisce all the time .. like Ma! And all about dead actors I either never saw or never wished to! ‘Ah! dear Marie Tempest! I remember once at Juliet Duffs during the war, she lived at Henley you know, ravishing house, Oscar Whimper and Edith Wallop came to tea with Marie Tempest, who was married to Edgar Rudd ... ’ etc etc etc .. and on and on they go, the stories, endlessly being repeated! You just have to sit there and listen. He HATES being interrupted and does not like anyone elses stories at all! A bit trying, and then you have to pick up the bill anyway. Not cheap. Never less than 300 francs a time!

  We drove a couple of the young Crew members down to Perigaux [Périgueux] yesterday .. a lovely run even in drizzle … among miles and miles of walnut trees … this is the region for nut oil .... they use it always instead of olive oil … made from walnuts. It is sweet and delicious. So we bought a couple of litres .... if we ever get home to use it.

  Had a long leasurly lunch at the Hotel du Parc, which has a star in the Michelin and cost a fortune. But the kids enjoyed it and we all got mildely wined and played idiotic word games in the car coming back and bought awful sweeties in a little village which were made of walnuts … everything is made of walnuts and truffels in the Perigord. And then just had an omlette and atichikos for supper when we got back here, still too full to eat anything else. The Radio … we can get BBC 2 for some reason, and a learn of the script and then to bed. Not very exciting … and I envy everyone I see working in their gardens.

  The BBC, talking of that, is doing a huge Homage to D.B sometime in August … ten of my best films and a big interview in the Radio Times plus the cover in colour! Fame at last. Trouble is they want to come out on specific dates to do it all in Paris and I cant possibly say when I’ll be free at this time. And they are panicking because their ‘date line’ is tight. Oh hell! There is always something.

  […] I must answer a few more letters which came in your bundle the other day, and send Ma another card full of drivel … and then get me jacket on and trail off to pick up John G. and a chap called Peter Arne who is quite pleasant but boring too! They all are! I really am OFF actors.

  What about Sir Stanley Baker! And Dreaded John Mills!1 It makes all the awards so cheap [ … ]

  All love to you … dont let Mark loose in the village! They may lock him up with all that hair!2

  Much love my little darling one, a big, big h[u]g as ever,

  my gratitude and thanks for all you are doing for me,

  I cant think how to repay you,

  But one day, you see, I will

  Your devoted brother.

  Dirk XXXXX

  In June production of Providence moved to studios in Paris. Dirk and Tony settled into the Lancaster, the hotel which they favoured as the French capital’s answer to the Connaught.

  To Penelope Mortimer Hotel Lancaster

  30 June 1976

  My dear –

  The temperature is in the ninties .. flowers dead, airless, agonizing on the set. Yesterday it was 125 and me in a neat double breasted St Laurent, poor Burstyn in a vast cashmere robe. Death seemed not far away and the floor felt like a rubber sponge beneath the feet. But we are nearly at the end of this staggering, exciting, film.

  […] Enormously interested by your obvious interest in ‘R’1 … I think you are on splendid lines myself. Venice was simply an idea we had ages ago, on one of the earlier projects of the thing, before Roeg fucked it all up with Sutherlands cock and misty-dont-turn-round shots2 … But DONT set a foot of it in America. I refuse to even set foot on that blasted land.

  Directors are hellish. How cruel, wrong and unjust to blame Jack.3 Unbankable is one of their excuse words like Powder Room. It really means that they dont like him. Gatsby was not the failure it was because of Jack but because the fucking Front Office blew it into some idiotic Product Selling Commercial. There was Gatsby Green, Gatsby Cuisines, Gatsby Sweaters, and even a Gatsby Hair Cut. They just had a foul cast and too much loot.

  Losey is too long in the tooth anyway. I have just refused to do a ‘bit’ in his ill fated Proust! He sent all France and the U.S.A a carbon cable stating that he was now able to ‘impliment’ the production of PINTERS ‘La Researche .. etc’ and that he was ‘sure there would be something for you in it. Please to telegraph immediate acceptance!’ Those of us who recieved the cable in France politely, and regretfully in some instances, declined. He turned purple, I am told, and fled to do a Telly in Mexico. Proust has folded it’s wings again and the dust has settled somewhat. Anyway: I cant think of a director … no way can I.

  There are too few. Schlesinger would camp it all up … and Bogdanovitch has the style of a Macdonald Hamburger. Perhaps a lovely European? But I dont know and am too bushed to care right now.

  Resnais, golden, steel, platinum, Resnais strides masterfully through his ‘dream’ brilliantly .. cooly, passionatly, calmly. What a superbe chap he is! This is a sort of marriage between us … no words are wasted, all sign language .. exhilerating, lifting; one reels home to the hotel in the evenings amazed that one has been able to do things for him which no one ever botherd to ask for before .. (save Visconti) .. and this is harder, far harder, than ‘Death In V.’ And the Style demanded is immense … partly Wilde .. partly Congrieve … partly Sheridan and lots of Resnais! Very exciting indeed. I have not seen a foot but am told, as the Paris en dit, has it that it is the Event of the Season. I DO hope so. However drunken that red-plum-with-a-beard, Mercer, may be, he can write when he wants to … and the film, amazingly for Resnais, is very, very funny … black funny and not always comfortable funny, but funny! We’ll see .... [ … ] I leave here, I think, by car for home on the 8th July .. and will have a merciful five days at home before trailing up to Holland to play, is’nt it odd? Browning (du Mauriers ex)1 in ‘A Bridge Too Far’ which is costing 27 million dollars and is the most awful drag you can imagine. But the loot is healthy … the role nine days over four weeks … and then I needent work again until Alain starts again. He promised me he’d have me again soon .. about March … I want to play everything he offers from a door handle to a spruce tree. We waited fourteen years together. I think we both feel the wait was justified as well as the result.

  Off now to the filthy Studio at Joinville … by the Marne .. no air conditioning and a set of such staggering proportions that it makes Babylon in ‘Intolerance’ pale by comparison. No wonder the actors did’nt get full salaries! The set must have cost the budget of ten movies … and it is very very hot indeed in Mr Laurents dinner jackets [ … ]

  Someone from Le Figaro is at the door … I’ll go and Parlez.

  [ … ] devoted, if hot, love –

  Dirk XXXX.

  P.S. What about my glorious S. MANGANO2 for [Mrs] Danvers?

  To Bee Gilbert Clermont

  13 September 1976

  Dearest Sno’

  What a lovely long letter to cheer me up on my return, three days ago, from a hellish week of looping in Paris. I got there to find that I had to loop the entire fucking film1 .. 200 loops. The sound engineers were dreadful (from Telly natch) and the birds, dogs and airoplanes whic
h scattered across the locations screwd us up even more. However clever old me, I broke the record at Billiancourt and did my lot in three anguished days ..... it is a Mercer Script … not Disney as you know, so it had to be precisely as said originally. Well .. it is done now. Am home again for a couple of weeks before returning to Old Father Attenboroughs Disney-Arnhem. Which I dread. What a nonsense that all is! Every ‘Star’ has a personal trailor with flush loo and a very personal Servant to get the grub, water, towels, beer … 450 Crew and 8 assistants … three Units … Arnold on one as 1st2 … untold tanks and planes … millions of extras and a script written by a Brooklyn Jew called Goldman.3 Almost unsayable. Odd, is’nt it? Shades of the dreaded ‘Fixer’ .... No one seems to care much about anything except getting it all done ‘on schedule’ … so one take is often the norm. Ah well. It will make a bomb, with all those Stars how can it fail? Adored Sean C.4 and worked very happily indeed with him … and made a surprising new mate in Ryan O’Neil5 who could not be nicer, jollier and brighter! That WAS a surprise. Tote says it was because he was so bloody respectful to me all the time .... but I just liked the bloke. And he’s good too. And THAT was a surprise. Gene Hackman was a bit Methody and got cross if the camera operator was on the set while he was rehearsing .. but was very pleasant to me and quite good, not more, when it came to the Acting.