Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  Mr Beaton,1 waspish, bright of eye, bringing, indeed as you said, many familiar faces .. alas! So many now no longer here.

  But a splendid bit of nostalgia and a reminder to myself that I was’nt wrong.

  Life was, once upon a time, Elegant.

  And thank you. Very naughty indeed: but forgiven in gratitude.

  And after Christmas Eve it was Christmas Day and so it went on.

  I do rather hate it all. But suddenly this year did’nt!

  I think because the week preceeding it was so bloody.

  My little beast [Labo] could’nt make it in the end. We sat and watched him battle away and loose. His reproach, his apology, his shame when he peed himself and everywhere else, almost not to be born.

  A gentleman, and he was that, of such impeccable manners .. I carried him about, he could no longer even stand, and finally we reached the Decision and it was done; well stage-managed I admit, in my arms in the patch of sunlight he used always to seek just beside my chair. He had no fear nor awareness. Only the very splendid Vet. knew the grief; and simply left immediatly after without even a farewell … which was tactful and kind.

  And so Tote and I put him in his hole quite near the greenhouse, under a flourishing bay, and shovelled in, together, not just the last of a dog but fourteen years of our own lives. After that … a minute or two after .. we got back to wrapping the presents for the Dustmen, the Mayors Wife, the lady who does the sheets and etc … and so it went on. Christmas Eve was a sort of mad charade; Labo in his grave, and me off to the airport, at seven of the evening (!) to collect a script1 from a harrased couriour (cant spl.) courrior which I had to READ before ten pm. Because at ten pm there was a call from California and I had to make a decision. All this with turkey and all that rubbish being prepared against the morrow, and Lady nowhere to be seen since, with a blinding flash of happy beige teeth, she had announced the night before that her husband had suddenly had a splendid idea and they were all driving home to Alicante (!) for Christmas.

  So you get the idea.

  [ … ] The Script I had to read is curious and good. I have said Yes. And leave for Hollywood, dear God!, on the 8th […] Playing with Glenda Jackson, which is the main bait, in the True Story of Roald Dahl and his wife Patricia Neal. You’ll not know about it I imagine, but someone you know will … so I’ll not bore you with the details. I have telephoned Roald and asked his permission to play him and he has most warmly agreed. It seems to me, and to him, a perfectly frightful thing that because a book was written about this part of the[ir] lives, a tragic and fearful part, that a film of it can be made without their permission. So they have co-operated wonderfully … and the Script has dignity and honour. But it still feels odd to ‘play’ a man you know well and to re-enact a deeply personal period of his life. We were neighbours for a while in Buckinghamshire ...

  What about that for fiction? The last time we met was at that awful Foyles luncheon2.… I never dreamed, as they say.

  Well. Who would?

  I suppose that I would’nt have touched the Cinema again if I had been able to make a living, even modest, from my writing. But now that the recession, or whatever it is called, has hit so hard, I have to go back to ‘real work’. Mr F. pointed out, with great tact as you would imagine, that £10.000 today is worth only £1.700 in ‘old’ money terms and so that simply wont do. I want to hold onto Clermont for a bit longer. So: il faut … damnation.

  And I really was getting along quite well with ‘Lally’1 … but she’ll have to wait now [ … ] I’d FAR rather ‘rite’ than Film. And Hollywood! Oh God! I swore never to set foot there again.

  I’m tired now. Cold too. Must go and light the fire and close the shutters. This with love, gratitude, and always … Devotion –

  Dirk

  To Patricia Neal and Roald Dahl Clermont

  2 January 1981

  My dear Pat & Roald –

  I should have written to you both an age ago … well: a day or two at least.

  But I would’nt until every single little ‘wheel and deal’ had been fixed on this Epic.

  I trust no one in that distant Desert City … and swore never to return to it after the disasterous mess they made of Durrell’s ‘Justine’, in which I was, sadly, involved.

  However: as of this morning I am assured that all things are ‘go’ in their language. And so go I must. Because I greatly want to do your ‘story’; if it must be called that.2

  I am very contrite that I had to interrupt the Family Joys on Boxing Day … and a perfectly good game of billiards (and a goat?) to boot.

  But I simply refused to take ‘their’ word that everything was okay .. and insisted that I first of all got your permissions.

  That you both so generously, and warmly, gave them made me very proud.

  I do not know Miss Jackson personally. An odd choice, at first glance, but after reading the script I knew a perfect one.

  She has the integrity and guts: she has honour. She is not a bit shitty. And she is a bloody marvellous actress.

  I can only do my best: I am too old, you know that, I am not a ‘clone’ by any means … nor do I intend to try to be.

  Together, and with Tony Harvey who is pretty good, I am certain that whatever we manage to make of this thing we shall strive in any case to honour you and the valient fight you fought.

  That’s what it is all about, in the end. The Fight. And I think that it is extremely important to share it with others who may be, one day, faced with the same thing … or with those who say .. as so often one hears, ‘Oh well .. it’s no good. Thats that.’

  That was’nt that.

  Thats why I want to do it so much.

  I cannot possibly hope to do more than re-represent what you went through with as much compassion and guts as possible.

  I’ll do my very damndest to make it possible for you not to be too furious! We’ll fight too, if we have to, for you both.

  Thats all: I only wanted to thank you, and assure you of my good faith and awareness of my responsibilities …

  With love ..

  Dirk

  P.S. No old Fashioned roses up here! All limestone shale and dust alas! Just stuck in Mrs Herbet Stevens1 and three Ophelia .. cross fingers.

  To David Frankham Clermont

  14 March 1981

  Dear David –

  I’m bashing this off immediatly on reciept of your splendid ‘snap’ [ … ]

  Your story, saga, of the RB thing2 is so wonderfully, brutally, typical. I knew him ‘socially’ when he was married to Jean S … and that was a fairly horrendous time. He was every bit as loathsome and pretentious at home as he is on a Set. Once he screened, for the first time, a copy of ‘Bullitt’ (two ‘T’s?)3 and I was invited along with Signoret and Montand and sundry other Europeans and at the end, as we sort of came out of the haze of splendour which was the movie, and having seen the now famous Car Chase for the first time, we were wide eyed and like a lot of kids in Disney Land. His only comment, as the lights came up in his over opulent screening room was ‘Great television. Sorry you had to sit through crap like that.’

  No one I know would work for him. How Sean gets by is his affair: but he is a tough fellow to crack.

  I was not, by the way, in a turmoil about the schedule of our unfinished epic.4 Not that. Although 4.30 am was a bit early .. and half an hour for lunch not quite enough … but we always got the first shot in the ‘can’ by 7.30 am .. and the Crew was fantastic and splendid and loyal and kind as could be. The main problem was our dreadful Producer1 who, after the first days ‘dailies’ tried to fire everyone in sight. And then having said the script was ‘twenty minutes too long by stop watch’ (Why did’nt he know this long before?) insisted on inserting extra stuff which there simply was’nt the time to shoot!

  The athmosphere on the Set was electric, with G. and I trying to hold it all together and to guard both lighting man, Villalobes2 who is magic, and T. Harvey who is a bit hysterical, from being sacke
d overnight. It went on daily. The screams, literal, the yells, literal […]! Amazing carry-on! One just stayed as calm as possible and worked. The Crew, plus the Teamsters, gave me loads of perfectly dreadful presents … as a token of their gratitude for ‘holding the place together’ … which was both touching and unexpected. I dont, in truth, know what to do with the stuff I was loaded with! A revolver which, when pressed, will light your cigar, beer mugs with hearts on them, a six-blade switch knife .. (they found it odd, but brave, that I actually WALKED from the Location House in Pasedena to the Shereton Hotel. All of five minutes down the road and in sight all the way from the Honey Waggon!) and a manicure set in plastic hide, plus a vast cowboy hat covered with feathers etc –

  But it was extremely kind. And I was very moved indeed.

  Glenda magical to work with. And the no-nonsense kind of lady I love.

  We just bashed on together … there are only a couple of small parts plus three, reasonably pleasant, children … so it was not a chore from that point of view.

  Having done the very first shot of the Movie on the first morning I suddenly realised that four years away from the business had in no way phased me at all. I was mainly concerned with the fact that I had ordered a bacon and egg sandwich and that it had’nt arrived.

  It came later … and only then did I realise that we had actually got the thing under way. But, Christ! What a way …

  What it amounts to is that we have shot, without loosing quality, two thirds of a Feature Movie (CBS Play Of The Week in the U.S. A Main Movie elsewhere.) in three weeks. Fourteen days to be precise.

  Not bad; but it did need years of experience and all that Rep. stuff and banging about with Visconti and Resnais to ‘manage’!

  I saw the L.A. Times thing, and almost fainted with horror at the snap! Taken, we were assured, by THE greatest lady photographer in the world. Glenda murmured under her breath that the lady had one too many cameras and was clearly fussed and had lost her light meter. So we knew we’d get a stinker for a picture. We did’nt know that I’d look like Kenny Moore and she’d look like a simpering survivor from Belsen. Anyway.

  The awful thing is that the English Part … the final third, is now to be shot in Northern California .. because our Producer feels that he can keep a better eye on things, (he has subsuquently sacked the entire Crew … only Harvey remains and the Cutter, Bernard Gribble) (from Ealing!) and also he insists that the British Crews are too slow and always go on strike. Which I cant deny. But how can we ever build Amersham High Street and Great Missenden north of San Fransisco? Well, of course, we cant … and it’ll all look like ‘Mrs Miniver’… but there you go.

  He is convinced that G. and I will ‘sweep the Emmies’ .. which would be absolutely fine if we had a finished film. Which we have’nt!

  The Parties, and there were’nt many because of dawn calls, were all as hellish as they ever are in H’wood, even those given by loved old mates. Underlying the whole thing was a new, for me, feeling of unease and fear. It was rather like going to parties in Rhodesia .... or India in 1850 ...

  The Blacks.

  Three of my glamorous Hostesses showed me their tiny revolvers. My own agent wears a pretty gold pendant round her neck which is a gas-bomb … and most of the houses I went to ‘visit with’ had iron grills round the gardens … and mesh wire round the pools. My own Driver carried a gun in the palm of his hand, and had a switch knife on his belt. And we did, one dawn morning on the Pasedena run, get ‘bumped’ and ‘nudged’ by a clapped out old Chevvy, lightless, no plates, jammed with sullen black faces … I was told to take no notice; the doors of the limo were locked and we put on speed until we got to the City Limits … but it was’nt fun.

  I would’nt live there for all the money in America. And Paris, the evening or morning, after I took off from International on Air France never looked so glorious, so free, so alive, so intense, so stimulating.

  Ah well … the best part, apart from G. was the Concord to N.Y. It was a glory of gracious living, elegance, and quiet good manners … rather as travelling was in the days of the Boats. No fur fabric here! Sables! Two hours out of Paris we began the descent to N.Y. And I was slightly overcome in the Loo to realise that I was having a steady piss 65.000 feet above the world and at twice the speed of sound. Eight thirty am in N.Y and the first flight in … so no hassle there, and a full days work with my Publishers and bed at a reasonable hour. A little weak about the knees … naturally .. but otherwise perfectly normal. The TWA haul across your immense continent next day was much duller and more tireing .. maybe because of the in-flight Movie which, though I never listen to the things, flickers away maddeningly like an early, and bad, magic lantern. But it’s all done now … home to getting the garden to rights after a month plus away … and off to London to award a prize at the Academy Awards Thing. God knows why .. but all expenses paid for three days and the Connaught rather calls me after a month of inedible food … all that cracked crab and those ghastly English Muffins! Not to mention Evian Water at 3.95 a bottle … which you have to drink in L.A because the chlorine, as you know, would melt a spoon!

  So … thanks for super letter .. apologies for this ill typed missil .. I’m off now to finish correcting proofs of ‘Occupation’ in French! It’s in seven translations … thank God I dont know Finnish or Israeli!

  As ever

  Dirk

  To Norah Smallwood Clermont

  15 March 1981

  Dearest Norah –

  N.R.N. means what it says.1 And you go quite dotty and spend £1.43 pence on ignoring the plea.

  So am I at this moment, for that matter. But that is my choice.

  [ … ] I had reason to return a fat bundle of Contract Papers to my ex-Agents (now re-signed with) in H’wood yesterday. Cost me over five pounds. The same packet of papers cost them three dollars to send me five days before. Can my signature, on limitless pages, have added to the weight I wonder? America is certainly cheaper … What I really mean is that just writing to each other now is in the same class as all luxurys. Should that be ‘luxuries’. Looks better.

  I dont really know why you are ‘facinated’ by my going back to the Set after four years. But your ‘facination’ has caused me to ponder on it a bit.

  Not really so extraordinary: it is, I think, the same with painters and musicians even … surely with writers? A long pause to refresh over-used parts of the mind, and then come back revived.

  I know that when I do I paint, better now than I did. Merely because I dont do it often. And I could’nt paint properly; ever. I was what you could call ‘effective’ only. Not enough.

  Acting is such a different thing to so many different types of people.

  I was aware, somewhere in my gut, that my work after thirty plus years, was becoming mannered and stale. So I chucked it in for four years and changed course, a little, by writing. There were times, I’ll confess, when I said to Forwood, just before we embarked on this last peculiar project .. ‘I wonder if I can still do it?’ and he only remarked that I’d have to have a shot at it to see, and that it was a fearful waste of years of work to give it all up in one fell swoop.

  And then I was off: and the to-do about leaving the house, the sudden alteration in my pattern of living, the speed, apart from Concorde! and utter difference to my life style here, was so intense that I had no time to think. I did’nt even bother to take the Script with me! I was so certain that there would be another, quite different one, waiting for me in N.Y. And, of course, there was!

  So, rather like a captive duck being hurled into a pond after years of the security of a hen-run in a farm yard … I merely swam.

  It’s so simple. Really. No great metamorphises take place I dont think. I know, before I start, after reading the script, who I am going to be and how. As you know already, I get the ‘frocks’ and shoes right first.

  Shoes I hunted down here in Cannes … before I left. A good pair of slim semi-brogue, black. With laces. ‘Good Women’ shoes my mo
ther used to call them with certain dislike. And then I rummaged about in old cupboards and found a pile of ‘cardies’, old sweaters gone at the elbow, Vyella Shirts with discreet checks in beige and brown, and a hacking jacket made for me by Huntsmans, patched and shabby, but still a quite marvellous cut, which was made for me for the first film I ever did in 1947! And it STILL works today. Oh! And old knitted ties …

  So there was Roald Dahl’s wardrobe at anyrate. And exactly what he wears today. And then. Of course I could’nt, and would’nt try to LOOK like him. I am not playing his clone. Merely re representing one amazingly brave thing in his life. So I had a bit of a tumble with a rather dotty hairdresser in L.A and we got a kind of ‘Donnish’ lock of hair to fall across eyebrow, and changed partings .. and there I was: a rather tweedy, baggy, thin, ageing, narrow shoed, school teacher. Or writer. Either will do. And did. And thus I was armoured. So the battle to ‘be’ commenced. And with the right script it is not so hard.

  Of course: that is all vastly simplified. But confidence has a lot to do with everything one does. And I have plenty of confidence about acting! God knows, after more than sixty major films, plus Theater, I should. And like a wine in a bottle in the cellar: one matures.

  The only thing is that the Year has to be right.

  And I know that my ‘year’ was a very good one indeed.

  There is no conciet in this: it is merely a statement of fact.

  The thing I simply adore is ‘being’ another person. Trying to use his mannerisms, finding what he’d do in a given crisis, how he’d move, walk, use his hands … if he would perhaps have a particular ‘tick’ in distress … tiny things which when added together give the audience the illusion that I am someone else. I dont always get this together fully. Sometimes I do.

  After a few days of shooting in the awfulness of the Hospital in Los Angeles where most of the work was filmed, the Surgeon, a very civilised, charming man, who had actually performed the operation on Patricia Neal and who had gone through all the things WE were all so busy re creating, and who had agreed to be Technical Adviser on the Set, came up to me one day very quietly and said: ‘It’s quite strange for me. I knew Dahl intimatly during those weeks here .. you dont look a little bit like him, you know that. But you ARE him. You behave exactly as he did then .. same calmness, angularity in his walk; he only ever showed his distress in his hands. As you do. Behind his back.’