Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  Between September of 1977 and May of 1978 Reiner took his scissors and tore the film to shreds. When I arrived in Cannes for the Press Show the splendid cameraman, Michel (SP?) Balhaus [Michael Ballhaus], with a hint of tears in his eyes, said not to attend the screening. Reiner was locked in his room, impossible to talk to, and far worse he had destroyed the film. I went, with Andrea [Ferréol], it was after all our duty to do so, and the warning was correct. The film was a mess. Scenes were transposed, cut, elimin[a]ted, and all, or nearly all, of Andrea’s performance was ruined. The comedy, and there had been valuable comedy, had gone. So too had many other ‘set pieces’.

  I was pretty shattered. There was still a sort of movie .. but not the movie I had last seen in Paris in black and white.

  Reiner was, finally, persuaded to attend the Press Conference and behaved impossibly .. replying to questions rudely, arrogantly, stupidly. We could not save the film or him. He was dressed in leather pants, bikers-boots, a battered black felt hat with a hole in it, a sagging, filthy, black tee-shirt full of tears and rents. It was a tragic, stubborn, farewell. I never saw him after that. I was not angry: just wretched. So much had gone, so much had been ruined.

  So much for pills and potions and ‘the wrong kind of friends’. He had plenty of those. But he was, I assure you, one of the, if not THE, most exciting young director I had ever met or worked with. He knew more about movement and the camera, about light and about sound than even Visconti … and he knew it all!

  He was humble (with me) exciting to work for, breathlessly inventive.

  Thinking that the first scene in the movie would be played between Andrea and I in the sitting room of our flat … comfortably dressed with our glasses of ‘goggle moggle’ was a grave mistake. We did it, as it now stands, all over the apartment and mostly lying flat on the floor while Andrea was stripped!

  Not at all my idea .. or that of Mr Stoppard!

  Stoppard was brought onto the film, according to Reiner (and he may have been fibbing) simply because he, Reiner, wanted a ‘real English adaptation of [Nabokov].’ He had seen Stoppards work, knew his use of English was eccentric but excellent and he wanted, above all things, for his first big International Movie to work with a real adaptation. Not a hack job by some secretary who might ‘know English pretty well.’ He wanted a clear, understandable, script in correct English.

  Translations of European films are often done by English-Speaking-American voice-coaches .. so there is always a problem! Reiner knew what he wanted to do with the Nabakov story: he did not want it written for him particularly.

  However Stoppard was summonsed, I gather they got on pretty well, and finally a very interesting, but confused and dense, script was produced.

  At this point Stoppard was not really very aware that the cinema is visual as an Art Form! So he tended to over-write and, for Reiner, over-embellish.

  The ‘puns’ for which he is so famous meant absolutely zilch to Fassbinder. I had to explain them in detail to him. No easy matter. He would consider in silence, sucking on his moustache, and then say ‘It’s schoolboy stuff, right?’ and throw it out. This was a constant problem, and it irritated him all the time. If anything in the script became too complicated he’d say ‘Another Stoppard “pun”. God! The English!’

  It was difficult to save poor Tom Stoppard from destruction.

  Reiner’s impatience was a dangerous sign: his boredome threshold was very, very short. When I first saw the final cut in Paris, and we did the dubbing, I called Tom and told him that I considered he’d get a bit of a shock when he saw his work but that he’d be very proud finally. He was not at all proud.

  In an angry letter to me, he complimented ME on my work but said that the film was ‘a disaster, a lemon, a ruin ..’

  And so it was from where he sat.

  I have described the day at my house in Provence when we all met to iron out the ‘bumps’ in the script. Tom re-wrote pages, threw new ideas around, and whole new scenes. Reiner, as I have indicated in ‘An Orderly Man’, lay prone in the cool of my drawing-room reading motor-magazines. He did not attend at all. He KNEW what he wanted to make, and how, and that was enough. He was just waiting for us all to finish struggling and get on with the beer.

  I did not want to hurt Stoppard: he was a very good friend during all the problems, and I respected him greatly as a theater-writer.

  After the showing of the film he saw in London he never contacted me again.1 Reiner stayed away from the Crew Party on the last night of shooting in a small hotel near Luneberg, on the then-Wall. I knew he would not be able to face the farewell … emotionally he was very soft once you had got to his gut, and he was amazed, and delighted, by Andrea and myself because we were both professional actors of much experience and he had never worked with others than his ‘gang’ who were keen, but amateur. Except for the marvellous Bernard Wickie2 … He [Fassbinder] shoved a letter under my bedroom door while I was down in the hotel bar hosting the party in his place. The letter, for reasons of copyright, I had to use in ‘Orderly Man’ as if it was a dialogue scene between us. Not so. His dialogue is his letter .. and this letter is with all my other stuff in Boston University under the care of the good Dr Gottlieb.

  Reiner had killed himself, by this time; I did’nt know how to contact his mother, and used his letter as best I could. But that is what he wrote.

  Had he lived, even though he deliberatly or in madness (and that was possible on some of the stuff he took) ruined ‘DESPAIR’, I know that I would walk to wherever he was, to work with him again. So, I know, would Andrea Ferriol .. whose wonderful performance he had so cruelly mutilated. We simply knew ‘genius’ when it was around. And you dont get to work with them so often.

  He and I worked together brilliantly. I knew, just from a look, what he wanted, we hardly ever spoke .. just did the job. I sometimes got behind the bad-times with the pills and the ‘gang’ .. and I know that I had his respect and, for what it is worth, his total confidence and love. Andrea and I held him together at times, when the pressure from his friends got too heavy.

  Certainly use the letters. Apologies for the errors and all the (sic) bits!3 I type so badly .. and spell dreadfully. Having witnessed the ruin of what had been, in my opinion, my very best performance, I left the screen for 13 years.

  Tavernier brought me back. I could’nt be more delighted! I did NOT want my 50 year old career to end on ‘DESPAIR’!

  Very Sincerely

  Dirk Bogarde

  To Eileen Atkins Cadogan Gardens

  3 May 1991

  Darling G4 –

  Fear ye not! I am not starting a correspondance course, done that thanks, but I got your splendid letter this am, and having written a mass of tosh (well: not really. Quite good really, about Fassbinder for some professor at Duquesne University who is doing a vast book on the fellow and wants to use some letters I wrote to him during the filming. Him being Fassbinder. Got it?) well … anyway. Having done that I thought I’d write back to you (no answer required, I’ll see you shortly I hope ..) to say that I was very touched that you had plodded off to the old Paris1 to see my movie. We open here at the Curzon in a weeks time. I dread the UK press. They are so bloody to me, I suppose because I pissed off for 22 years and worked abroad? I cant THINK why they call me ‘bitter’. Christ!

  I know what you mean about Odette [Laure] in the fillum. She is, as it happens, younger than me, and has almost never been in a film. She is strictly Theater.

  I adored her. We had no common tongue, I mean, I could speak Frog to her and she could just about say, ‘I tink I okay big boy, You tink?’. And we fell apart laughing, because her English was learned during the Liberation!

  But Tavernier cast her before me .. so I had to match up. See? Anyway I loved her for her total committment to the project and no fart-arsing about.

  She had a little bower of a dressing room in the ruined villa in which we ‘shot’, and Jane and I shared a room next to the lav. Only one .. with a gr
een plastic curtain. Opening into our room. So. When anyone went to have a piddle, (for something more we left, naturally) but with a piddle we all sang and hummed and it was perfectly alright until the thing got blocked and we were stuck with a smell that only the Kurds can appreciate. But that is how we made the movie. I LOVE it that way. The Hollywood way doesnt work for me I fear. But no matter, it wont have to.

  I imagine how hellish it must be for you with no air-conditioner, but think of the hugeness of your success!2 [ … ] It really is so splendid. I hug myself; for you.

  Here, when you get home, it’s much the same as it always was only a bit more gloomy than when you left. The recession is grim: but the Rich are still with us, and so that must be alright. I suppose.

  I found, the other day, an aged copy of The Sun! Stuck in a drawer behind a lot of screws and nails and electric light bulbs. Dated May ’65 .. and with a huge spread about a party I gave for Sybil (Burton) Christopher the night before she sailed for N.Y and left U.K for ever. The cast list was amazing! I took over a new club called the Ab Lib3 … and closed it .. because of the noise we all made until six am and breakfast. It was for Syb’s chums to say farewell. I had stipulated to her, on the telephone, a supper party at the Connaught for twelve or so.1 She thought I meant something QUITE different and invited ALL her chums who were around, which came to 300. NOT INCLUDING all members of the London Ballet .. or whatever it was called2 in those days.

  But the point of all this is simply to say that one of the ‘rocketting stars’ who were present was Miss Jean Marsh!3 And I never knew or remembered!

  I feel so guilty .. golly. But it was a considerable time ago. […]

  Tonight I am off to rehearsal for ‘Saki’, to ‘do’ the music cues! We open in Bath next Sunday: George Fearon is doing music … not my idea but old Piggot Smith who is producing the show for his Compass Company … he’s as nervous as a child bride, and taking everything MUCH MUCH too seriously.

  I have suggested tunes that Mr Fearon might use. Edwardian stuff, like Floradora, The Belle of New York, The Arcadians .. so on. I am so old I know them. No one else did! So one begins to know about being 70. I dont, for a moment, consider you to be among the aged!! No, not that. It’s just that you are a clever lady and you might perhaps KNOW those things. I felt such a loon whistling stuff to an amazed, bewildered, group. Never mind.

  Yah. Helena sort of managed Press-wise here.4 Not over generous. They were kind to Mel G. not so kind to Close … but they do seem to think that the British own bloody Shakespeare and that no one can do him except them.

  I’ve seen so much BAD acting since I got back to the UK that I now keep out of the way. I cant wrestle with my conscience watching Judy Dench or Prunella Scales at it. Oh dear! Your best mates. Sorry .. but really … it is all very Cottage Industry Stuff to me. Like the Stonehenge Woollen Industry, which you ARE too young to know about. It is marvellous that you have gone ‘away’ to work … as I did. To broaden the horizons … actors must, I feel. As indeed so must writers. We are so much richer for that trip. Even if we do, as I know you do, rather ache for the river,5 Bill, the cats and trolling about in the garden now that May (bloody so far) is here. But still: we got away.

  Had lunch yesterday, at her house, with Dilys Powell. 89, my dear, deaf as a post but still writing and as bright as a button. Or a very sharp knife. I do so envy people who really adore their work. It’s so stimulating. I had been sent for to talk about screen-acting to one of her protéges … a pleasant, dull, fellow who is a Top Producer for Welsh TV. Which should have put me off. What can you say to a Welsh TV Producer? Nothing he’ll understand, thats for sure. I talked myself into a writhen log. The food was inedible anyway .. so I talked on. God knows about what. You simply cant define acting! It happens or it does’nt. Piggot Smith says that I am a ‘behaviourist’ (Whatever that means. Do you know?) but I do know that he’s a Real Actor. And that it shows!

  Chinese family, very noisy, have moved into the flat below. Shouts and cries and high chitter-chatter from the women. They are from Singapore. I DO wish they would go back there. At the moment they are having a terrible row in their bed-room, under mine, and she is screeching. She’s covered in Cartier and Chanel. Oh Lor … I had better stop this and go to the photo-copy shop and do my things for the Professor in Pittsburg. I am now so aged that I am about the only living relic who remembers Losey, Cukor, Visconti and, now, Fassbinder.

  I wish they paid me.

  My balcony ablaze with wallflowers, violas in profusion, the rose in fat bud, the hostas brilliant, a brave fuschia has opened a nervous flower .. it is a mass of bees, and you’d imagine you were in the Cotswolds.

  Except with the Chinese below and Peter Jones opposite you know bloody well you aint.

  Come home soon … enjoy what is left of N.Y, and remember that you are greatly missed but enormously loved …

  Did I say anything pleasant about Miss Collins last time? In the Cowards?1 Forget it. Erase. She’s terrible. I have now watched three … all dire .. except one burst of excellence from your chum Miss Phillips in ‘Astonished Heart’ but the rest, tragically, is crap. How you can turn Coward into dust and ashes and ‘Dynasty’ is amazing. It all depends, darling, on your Director!

  With endless love

  Dirk XXXOXX

  Forgive errors. I think faster than I can type. – OR the other way round –

  To Olga Horstig-Primuz Cadogan Gardens

  22 May 1991

  Olga darling –

  Well: first of all forgive me for being so late in my reply to your sweet note .. a feeling of sadness and irritation there I could feel! As I wrote in my card, Rosay2 was not the only one to discover the bore of getting elderly … it is wretched, and even if you think I am a little bit like a petit poussain compared to you, you are wrong! I am forced to realise that the things I used to take for granted are now only ‘loaned’ to me for my life-time, and that they wear out eventually. Teeth for one, eyes for another, legs, ma belle, for another! It is never ending … but one goes on, because one must and, anyway, there are compensations. I am told!

  The film has opened in London to very good reviews .. some marvellous .. all good but one or two rather idiotic. The main Critics were all in Cannes, so we had to put up with the second-stringers. Most of them report football matches as far as I can see. I am still considered to be ‘light weight’ and the ‘pretty young Doctor’. I shall NEVER live those early films down. Seems so silly .. but the younger critics still blame me. They also think that Tavernier is ‘arty’, and quite miss the point of his work. We are so seperate, France and England, in our likes and dislikes. It amazes me that a mere twenty two miles can make so great a difference. But, alas, it does. The English live on an island. [A]nd it shows badly: they are so insular! God! Anything you say in criticism is screamed at by the Press. I have had a terrible time since I got back here with the cheap papers. But I managed, at a big Award ceremony which was televised, to say my piece uninterrupted!

  I told them that they were out of touch with reality when they said that I lived in a basement, alone, a recluse, broke and drinking two bottles of whisky a day! It was apparent that I was not … there were 500 people present, and when I said that I was NOT a recluse, that I had not retired, but that I was bloody selective! they 500 rose to their feet and gave me a standing ovation! I was very pleased. But you can imagine the cheap Press the next day. I got rubbished well and truly. But I dont think that it mattered because more people had seen me on the TV than buy the cheap papers! So .. I have managed to fight them and so far, touch wood, I have won. But they wait for any mistake or failure. God! I hate them.

  [ … ] The show that I do on ‘SAKI’ has been a great success […] it is very nice to hear applause again! The whole company, six of them plus the pianist/Composer, come this evening for sandwiches and Frascati .. we are to discuss last week, and I feel certain that they will try to persuade me to take the show on for a long run. I shall remain firm. They can re
place me if they like .. but the idea of working every night in the summer in a theatre appalls me! So...

  I imagine that you know that Capucine1 had a very long, and discreet affair with a cousin of the Queens. Nicholas Phillips? He was found dead in his car a few months ago .. suicide of course, but thankfully the Coroner refused to pass that verdict and simply said that there was no proof that he had intended to take his life. The cheap papers re-printed the Capucine business and said that she had ‘originally been a man’! I ask you .... You will realise how low we have got in this country. Thankfully people simply no longer believe what is in the cheap press now.

  […] I think that you perhaps knew that I did the narration, as John Galsworthy, for the BBC doing the ‘Forsyte Chronicles’. All the nine volumes! It took 25 weeks, of an hour a time, on Saturdays. I did the entire narration, alone, in a small studio in 3 days! Not bad! I did 850 tapes and only had to do two retakes .. and not my fault, simply the pieces were too long. It has been a huge success. Now they are selling the cassett of 9 of them. A little money for me. ‘Voices In The Garden’ is now on cassett .. read extremely well by a very good man called Andrew Sachs. It runs eleven hours. Very good for blind people or people who cant hold a book. Lots of those about!

  The summer has come at last .. and a London summer can be lovely. My little terrace here is full of flowers and looks very good indeed. It is hard work, because I have to cart everything, like rubbish and old earth, down to the big garden four floors below. I look such an idiot carrying buckets along Sloan Street full of earth to dump in the garden! But what else to do with the stuff I wonder? Anyway, sitting out with my drink in the evening sun, surrounded by geraniums and nicotiana and my fuchias almost reminds me of Clermont.

  Tony died three years ago last Saturday. How the time goes!

  […] Now: enough .. I will take this to the post and buy the evening paper and have a rest until the Gang arrive for food and drink. I’m not lonely!