Dimensions | 18 × 26 × 6 cm |
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In the original dustsheet. Black cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.
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‘Biographies only tend to be definitive until the next one comes along, but there’s no danger of Coldstream’s erudite, moving analysis ever being superseded’ INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY.
As an actor Dirk Bogarde was a Rank contract artist and matinée idol who became a giant of the intellectual cinema, working on films such as Death in Venice, The Servant and Providence. Fiercely protective of his privacy, and that of his partner of 40 years, he left England in the 1960s to live abroad, where he carved a second career for himself as a bestselling author. Although Bogarde destroyed many of his papers, John Coldstream has had unique access to his personal archives and to friends and family who knew him well. The result is a fascinating biography of a complex and intriguing personality.
Review: One immediately has reservations when it comes to `authorised’ biographies: how much we are told is true and how much has been left out? But with John Coldstream’s biography of Dirk Bogarde, I think we are on safe ground, if only because the general demeanour of the narrative is not by any means uncritical of its subject. In his introduction, Coldstream recognises that “Dirk was a writer whose entire oeuvre became a fiction, thanks in large part to his hyperactive imagination and his fantasies”, that Bogarde sought to cover his tracks through chaff, camouflage, and a scorched-earth policy.
The prologue opens with Bogarde’s quiet, painless, and sudden death in his flat in Cadogan Gardens and how his nurse of two years sensed Bogarde urge her not to try and resuscitate him. It is quite an odd and moving passage. What follows is then a chronological account of Bogarde’s careers as actor and writer, for he is as detailed about Bogarde’s later writing career as about his acting, although alas on both there are no detailed critiques provided. We learn how in his late teens Bogarde was taught art by a then little-known Graham Sutherland, and how he chatted about acting to a completely unknown Peter Ustinov. Tony Forwood does not appear until the start of chapter four, and even then, only offering to manage Bogarde. Forwood then disappears as Bogarde goes off to war
Coldstream’s account, however, is in two parts, ‘Derek’ and then ‘Dirk’, denoting a decisive break around 1946 in Bogarde’s outlook and persona. This was when he was demobilised at the ripe age of twenty-five. Coldstream notes how Bogarde wrote on a book’s endpapers Derk, Dirk, Derek’ as if deciding what name would look better up in lights. It’s at this point too that Forwood re-appears and never leaves.
As regards Bogarde’s relationship with Tony Forwood, “In later years, at home and only in front of the most deeply trusted, Dirk would sometimes address Tony as `wifey’. It meant little: he had nicknames for everyone. It simply testified to the affection between them.” Is Coldstream playing Dirk’s game on his behalf here? It seems, if we are to believe Coldstream’s ambiguous account, that there never was a physical side to Bogarde’s and Forwood’s relationship. Even Gore Vidal called their relationship `un mariage blanc’
Throughout the biography, Coldstream concisely addresses most of Bogarde’s films, although one would perhaps have wished for a more detailed analysis of some. But there is much insight on the major turning points in Bogarde’s career. In the film’Victim’, Bogarde himself reworked the controversial script, inserting the words “I stopped seeing him [Boy Barrett] because I wanted him.” Coldstream pinpoints this as “the moment when the matinee idol donned a new cloak of seriousness; when `Peter Pan’ grew up; when `Dorian Gray’ allowed us with him to take a peep into the attic.”
The book comes with endnotes and acknowledgements to all those who agreed to contribute. Useful appendices include details of his plays, films, TV appearances, his choice of `Desert Island Disc’ records, and also quotations from others about Bogarde. A large number of well-chosen photographic plates adorn the book throughout.
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