[This is the nineteenth in an occasional series describing
British artistes who found fame on stage or in the movies]
This piece describes two actors who had long careers in
action films, comedies and dramas. Niven, with his military air, was the more
extrovert while Bogarde, by commercial necessity and personal choice a closet
gay, was much more diffident. Both had second careers as writers, surprising
and impressing their erstwhile fans and a new audience.
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| David Niven |
David Niven (1910 – 1983) was born into an affluent
landowning family. His Scottish nominal father was killed in action at Gallipoli
in 1915 when Niven was a child and his mother later married her friend Sir
Thomas Comyn-Pratt, reputedly the biological father of David. His
rebelliousness led to his expulsion from prep-school and barred him from Eton,
but he went to Stowe, whose headmaster was the notably liberal JF Roxburgh whom
Niven much admired. He went on to military school at Sandhurst eventually being
commissioned in 1930 into the Highland Light Infantry, the Scottish regiment he
had particularly wished to avoid. He hated his two years there and fled to America,
resigning his commission by telegram in 1933.
After visa problems diverting him to Mexico, he eventually
found work as a film extra in Hollywood, slowly improving his status to minor
roles then to leads. He became a member of the “Hollywood Raj”, the English
expatriate community in Hollywood, including C. Aubrey Smith, Rex Harrison,
Ronald Colman and Errol Flynn, with whom he shared a house. He made several
films including The Charge of the Light
Brigade (with Flynn) and as Edgar Linton in Wuthering Heights in 1939 with Laurence Olivier. On the outbreak of
war he became a lieutenant in The Rifle Brigade in 1940 and had a busy war
between Signals duties, action in France after Normandy and propaganda film
making. He left the army as a Lieutenant-Colonel.
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| Hunter and Niven in A Matter of Life and Death |
An early film success was the 1946 Powell and Pressburger
romantic classic A Matter of Life and
Death with Niven playing the lead as heroic Squadron Leader Peter Carter
opposite Kim Hunter. He made a number of films as the lead like 1950’s The Elusive Pimpernel with Niven as Sir
Percy Blakeney – the source of a contract dispute between Niven and Sam
Goldwyn, resulting in Niven being excluded from work for the Hollywood studios
until 1956.
Niven’s personal life had taken an unhappy turn when his
beloved English wife Primula Rollo, whom he married in 1940 and gave him 2 sons,
died aged only 28 in a 1946 house accident. He later married a Swedish model
Hjordis Genberg, who became promiscuous and alcoholic, creating turmoil in
their relationship, although Niven himself was a dedicated womaniser.
Niven shot to global stardom playing Phineas Fogg in the
1956 star-studded epic Around the World
in 80 Days which was a huge success. In 1958 Niven put the seal on his
career credentials by winning the Best Actor Oscar for his fine portrayal of
cashiered Major Pollock in Separate
Tables from Terence Rattigan’s play. He was only on-screen for 16 minutes!
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| Niven with Cantinflas in Around the World in 80 Days |
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| Deborah Kerr and David Niven in Separate Tables |
Niven was familiar in action movies like The Guns of Navarone (1961), playing the
insubordinate explosives expert opposite Gregory Peck and The Sea Wolves (1980) and as Sir Charles Lytton in the 1963
original Pink Panther, showing his
comic gifts.
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| Niven and Peck in The Guns of Navarone |
He started writing in 1971 when his first volume of bright
memoirs The Moon’s a Balloon sold 5m
copies. A second volume, Bring on the
Empty Horses, stiff with somewhat unreliable if amusing anecdotes, often
borrowed and heavily embroidered, also sold well. The second of two novels Go slowly, Come back quickly enjoyed
some success. Niven was an unusually talented person despite his raffish air
and he maintained, unlike many showbiz stars, a civility and politeness to all
sorts – London Airport porters especially appreciated this and sent an enormous
wreath to his funeral.
Niven was beset by the totally debilitating motor-neurone
disease in 1981 (wife Hjordis not much help) and he died in his Swiss chalet,
the Chateau d’Oex, in 1983, mourned by his many friends and fans.
----------------------
Dirk Bogarde
(1921-99) was born Derek van den Bogaerde, in Hampstead, London, the son of
Ulric Bogaerde, an Englishman of Flemish origin, who was art editor of The Times, and of Glaswegian actress
Margaret Niven (no relation to David!). He was educated at University College
School, Hampstead and for 3 years at Alan Glen’s, Glasgow. He wanted to study
acting and then went to Chelsea Arts College, making his stage debut in 1939.
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| Dirk Bogarde |
War broke out and Bogarde joined up, became an intelligence
officer with The Queen’s Regiment, ending the war as a captain. On
demobilisation he returned to acting and his good looks attracted the notice of
The Rank Organisation and he was signed up on a 14 year contract. At first he
played young tearaways, notably as the killer of PC Dixon (Jack Warner) in The Blue Lamp (1950). He made various
adventure films and in 1949 met actor Anthony Forwood, erstwhile husband of
actress Glynis Johns, and they became lovers living together devotedly for
almost the next 40 years.
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| Bogarde and Forwood |
This takes us to the central enigma of Bogarde’s life. He
was entirely homosexual yet was built up by his studio as a matinee idol. He
had to hide his orientation as in Britain male homosexual acts were illegal
until 1967. His Rank contract had “morality clauses” which could result in
dismissal for homosexuality, quite likely to be invoked by strict Methodist
Lord Rank. Unlike many others, Bogarde never “came out” when the climate became
more liberal and he publically denied his homosexuality all his life. Yet his
post-1960 film performances reflected his nature unambiguously.
In 1954 Bogarde became Britain’s box-office top star with
comedy Doctor in the House playing Dr
Sparrow, ably assisted by Kenneth More, Donald Sinden and James Robertson
Justice as irascible head-surgeon Sir Lancelot Pratt.
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| Doctors J.Robertson Justice, Kenneth More and Bogarde |
In 1955, the first sequel, Doctor at Sea featured gorgeous young Brigitte Bardot, rather lost
on Bogarde; there were 5 Doctor sequels. Bogarde starred in action films Simba about Mau Mau terrorism in Kenya
and in 1957 Ill met by Moonlight with
Bogarde as Paddy Leigh-Fermor, kidnapper of the German general commanding
Crete. He was also self-sacrificing Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities based on Dickens’ novel. He played 3 roles in
1959’s Libel about an amnesiac
officer opposite Olivia de Havilland.
Bogarde escaped from his Rank contract in the early 1960s.
He tried but failed to break into Hollywood. His lack of interest in women was
certainly a handicap, but anyway Song without
End where he played Franz Liszt failed, as did The Singer not the Song with Bogarde in outrageously tight leather
trousers as a campy Mexican bandit.
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| Bogarde in tight leather |
Bogarde’s remaining film career was a mixture of the offbeat
and the art-house, very much to Bogarde’s taste. He was a gay barrister
combatting blackmailers in Victim
(1961), a bold film for its time, and then decadent valet Hugo persecuting
James Fox in The Servant. He was good
as the bored banker in Darling (1965)
chasing free-wheeling Charlotte Rampling, very much a film of the 1960s. In
Visconti’s The Damned (1969) Bogarde
wallowed in Nazi depravity. In 1971 he won awards as Gustav von Achenbach in Death in Venice, obsessed by a pretty
Italian boy to the music of Mahler.
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| Bogarde in Death in Venice |
His final German-themed film was The Night Porter where Bogarde as Max, an ex SS officer, recreates
his sadomasochistic relationship with former prisoner Charlotte Rampling. One
critic complained the film was:
"as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to
titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering.”
Bogarde returned to his he-man persona in one of his
last films in 1977 A Bridge too far in
a cameo as “Boy” Browning in an epic
about the battle of Arnhem.
There was a strong element of fantasy and wish-fulfilment
about Bogarde’s celluloid world. From 1971 Bogarde turned to writing with 7
volumes of memoirs, 6 novels and much journalism, his first volume A Postillion struck by Lighting probably
his best. Written long after the event, Bogarde claimed to have been one of the
first British officers to have been present at the Liberation of Belsen, but
later research makes this highly doubtful. He was however generally a witty and
sensitive writer. He was knighted in 1992.
In 1988 his lover Anthony Hopwood was dying of liver cancer
and Bogarde campaigned for allowing voluntary euthanasia for the terminally
ill. They had lived together mainly in a villa in Grasse in the French Midi but
Hopwood died in London as did Bogarde himself after a stroke in 1999. It was a
pity that commercial, social and personal pressures made Bogarde effectively
live a lie: he may have been happier and helped others if he had “come out” in
the 1980s. However it is wrong to judge others on such intimate matters and
Bogarde had enjoyed a remarkably successful career.
SMD
24.01.15
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015
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