Dirk Bogarde

Dirk Bogarde0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Dirk Bogarde0:05

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:32

How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? On our desert island this week is one of Britain's most popular film actors, Dirk Bogart.

Presenter0:39

Dirk, do you think you would endure the isolation of being on a desert island? Quite frankly, no, I couldn't. I think I'd go absolutely stark staring barges. I should loathe it. Apart from the loneliness, is there anything you would find particularly frightening?

Presenter0:53

Well, the whole thing would frighten me, frankly. Loneliness is the most important thing, but silence, I think, would be the next thing would frighten me to death. After having worked, as I do and have done for now so many years, with so many people in my profession, acting and in the cinema, particularly, which is a sort of factory atmosphere, you know, and you meet so many people in a day. I'd miss it frankly, and the pressure and the... I really couldn't bear it right. It's no two ways of it.

Dirk Bogarde1:14

Yeah.

Presenter1:16

Do you have a religious philosophy that would help? No, I'm afraid I haven't really. I'm a bit of an atheist, I suppose. I think I'd run out of prayers awfully quickly.

Presenter1:23

Is music an important thing in your life?

Dirk Bogarde1:24

Yes, I'm

Presenter1:25

Oh.

Presenter1:26

Did you have any plan in selecting your eight records?

Presenter1:30

No, I had no plan, except you didn't let me have enough. I suppose it's rather a mean island. But I picked these basically, I suppose that was a sort of plan, because in the end there were bits of music or the voices that would remind me of times that I'd had and enjoyed and would set up chain reactions in my mind of pleasanter times and also would bring back...

Presenter1:48

Not in nostalgia, but the voices are friends. What's the first value we have there? The first one is piano, which I love very much, and it's called The Constellation of D-Flat by Liszt.

Presenter1:58

Why do you choose it?

Presenter1:59

Basically because it is the constellation which I should need on an island. It's good for sunsets.

Presenter2:04

And also it's a piece of music that I once had to play myself in the film.

Presenter3:06

Lists Consolation and D Flat, played by George Bonnet.

Presenter3:11

Derek, where were you born?

Presenter3:12

I was born in Hampstead. Your name is Dutch, I believe. Yes, my proper name, Vandenbuchart, is Dutch. It's Dutch derivation.

Presenter3:19

Was there any precedent in your family for the theatre?

Presenter3:22

Well, my mama was an actress and her father was an actor. So I, you know, I had the virus. Yes, this was your first ambition.

Presenter3:30

From the very moment I started to breathe and they slapped my bottom, I think I cried and started to act.

Presenter3:35

Is this what you did when you immediately left school?

Presenter3:38

No, immediately leaving school, that's a very long story, we haven't got time for all that, but I was eventually sent off because I was dreadfully bad at school and I was sent off to the Chelsea Polytechnic in Manorisa Road to study stage decor and painting under Graham Sullivan and Henry Moore and some rather splendid teachers of that kind. I was really no good at school and I wouldn't go into the diplomatic corps and I wouldn't follow my father into the Times, which he was the art editor. So the only thing was to put me into an art school, which I knew was going to be a shortcut to the Paythusium and it worked out.

Dirk Bogarde4:04

I knew it was gonna

Presenter4:06

Yes. What was your first job in the theatre?

Presenter4:09

Uh what you really want to know do you? Well my first job in the theatre was cleaning up the gentleman's lavatory in the Kew Theatre.

Dirk Bogarde4:11

Who am I?

Presenter4:16

Was it there that you first trod the boards? No, not there. It was the first time I professionally got paid for treading the boards. I'd been in various amateur dramatic societies before and repertories that I did sort of little bits in. But it was the first time I got paid seven and six a week.

Presenter4:32

Jack Leon's Q Theatre, probably the best theatre workshop London's ever had. Goodness. It's one of the most awful tragedies of our day today. And I may say no foggy about this, but that theatre's gone. It was when you remember, as you well do.

Presenter4:45

The hundreds of us that started or went through those portals.

Presenter4:50

What was your first West End appearance? My first West End appearance was in 1940, the beginning of 1940, in a play by J.B. Priestley called Cornelius, which was at the Westminster.

Dirk Bogarde4:53

Uh

Speaker 44:53

Yeah.

Presenter4:59

And I was

Presenter5:01

eighteen and terribly conceited and very funny'cause I got very good notices and it went to my head.

Presenter5:06

And I learnt my first lesson, salutary lesson in the theatre, in a scene with Max Adrian, who was playing in the scene with me. I was really mugging it up most frightfully.

Presenter5:15

And Max picked up a huge ledger. It was an office scene. And without me knowing it, hit me smartly on the head and said, never, never do that in the theatre again. And I never have. Then he went into review. Then I went into a review called Aversion.

Presenter5:28

All the theatres are closed down except the windmill, and every remembers that we were still on in diversion at Wyndham's with Edith Evans and Peter Eustonov and a really splendid car.

Presenter5:38

And then, of course, the war caught me, which it had to an end, and Peter Usnavai joined up together on the same day and marched off towards the.

Dirk Bogarde5:42

Yo.

Presenter5:44

Six years in the Army. Did you get involved in any services entertainment? Well, I was so jolly bad when I got into the Army.

Dirk Bogarde5:49

When I got into this

Presenter5:51

Nothing on earth to do with me. I sent to signals, which is the worst place for me.

Dirk Bogarde5:51

You know that.

Presenter5:55

And so they said, what can you do, Rather Desperate? And I said, well, I'm quite good at doing plays. So for a year, I directed the Garrison plays at Catrick.

Speaker 45:59

Yeah.

Presenter6:02

Which was really splendid for me and quite nice for some of the folks up there, but they couldn't go on forever there to make me work properly in the end.

Dirk Bogarde6:07

Rev it.

Presenter6:09

Yeah.

Presenter6:10

You were a a a semi-official war artist too. Yes, I was. That was after the D-Day landing.

Dirk Bogarde6:13

Yes, I want.

Presenter6:16

I became a semi-fetal warrant for the Air Ministry and painted, I suppose, what a great many, right from the landing up to Lüneburg.

Presenter6:24

When you came back to London after six years,

Presenter6:26

How long did it take you to find your feet again? Well, I came back, intending never to go back to the theatre again, because I'd enjoyed being a soldier so much.

Presenter6:33

I did try and stick it out for a year after the war, but it was really impossible.

Presenter6:37

My pips weighed rather heavily on my shoulder and all the little pip squeaks came up that hadn't been in the war, you know it was all impossible, so one gave it up and I was going to be a teacher, if you can believe it, at a prep school at Windlesham.

Presenter6:48

teaching little beasts how to play cricket and paint. But fortunately, I got a small part in a play in London and didn't go to the Willie League Plus or just as well I didn't know. Which play was this? It was a play for children and it ran half an hour and I played Jesus Christ and I can't remember what it was called. I was called A Man in the Street.

Presenter7:06

And then?

Presenter7:07

And then from that I got a television.

Presenter7:10

I played a rope, which is called. And then from that, I went up to an audition and got a very super play with a new young actor who was already just being demobbed called Kenneth Moore.

Presenter7:19

And the play was Michael Clayton Hutton's Power Dark Glory, which made Kenny and I.

Presenter7:23

You know, as they call it, stars overnight. Yes, this play was to have considerable consequence for you, wasn't it? Yes, it changed the whole course of my existence and life.

Presenter7:32

In a film contract.

Presenter7:34

Well, that was something that I didn't expect at all. The film contract came and I was a bit snooty about films because actors, you know, stage actors are and we did it for the money. We did it. I'm passionate about it now.

Presenter7:44

I got a film contract with the Rancor conversion, but it did allow me to go back to the theatre every alternate year for six months.

Presenter7:51

Well, we'll talk about your film career in a minute. Let's have another record. What's your second? Well, the second record, I would have to have something to do with France on my island because I'm a wild francophone. And Yvonne Panton, I think sort of in this particular little song, C'est la Saison d'Armour, sums up for me the essence A of France and B certain of Paris.

Speaker 48:29

Je pours a diary, condos liber, billen memorie.

Presenter8:42

Yvonne Prenton in a song from Trois.

Presenter8:46

So a contract with the rank organization. Now the rank film empire was at its peak then, wasn't it? At its giddy peak, yes. What was your first film part? My first film part was a film that I've really tried to forget and most people have forgotten, I think. It wasn't a very fortunate thing and I was very bad in it. It was called Esther Waters. It took a long time to make.

Presenter9:04

And I was billed all over Brighton as Burke Gokraft.

Presenter9:08

How long were you under contract for? I've under contract 15 years. How many films did that involve?

Dirk Bogarde9:12

Yeah.

Presenter9:14

Oh, a lot. I should think about... I've made 41 now, and I think about half of that was in that period with Rankin. Of varying quality. Of very, very quality. Let's talk about good ones. Which do you remember? Hunted, I particularly remember, which was directed by Charles Crowton.

Dirk Bogarde9:23

Let's talk about

Speaker 49:26

Hunting.

Presenter9:30

which was a marvelous film and a little before its time, and The Blue Lamp, which was an eating rank picture directed by Basil Durden.

Presenter9:37

And a film I particularly liked, which was not a rank film, but was a film called Appointment in London. Those are the three great favourite ones. And then, of course, Doctor in the House, which was the, you know, the turning point again.

Dirk Bogarde9:45

The technique right again.

Presenter9:47

Did you have any right of veto? Could you refuse a part if you wanted to? Well, they were jolly good to me because they never made me do anything I didn't want to do particularly, but I had to choose one of three or four scripts that they submitted, which was only fair. Have you ever made any really bad mistakes like that? You only had to say mistakes like that. The one came to my mind.

Dirk Bogarde10:00

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter10:06

A wonderful script was sent to me by a great friend of mine who'd written the part especially for me called Alan J. Lerner, who wrote My Fair Lady. And I went to America to discuss it with him. I read it and I was terrified of it because it meant singing and dancing. And I said no, and I turned it down. And it was called Gigi, oh dear. And I did A Tale of Two Cities instead.

Presenter10:26

Well your rank contract eventually came to an end. Since then you've been freelancing. I've been shopping. You've made several films abroad. You went to Hollywood for work. I went to Hollywood indeed. That was a very strange experience. This was the life story of Liszt. This was a film called Song Without End, which indeed it almost was a film without end. It went on and on and on and our director died after three weeks and it was a written disastrous picture.

Presenter10:47

And the worst part of it all was that I had to play the piano, which I didn't know I had to do until I got to Hollywood.

Dirk Bogarde10:51

Olive

Presenter10:52

Do we all play the piano? Not at all, no. Never have ever touched a piano. I've seen it in bars and I've seen it across rooms and in drawings, but I've never touched one.

Dirk Bogarde10:52

And not

Dirk Bogarde10:56

Rooms in the drawings but

Presenter10:59

And I had 85 minutes of piano music to play, and the most complicated, because Liszt was not at all simple.

Presenter11:06

And the piece I want to play in a moment for you, which I've chosen, is the hardest because it was a very exciting piece to play. It was the first time I played with an orchestra. I played on Liszt's own piano or one of his own pianos.

Presenter11:17

And I played so hard and with eight months press

Presenter11:20

Learning how to play. I actually did play the pieces in the end, but not what you hear. This is played by George Bollette. I minded. Do you understand that?

Presenter11:28

And my fingers literally split at the sides and bled. So it was a rather tricky and difficult piece to play because it's very fast, very complicated indeed. And not only was I terrified, but my fingers were covered in blood at the end, and so indeed was the keyboard. Watch the piece.

Presenter11:42

The piece is the concerto in E-Flat by List and part also on this recording of the Hungarian Fantasy.

Presenter12:46

George Bollitt playing the concerto number one in E-plat and part of the Hungarian fantasy from the soundtrack of Song Without End.

Presenter12:54

The last few films you've made, Dirk, The Victim, The Servant, The Mind Benders, have been much more serious in you. That's the plan.

Dirk Bogarde13:01

Yeah. Absolutely.

Presenter13:02

Did you help set these films up yourself? No, not at all. A servant indeed I did with Joe Lacey and a recent picture, which is coming out in a few weeks, which Lacey and I did again together with Tom Courtney, who won the Prize at Venice for us, we're very proud of. It was a film called King and Country, which is about the First World War, which we made in 18 days for £80,000. So we're jolly smug about that so fine.

Dirk Bogarde13:23

So far.

Presenter13:25

Yes. And in the middle of these rather serious films, you took time off to make another doctor. Oh, yes. The doctors are enormous fun to make. But, you know, you can't go on sort of eating black bread all the time. You must have a little drum here and there.

Dirk Bogarde13:30

Oh yes.

Presenter13:36

Some as the audience, yes. You haven't spent all your time in in the film studios. You have done occasional stage plays. Oh yes, I've gone back to the theatre a number of times.

Presenter13:46

particularly with point of departure or the genre.

Dirk Bogarde13:48

Yeah.

Presenter13:50

And a very bad play of Hugo Betty's called Summertime, which we quite enjoyed, but nobody else did. And I got jaunted in the middle, so that didn't help. But generally speaking, I'm afraid that the awful truth of it is that I have lost my nerve for the theatre. I suffer very badly from claustrophobia, and it's a stupid thing, and no time to bore you with it. But the moment a curtain goes up on the stage, I'm just waiting to be sick, physically sick, you know, and it's the only thing I can remember. So I've decided to pack that in. It's a great show because, as you know, this is my first love, I was born into it, and I've cut myself off from it.

Presenter14:22

What's your next film? What are you working on next? I'm working at the present on a terribly marvellous film, I think, and another change for me, another different sort of part, with Judy Christie.

Dirk Bogarde14:24

Uh

Presenter14:30

And Lawrence Harvey.

Presenter14:32

directed by John Schlesinger who did Billy Liar and it's called Darling.

Presenter14:36

Have you any one great professional ambition that you haven't yet enjoyed? No, none at all. I'm always asked, I don't play Hamlet or Romey or anything. All I want to do is to go on acting in the cinema until I'm too old to act.

Dirk Bogarde14:39

Note number

Presenter14:47

Let's have record number four now. Well, record number four is an almost unknown record of Julie Garlands, who I'd have to have on my island with me anyway, because of the warmth and the fun of her voice. This is a funny little number. I've tried to make her sing it a hundred times in her concert. She won't. It's on an LP called The Letter, which is hardly known, and it's called The Worst Kind of Man.

Speaker 215:13

The worst kind of man

Speaker 215:17

Some girls will tell you is the kind that drinks too much at parties, does boring imitations, wears a lampshade for a hat, and when he gets tired of that, he tells dirty stories, then passes out in the m-

Presenter15:37

Judy Garland is the worst kind of man. I love that bit about the morning glories. It's my favourite piece in the record.

Speaker 415:41

Every piece of the battle record.

Presenter15:45

Number five now. Number five is a very different lady. I make no excuses for this. It's very hackneyed. I adore it. It's Vilia and it's sung by Schwarzkopfom I adore.

Presenter15:55

Vilia particularly because the Merry Widow was brought out to Europe during the war by Cyril Richard and Manj Elliott for ENSA. And practically everywhere I went in that campaign, somewhere in the front, somewhere in the back, somewhere in the orchards, the Merry Widow was playing and one saw it night after night and after Arnhem and places like that.

Presenter16:14

The Merry Widow is very important to us.

Presenter16:16

I love Schwarzkopf, as I said, I love the Meriwood Aircraft here, a sort of perfect marriage of the two.

Speaker 416:32

Sweet to the swift and throw the sun.

Speaker 416:50

Come to me, believe me.

Presenter17:18

Elizabeth Schwartzkop. Dirk, how would you manage on this island practically? Could you look after yourself?

Presenter17:23

Well, it depends what you give me. If there's water. Is there water? There's water and vegetation and a reasonable climate. And I can grow things.

Dirk Bogarde17:27

Yeah.

Presenter17:30

Yes, a temperate climate. Oh, I'd be fine. You could live off the land. Oh, yes, I'm very good at gardening.

Dirk Bogarde17:30

So Tim

Dirk Bogarde17:32

Hallelujah.

Presenter17:34

Fishing? Yes, excellent. I don't like killing them, but I'm very good at it if I had to. Could you build some kind of craft eventually?

Presenter17:40

Yes, I should. I should cut things out. You mean could I would I be capable of building? Yes. Oh yes, I can nail things together.

Dirk Bogarde17:41

How do you mean?

Dirk Bogarde17:42

Yes. Oh yes.

Presenter17:45

You wouldn't have any nails. Well, then I'd lash things. Yeah, when you try to escape.

Speaker 417:46

Well then I

Dirk Bogarde17:47

Uh

Speaker 417:47

Thank you very much.

Presenter17:49

Yes, every four minutes.

Presenter17:50

Good luck. Let's have a record. Well, now this would be a four piece of music, which I again like very much indeed, otherwise I'm playing it.

Speaker 417:57

Yeah.

Presenter17:59

My father had a huge collection of records when I was a child. I was brought up with this particularly, not because of the war associations, but all my life I've always loved Beethoven's Life, and so I'd like just to have this part of it anyway, if nothing else.

Presenter19:12

The opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Bruno Walter conducting the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter19:17

Now you've got two left. This rather mean little pile. They've only got two. Well, number seven, the one that I certainly would take with me, well, everybody's heard, but rather too much, so I'm not going to do it now because there's another more exciting thing coming up on number eight. But it would be, without any question, Rex Harrison, seeing I've grown accustomed to her face from my fair lady, which is...

Presenter19:39

The sort of most mildest back-handed love lyric that I've heard for many years and also Rex

Presenter19:44

Harrison is the one actor who has influenced my acting life in the theatre and on the screen more than any other actor or living person. And I would have to have him on my island for that beautiful purity of diction and the splendour and power of the English time.

Presenter19:59

Well, let's move on to number eight if we're not clear to hear number seven.

Presenter20:03

What's this going to be? Well, number eight would be something that you've heard a lot of in this country, but we're going to play...

Dirk Bogarde20:04

Well, not

Presenter20:08

I'm going to take with me the original.

Presenter20:12

version of hello dolly

Presenter20:15

There'll be lots of rather indifferent recordings of it.

Presenter20:18

But we've been given permission, which is terribly exciting, I think, today, to play the actual soundtrack from the play.

Presenter20:25

And this is as Carol Channing sang it in Hello Donnie in the show. And in New York, when I saw it in February.

Presenter20:30

After about four or five days, it opened. At the end of this number.

Presenter20:34

which is called the waiter's ballet.

Presenter20:37

You sort of leap from your seat and roar and cheer, and it's quite staggering, and they go through all of it all over again for you, and you can't let her leave the theatre. It's one of the most.

Presenter20:45

tremendously exciting moments in the theatre, in the musical theatre, equivalent to really to Oklahoma.

Speaker 420:52

No, we're

Speaker 420:56

Yeah.

Speaker 420:58

Glad to see Hank. Let's thank my lucky star. You're looking great, Stanley.

Speaker 421:10

Lose some weight, Stanley.

Speaker 421:12

Jolly overjoyed and overwhelmed and overpowered.

Presenter21:23

Carol Channing and the New York cast in the title song from Hello Dolly.

Presenter21:28

Well there are your eight records Dirk. Although we only played seven. Now if you could only take one record with you, which would it be? I've always dreaded this question. It's a terrible one to answer. I think in the end I'd want to take Hello Dolly, but I think you know after about five years I might get awfully bored with it.

Dirk Bogarde21:34

Most dreadful.

Presenter21:41

I don't think I'd ever get bored with Beethoven, so I'd take him. And one luxury you can take with you.

Presenter21:47

Oh, well now, I would take John Sargent's conversation piece, that wonderful portrait of the Sitwells.

Presenter21:54

Even though with Damien, he's standing in a...

Presenter21:56

in a scarlet velvet dress as a child. As a child, she's 14, I think it is. And it's one of the most haunting conversation pictures I've ever seen.

Presenter22:04

It's also very large, so I could make it into a tent.

Presenter22:07

Or I could make it in for raft, couldn't I? And one book.

Presenter22:12

One book without any question I'd certainly take as a copy that I took all through the wall with me.

Presenter22:17

of the Swiss family Robinson, which I bought for Tuppence in Lewis High Street when I was about 15. And it was published in 1879 with all the engravings and everything. And it tells you exactly and precisely how to live on a desert island.

Presenter22:31

And thank you, Dirk Bergard, for letting us hear your choice of Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much for letting me tell you.

Presenter22:37

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 422:48

Blah blah blah blah blah.