No flies on the film star
Hugo Vickers
A PARTICULAR FRIENDSHIP by Dirk Bogarde Viking, f12.95, pp.200 The late Ginette Spanier, Directrice of Balmain and a well-known broadcaster, had this advice about how to deal with fans: 'You must write back once', she said, `but never again. Otherwise you will find you have a pen pal for life'. I once talked to a fan-letter writer. His celebrities lay either side of a deep divide. Those that replied were good and could be loved for ever, highest marks going to the ones who wrote back in long-hand. The non-repliers were bad, almost to be hated.
Dirk Bogarde has suffered extensively from the over-attention of his fans. In this book he reveals that he hated the fame he acquired as 'a Film Star'. His fans de- scended to terrible antics — hysterical women hiding themselves in his wardrobe at the theatre, one who wandered about his garden at night crying his name,, and those that ripped his flies `so often that eventual- ly, in public, I had to have a side zip'. What appealed to him about the un- known lady in America who first wrote to him in 1967 was that she communicated not as a fan but as one who had lived in his 13th-century Sussex house in the 1930s. They never met, nor ever spoke, but he detected that she was ill, indeed dying of cancer, and so began a long correspond- ence which aimed to 'amuse her and to bring some form 'of lightness into what seemed to me a comfortable, but desper- ately lonely existence'. This book gives us Dirk Bogarde's letters from 1967 to 1972, so we learn much about him, but little about Madame X.
Bogarde emerges a great deal more brittle and acerbic than his early film fans would have credited. He is observant and, being shy, he seems often to prefer watch- ing from the side-lines to being in the swing of life. I particularly enjoyed his vignettes of a visit to Venice, especially a dreadful scene in a shop in which a lady from Fort Worth attempted to brow-beat her hus- band into buying her a bird-cage. Likewise his visits to Hungary bearing 20 copies of Playboy to speed his passage tirough customs, and his horror of Hollywood dinners: Deep-frozen veal in vomit and mushrooms . . . or Alaska King Crab, so filled with icicles that it was like eating a pin-cushion . . .
In 1968 Bogarde lunched reluctantly with the Queen, and describes her attend- ing the wedding of Lord Christopher Thyn- ne, evidently in the hope of seeing the Rolling Stones. The author did not go to this wedding himself but noted: 'There is a current rumour about Town that someone laced the cake with LSD . . . which, if true, could mean that the Queen took her first 46h-4f Anyone who has ever loved a house will relish his stories of his house and its garden. He even drew a detailed plan of the lawns, complete with minute shirts on the washing-line.
There is a touching tribute to Vivien Leigh, and a wonderful description of Dame Edith Evans embracing the effigy of Pope John in the catacombs at Rome, which succeeds in the rare combination of being moving and funny at the same time.
During the memorial service to 'Puffin' Asquith in 1968, a slight figure in a crumpled blue suit stepped forward to play Bach's Chaconne in D Minor. The con- gregation sat spell-bound as Yehudi Menu- hin saluted an old friend:
We had just heard Olivier read that bit from Corinthians about Charity and that had nearly un-manned us all . . . but this com- pounded the lumps in our throats. Fortu- nately Rex [Harrison] leaned towards me and touched my arm gently. 'Never could abide a fiddler!', he whispered, and sort of broke the grief, beautifully. 1 was very grateful.
Only gradually does it emerge how much this correspondence meant to Dirk Bogarde himself. While insisting that they should not meet he wrote: 'Affairs like this are for the secret places of one's hearts and minds, to be held securely in the private- times'. He claimed that he was two people and this may well be so: 'You MUST realise that I have to live two kinds of life, one public and one private. You have the key to the private one . . . .' To me, the most disturbing revelation was that his public image is an act. He can 'paint on the fixed smile, the "gentle and humble one" (which seems to be the most popular with the Fans) . . I think I know the look he means — the confused, slightly forlorn, appealing look as when the young trainee doctor in Doctor in the House is confronted unexpectedly by the looming figure of Sir Lancelot Spratt. I hope it is not wholly an act.
Dirk Bogarde tells us that he has des- troyed all his diaries and correspondence, and the office files of 45 years kept by his recently deceased partner and manager. I cannot but decry such a thing. I prefer Mae West's line on diaries: 'You keep a diary and one day it'll keep you'. Having en- joyed these letters I feel sure his diaries would have been of merit.
In the course of the correspondence there is evidence that Madame X offered to bequeath Dirk Bogarde her Modigliani, but very correctly he declined. Neverthe- less, he offered her a subscription to Country Life and sent her various books. Their friendship for one another thus prospered on other levels. Madame X, who died in 1972, wanted these letters published and the result is an absorbing volume in the mould of 84 Charing Cross Road.
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