Dirk Bogarde letters serialisation

[theuofc]

Hello, Everyone,



EVER, DIRK, the Bogarde Letters is due out the 14th of August.



If you'd like to have a preview of the book, extracts from EVER, DIRK will be published in a two-week serialisation on Sunday, 3 August and again on Sunday,10 August in the Seven magazine section of the Sunday Telegraph, UK.



From what I've seen in my preview copy of the letters, Dirk is at his witty, rapier best.



All the best,



Barbara

SirDirkBogarde : SirDirkBogarde



http://www.facebook.com/pages/SIR-DI...8317564?ref=nf

[Freddy]

Hello, Everyone,

EVER, DIRK, the Bogarde Letters is due out the 14th of August.

If you'd like to have a preview of the book, extracts from EVER, DIRK will be published in a two-week serialisation on Sunday, 3 August and again on Sunday,10 August in the Seven magazine section of the Sunday Telegraph, UK.

From what I've seen in my preview copy of the letters, Dirk is at his witty, rapier best.



All the best,



Barbara

SirDirkBogarde : SirDirkBogarde



http://www.facebook.com/pages/SIR-DI...8317564?ref=nf

Hello Barbara,



Many thanks, noticed it featured on the always excellent Sir Dirk's web pages.







Freddy

[theuofc]

Hello Barbara,

Many thanks, noticed it featured on the always excellent Sir Dirk's web pages.



Freddy

Hello Freddy!

it's very nice to hear from you..like old times. Thanks for going over to the Official Website. I hope you had a chance to read all the sections, including the ones on Dirk, the Actor.



Cheers,



Barbara

[theuofc]

Hello, All,



Dirk Bogarde's selected letters in EVER, DIRK is serialised in two parts in Seven magazine in the Sunday Telegraph, today and 10 August. The book is due out: 14 August.



Here's the link to part one which includes a great, great photo of Dirk, Kathleen Tynan, and partner Tony Forwood.



Dirk Bogarde's letters - part one - Telegraph



Enjoy,



Barbara

[batman]

Thanks Barbara.

[penfold]

"Old Father Attenborough's Disney-Arnhem".....Ouch!! ...At least I know what I'm getting my mother for her birthday....

[batman]

This bit made me chuckle .....



"Mike Cain pulled the Movie Star bit a bit much... the big cigar, black glasses and fat Cadillac... but he was pleasant if dull and has to have the ugliest voice in the business... and pop eyes. And that was a surprise too."

[theuofc]

Thanks Barbara.

You're welcome, Batman. Bogarde never writes a tepid letter!

All the best,



Barbara

[theuofc]

PART TWO of EVER, DIRK, the Bogarde Letters in the Telegraph.



Dirk Bogarde's letters - part two - Telegraph





EVER, DIRK is due out: 14th August.



Cheers, Everyone,



Barbara

[Freddy]

Hello Barbara,



Waiting and looking forward to 14th August



FReddy

[batman]

Thanks Barbara, wonderful stuff.

[julian_craster]

The Sunday Times book review is illustrated by a nice camp pose from Sir Dirk in 1967.....

Dig those kinky boots !

[theuofc]

Thanks, Batman. Some of the letters are a tad wicked, but they are also hilariously witty.

I laughed my way through them and then started reading them again.
Cheers,

Barbara

Come and visit the Bogarde Facebook page; everyone is most cordially welcome:

www.facebook.com/pages/SIR-DIRK-BOGARDE/27978317564?ref=t

[theuofc]

Hello Barbara,

Waiting and looking forward to 14th August

FReddy

Hello, Freddy!



Always nice to see you. I am on the edge of my chair waiting for the book to come out on the 14th of August. It was wonderful to get the two-part serialisation as a preview. Did you see part one in Seven magazine? It had a wonderful cover photo of Dirk and some great pics inside, one of him with his partner Tony Forwood and Kathleen Tynan (a very striking photo by Patrick Lichfield )and another of Dirk 'al fresco' in a bathing suit making picalilli. Hee



Best,



Barbara

[julian_craster]

It is indeed surprising that the Daily Telegraph should publish such a negative review of a book that they paid to serialise and for which the book's editor [John Coldstream] used to work as literary editor.



At least, it displays the independence of the British press, and cannot be dismissed as yet another tiresome 'Daily Mail' hatchet job .....



This review will not please ever-loyal DB devotees, but in addition to the undoubted negativity of the reviewer, the cause is not helped by some of Dirk's own views as expressed in his letters, which are not always very palatable !





Review: Ever, Dirk: the Bogarde Letters ed by John Coldstream

DAILY TELEGRAPH

22/08/2008



Dirk Bogarde's grouchy letters are a publication too far thinks Lynn

Barber



Gush, gush, gush - or as Dirk Bogarde would no doubt have it, gusch,

guch, gutch. He couldn't spell for toffee and, as his editor John

Coldstream wearily remarks, "The correct use of the apostrophe was as

alien to him as Sanskrit."



And yet he spewed out words like a babbling brook - he told Norah

Smallwood, the Chatto editor who launched him as an author: "I am

really not a bit happy unless I am writing. Even a letter will do."

But given that Bogarde wrote so much - 15 books, endless diaries and

thousands of letters - it is strange that he never attempted to learn

spelling.





Under Norah Smallwood's tactful tutelage, he made some inroads into

split infinitives and hanging participles, and learned to curb his

enthusiasm for adjectives - "I use them like carroway seeds in German

cabbage" - but with spelling there is a sort of "I did it my way"

defiance that feels like contempt.



Coldstream has made a brave decision in reproducing Bogarde's spelling

and punctuation unaltered. I am not sure it was a wise one.



The Letters open in 1969, when Bogarde is 48, and has just left

England for good, he thinks. There are financial reasons - he believes

his film career is winding down, though in fact he is about to make

Death in Venice for Visconti - but also he is weary of England.



He and his companion Tony Forwood spend the first few months in a

rented house near Rome "absolutely alone except for the Rolls and the

Simca" and he enjoys making his first ever trip to a supermarket to

secure supplies of pickled onions and baked beans.



They go house-hunting in Tuscany but end up buying Clermont, a

farmhouse on a hill near Grasse, where they will live for the next 16

years.



In theory, Bogarde should have been at his happiest in the Seventies,

when he was living in a house he loved and making a succession of

great films, but he was never one for counting his blessings.



His early letters are full of complaints and bitching about other

actors - Stanley Baker and Richard Burton "both as tiresome as each

other", Anthony Quinn "terrible", Michael Redgrave "unspeakable",

while Robert Shaw "only does two things really well...shout above rain

and wind and stand with his legs apart".



By 1973 he is grumbling, "I HATE the work now. Honestly...during my

fifth simulated orgasm on the film with Cavani in Rome [The Night

Porter] I suddenly wondered what the hell I was doing at 53 with my

back on the floor, my flies undone, being straddled by beloved Miss

Rampling."





Rescue arrived in the shape of Smallwood, who offered him a new career

as an author. Rather surprisingly, given his normal disdain for the

"great unwashed", he found he loved signing books and meeting his readers.



For three years he concentrated solely on writing. But then he told

Smallwood he had to go back to "real work" to pay the bills, and he

played Roald Dahl in The Patricia Neal Story with Glenda Jackson as

his wife.



Despite their different political views, he adored and admired his

co-star: "Miss Jackson, surely a plain girl, with feet like a

goat-herd, hands like a bricklayer, bad teeth; has an inner

magnificence I have only ever seen matched by Edith Evans."



Unfortunately the film bombed and left him "as bankable as Atomic

Waste", so it was back to writing. It was nine years before his next

(and last) film, Daddy Nostalgie for Bertrand Tavernier.



Those who have read Bogarde's many volumes of autobiography, or John

Coldstream's excellent authorised biography (which exposes many of his

lies), will find few surprises in these letters.



But what shocked me was how little they mentioned Forwood - some of

Bogarde's correspondents might have assumed he lived alone. It was

only in 1983, when Forwood was diagnosed with Parkinson's and cancer,

that Bogarde publicly acknowledged him in the dedication to An Orderly

Man.



Eventually, reluctantly, they moved back to England, where Forwood

died in 1988. Bogarde said he was only saved from suicide by being

asked to review books for The Daily Telegraph.



Thereafter he lived alone, complaining, "The worst thing is the

loneliness...I suffer in utter silence from Friday evening until

Monday" until his death in 1999.



At his best, when he is writing excitedly about working with Visconti

or Fassbinder, or finding the right clothes to play Roald Dahl, his

letters are engaging and informative.



But more often they are claustrophobic and self-absorbed. He makes the

usual expat complaints about how England is going to the dogs, being

taken over by Jews, Arabs, Japs, "nig-nogs", socialists etc, and his

interest in the wider world is zilch.



He told Dilys Powell in 1989: "Letters, I think, unless they are

brilliant, can be a bit of a bore. And mine are not brilliant.

Amusing, perhaps, light, and loving but they aint Intellectual!" Quite

- and not that amusing either.



The only line that made me laugh out loud was from Stanley Donen, a

fellow Cannes juror, countering the argument that they must give an

award to John Huston because he'd come all that way - "You do NOT get

a ------' Palme d'Or for TRAVELLING!"



Bogarde has been beautifully served by Coldstream (a much-loved former

editor of these pages), both in his authorised biography and now in

these immaculately edited Letters, but I feel it is time to say basta

to Bogarde. He has generated more words than he is worth.

[Freddy]

Thanks for that Julian, for some reason the word 'bitchy' springs to mind. The biter bit.



Still love the guy though.



FReddy

[julian_craster]

<< Thanks for that Julian, for some reason the word 'bitchy' springs to mind>>



Are you referring to Barber's review, or to Sir Dirk Bogarde's letters ?



Both, surely.....



Incidentally, Bryan Forbes did a much more 'Dirk friendly' review of the letters in THE SPECTATOR :





Ever Dirk: The Bogarde Letters edited | John Coldstream | Review by The Spectator



It gave me a 'nice warm glow' all over just reading Bryan's review.....

[Lord Lionheart]

Bitter old queen. I remember seeing an interview with him at his house in the south of France. He came across as slimey and arrogant, put me off him for life. Evertytime I watch one of his movies I just think of that horrible person I saw in the TV interview

[dremble wedge]

Dirk Bogarde criticising Richard Burton and Michael Redgrave? What next? Danny Dyer having a go at Cary Grant for his comic technique?



It does sound fun though...

[Wicked Lady]

I wonder if Dickie Attenborough read some of the missives (involving him) with pursed lips? Although at least I'll know now to stock up on food if he and the wife ever pop by.



I admire Dirk for taking riskier, more complex roles which he was invariably good at, but I've always had the impression that he was a bit full of himself. Reading these letters, I think you'd have to accept that he'd be an amusing friend, but he'd be amusing about you the minute you left the room.



Although, I think this book would be fascinating vouyeuristic reading.