Bogarde’s off-screen lead role

My parents weren’t particularly religious but they would never dream of going to the cinema on a Sunday.

British actors Dirk Bogarde, Donald Sinden and Kenneth More in Doctor In The House.

My parents weren’t particularly religious but they would never dream of going to the cinema on a Sunday. So, as a 14-year-old, I was mildly surprised when we went to see Dirk Bogarde in Doctor in the House on Easter Sunday, April 18, 1954. This unusual turn of events came about because we were spending the long weekend with my mother’s oldest girlfriend, Frieda, and her family in Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex — and, of course, it was raining. It was Frieda’s idea to go to the Pavilion cinema to see the much-discussed new British comedy, and it proved to be a winner.

Doctor in the House started life as a book by Richard Gordon in which the author described in comic terms the five-year training undertaken by medical students before they graduated as ­doctors. Book and film are set in St Swithin’s, a large London teaching hospital.

The misadventures of four students are followed: Simon Sparrow (Bogarde), who is serious about medicine; Grimsdyke (Kenneth More), who has been left £1000 a year for the duration of his training and so is in no hurry to pass his exams; Benskin (Donald Sinden), who is more interested in the nurses; and Taffy (Donald Houston), whose sole interest is soccer. Directed by Ralph Thomas, a competent but unremarkable craftsman, the film is peppered with amusing incidents and one-liners and some delicious contributions from character actors such as James Robertson Justice, as Sir Lancelot, the hospital’s chief surgeon, and Geoffrey Keen as the dean. The audience at that Easter Sunday screening loved it, and there were several sequels, three of them — Doctor at Sea (1955), Doctor at Large (1957) and Doctor in Distress (1963) — retaining the character of Sparrow with Bogarde repeating his role.

Dirk Bogarde was Britain’s leading heart-throb in the early 1950s. He was born Derek van den Bogaerde in 1921; his father, Ulric, was arts editor of The Times and his mother, Margaret Niven, was an actress. His early promise as an actor was interrupted by the war; he enlisted in the army and served as an intelligence officer. After the hostilities ended he resumed his acting career and came to prominence when he was cast in the leading role in Esther Waters (1948), a romantic melodrama. He was signed to a contract by the Rank Organisation and quickly became immensely popular; he proved to be very versatile, capable of playing in comedies, action films and romantic dramas.

As time went by he began to rebel against the comfortable but undemanding roles he was being given by Rank, and he fought hard to play the lead in Basil Dearden’s social thriller, Victim, in 1961. Dearden had made something of a reputation by tackling difficult themes, such as racism, in his films, but with Victim, together with screenwriters Janet Green and John McCormick, he set out to draw to the attention of a wide public the injustices of the then-current law against homosexuality, a law that left gay men in prominent positions wide open to blackmail. The film was conceived as a thriller, a whodunit in fact, that would open the eyes of “ordinary” cinemagoers to this problem, and it succeeded beyond expectations. When I saw the film, in September 1961, the cinema was packed with Bogarde fans, and they were in for a surprise. The actor plays Melville Farr, a London barrister, with a wife, Laura (Sylvia Syms), and a very comfortable lifestyle. Farr discovers that “Boy” Barrett (Peter McEnery), a young man with whom he had had a close friendship, is being blackmailed over a photograph showing Farr and Barrett together in a compromising situation. Arrested by the police, Barrett kills himself. Farr becomes determined to bring the unknown blackmailer to justice and, in the process, discovers several other well-known Londoners are also blackmail victims. Played by a gallery of fine actors — Dennis Price, Anthony Nicholls, Peter Copley, John Barrie and Charles Lloyd Pack — these “victims” of society’s laws are given a good hearing in the film. But it’s Bogarde’s Farr who naturally takes centre stage. The actor delivers one of his finest performances as the anguished protagonist who loves his wife and is forced to explain to her his desire for another man: “I wanted him!” he cries.

The film is not without its flaws. In its commendable efforts to coat its message in an entertaining thriller format there are rather too many red herrings and contrivances that border on the melodramatic. Yet it achieved exactly what it set out to do: to start a public debate. Homosexuality was decriminalised in Britain six years later.

The success of Victim permitted Bogarde to tackle much edgier roles for the rest of his career. He formed a productive partnership with blacklisted American director Joseph Losey; together they made The Servant (1963), King and Country (1964) and Accident (1967), the latter, with its literate Harold Pinter screenplay, surely one of the best British films of the period.

Subsequently Bogarde worked with some of the best European directors: Luchino Visconti (The Damned, 1969, and Death in Venice, 1971); Liliana Cavani (The Night Porter, 1974), Alain Resnais (Providence, 1977) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Despair, 1978). He made no films during the 1980s, though he dabbled a little in television, but instead he spent much of this period writing a series of 15 bestselling books. He never married but lived for many years — in what he always claimed was a platonic relationship — with Anthony Forwood.

He made just one more movie. In 1990, French director Bertrand Tavernier, lured him back to the cinema to star in Daddy Nostalgia, the story of a difficult relationship between a dying man and his daughter. A retired businessman, Daddy lives with his second (French) wife in the south of France; his daughter, Caroline (Jane Birkin), a screenwriter, lives in Paris. They haven’t seen one another in a very long time, but she comes to see him in hospital, where he is recovering from a heart operation, and stays with him as they attempt to make up for all the lost time. The old man is, as the title suggests, nostalgic for the past, sad to see beautiful old buildings being destroyed, concerned about what he sees as growing xenophobia evident in people of his generation.

This beautiful film premiered in competition at Cannes on May 14, 1990. Three days earlier, in England, my father died. On May 18 I left the festival to fly to London for my father’s funeral. I had been unable to get an economy ticket on the fully booked aircraft, so I was flying business class — and found myself sitting next to Bogarde. I had never met him before and knew him to be a very private person, but I was in such an emotional state that I spoke to him and told him how much I loved his film and the reason for my flight to London.

He could not have been more generous; he listened to me with sympathy and great kindness.

Bogarde died nine years later, a great actor and, judging from that one brief encounter, a great human being.

Doctor in the House and Victim are available to rent or buy on iTunes.