This is BY FAR my favorite Dirk Bogarde find. About a week ago I was perusing ebay listings and came across a late-1950's magazine that had only a photo of the cover, and said "Dirk Bogarde cover and feature -- his life story in pictures and also in comic strip." Comic strip??? I had to see this. And it's about 100 times better than anything I could have hoped!! It is seriously a comic strip. It's 22 pages long and -- with a few white lies and exaggerations -- really is his life story in comic strip form, up until about 1958. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do!! :)
Susannah York passed away today at the age of 72 after a battle with bone marrow cancer. Dirk Bogarde's co-star in Sebastian and Oh! What a Lovely War, Susannah York was an amazing actress, and from the interviews I've seen, and articles I've read, she seemed like an incredibly lovely person. As The Guardian put it, she was a "gentle star of 1960's cinema." She'll be deeply missed.
I signed up for Netflix tonight, and BOY was I thrilled to see how many Dirk Bogarde movies are available on instant play! When I used to have Netflix months ago I think the only one available to watch online was Justine, so this is a huge improvement. Here's the list of films available to watch instantaneously, on a whim, any time night or day! Whee!!
Some new scans to share! The one above is from The Password is Courage, and the ones below are from a set of French Justine lobby cards I got last month -- mainly for the first one, but the rest are really nice too!
I'm a bit behind in adding the new scans to the photo section of the site, but hopefully I'll have that finished this week. I hope everyone had a lovely holiday season & best wishes for the new year! :)
Have to admit .. I haven't actually seen Justine yet! It's one of the ones I'm really looking forward to watching (co-starring Anna Karina! yay!) though. I've just been trying to save some of his films and not watch them all at once. Nevertheless, I couldn't pass on these photos when I saw them on ebay! They're fantastic!
I'll be adding them to the photograph section next week -- until then, if you'd like to download the large scan, just click on the photo and it should open in a new window :)
I made a new video tribute today... actually, I made it this month. It's taken me forever to prepare, since I had to rip all of Dirk Bogarde's movies to my hard drive. Yup, this one includes EVERY one of his movies, and in chronological order, no less! The only exceptions are Blackmailed, Upon This Rock & We Joined the Navy since they're being stubbornly elusive.
The video is set to "As Time Goes By" sung by Bryan Ferry. It starts with Dirk Bogarde's first starring role in Esther Waters (1948) and ends with his last performance in Daddy Nostalgia (1990). Here is the full list of films, in order:
Esther Waters (1948), Quartet (1948), Once a Jolly Swagman (1949), Dear Mr. Prohack (1949), Boys in Brown (1950), The Blue Lamp (1950), So long at the Fair (1950), The Woman in Question (1950), Hunted (1952), Penny Princess (1952), The Gentle Gunman (1952), Desperate Moment (1953), Appointment in London (1953), They Who Dare (1954), Doctor in the House (1954), The Sleeping Tiger (1954), For Better For Worse (1954), The Sea Shall Not Have Them (1954), Simba (1955), Doctor at Sea (1955), Cast a Dark Shadow (1955), The Spanish Gardener (1956), Ill Met By Moonlight (1957), Doctor at Large (1957), Campbell's Kingdom (1957), A Tale of Two Cities (1958), The Wind Cannot Read (1958), The Doctor's Dilemma (1958), Libel (1959), The Angel Wore Red (1960), Song Without End (1960), The Singer Not the Song (1961), Victim (1961), HMS Defiant (1962), The Password is Courage (1962), The Mind Benders (1963), I Could Go On Singing (1963), Doctor in Distress (1963), The Servant (1963), Hot Enough for June (1964), King and Country (1964), The High Bright Sun (1964), Little Moon of Alban (1964), Darling (1965), Modesty Blaise (1966), Blithe Spirit (1966), Accident (1967), Our Mother's House (1967), Sebastian (1968), The Fixer (1968), Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Justine (1969), The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971), Night Flight From Moscow (1973), The Night Porter (1974), Permission to Kill (1975), Providence (1977), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Despair (1978), May We Borrow Your Husband? (1986), The Vision (1988), Daddy Nostalgia (1990)
Later this week I'm planning on screen-capping the video and captioning the photos with which film they came from, so that if a specific clip looks intriguing you'll know which movie to watch :)
Three early Dirk Bogarde movies are finally being released on DVD in January! They're being released in the UK, so they're in PAL format but most computers can play region 2 discs with VLC player, and multi-region DVD players can read them as well.
The lucky movies are Once a Jolly Swagman, Esther Waters and The Spanish Gardener. Hopefully the fact that the powers-that-be are finally releasing some early DB Rank films is a sign that Blackmailed (a movie that doesn't seem to be available anywhere, and I mean anywhere) will finally see the light of day!
For some insane reason, I was laboring under the delusion that he was an American actor from the 1950's specializing in B-Crime movies. You know the ones, where the actors are exceedingly sweaty and wear shoulder pads that double the width of their frame. Imagine my surprise when I turned on TCM one day and found that Dirk Bogarde was actually a dashing, debonair, talented Brit.
This blog chronicles my discovery of Dirk Bogarde as I plow my way through his filmography, books, artwork and recordings. He has quickly become my favorite actor, and I have a feeling that I'll be discovering Dirk Bogarde for many years to come.
