Dirk
Bogarde (29th March 1921 to 9th May 1999)
I can remember my mum watching films on Sunday afternoons in
the seventies as I played with my toys; it was usually light-hearted romantic
stuff (her favourite series was the series The Loveboat.) I can recall
one afternoon when I was playing with my cars and she was watching one of the Doctor
In The House films starring Dirk Bogarde. It was the first time I noticed
she quite liked someone besides my dad and I was mildly shocked.
While in
London I decided to find Dirk’s last home where he died of a heart attack. I’ve
read and re-read his series of autobiographical books which paint a full life
from boyhood in London to army years (he used to pick targets for the Royal Air
Force to bomb) to his film star era to life in exile in Provence and back to
London again. The last autobiographical book A Short Walk From Harrods
tells how he knew life was tapering to an end (he smoked 40-50 fags a day) and
he returned to spend his final years in London.
The flat he
bought really is a short walk from Harrods but finding it was not simple. Just
off Sloane Square in Chelsea are Cadogan Gardens and Cadogan, timeless
red-brick mansion blocks standing sentinel over one another but they’d confuse
a postman on his first day.
I walked
around looking up so long that my neck ached. I had a photograph of the
top-floor apartment, a screen-shot from a paused documentary. I found it thanks
to the building restrictions imposed on mansion blocks the apartment remained
unchanged – a high-up lair on the fourth floor. This was a home for someone who
guarded their privacy yet wanted to be in the middle of things. It overlooks
Cadogan Gardens but the gates were locked. In commiseration I sat on some steps
to another mansion block and had a coffee and peanut-butter sandwich. A callow
girl exited the door and affected an expression that said, “not on there
please” though she seemed too polite to articulate it.
I found the
door Dirk used to access his hidey-hole home (which is now worth about
£2,300,000.) Mmmm...deja vu; I’d walked along here a few years ago looking for
the house where Judy Garland’s life ended in a whirl of drugs 12 days after her
47th birthday. It’s within a stone’s throw away.
Dirk
reluctantly returned to England after living in rural Provence for nearly
twenty years. His partner John Forwood (they always claimed it was a profound
platonic friendship) was suffering from Parkinson’s disease and cancer. They
sacrificed the beloved farmhouse for medical treatment in various London
hospitals. While renting a house Dirk suffered a minor stroke while nursing
John. Following the death of his partner he bought this apartment for £380,000.
He lived a
fairly solitary life writing and reviewing books. After a long relationship
with the camera, film star status (he was the original “idol of the Odeans”)
and a second career as a writer he could have dined out in high social circles
but retreated to this quiet corner of Chelsea. He had come full circle - born
in Hampstead, joined the armed forces at 17, became an actor at 27, moved to
France at 48, returned to London at 67.
Aged 75 he
underwent angioplasty to unblock arteries leading to his heart. He’d been
smoking 40-50 cigarettes a day and this arties were in a bad way. It didn’t go
well and he suffered a massive stroke after the operation. He died and had to
be resuscitated. One side of his body was paralysed, his speech was affected
and he was left needing a wheelchair. He employed a live-in nurse to administer
to his needs.
On 7th
May 1999 Lauren Bacall called at the flat to see him not knowing her friend
would die of a heart attack the following day aged 78. His wishes were to be
have no funeral service, be cremated without fuss and have his ashes were
scattered at his former estate in Grasse, Southern France.
When I see Dirk
on television now I think of my mum, one of his many fans. If we’d have been
down in London and seen Dirk buying a toaster from a shop in Sloane Square she’d
never have forgotten it.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
At the
end of the row is a sign for Cadogan Gardens (Dirk lived at number 2)…
At the entrance…
He loved the privacy of a high-up
flat and Cadogan Gardens….
