So beautiful.
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ducdebrabant — 19 years ago(February 17, 2007 08:37 AM)
Sexy self-image that revved up Dirk Bogarde
Candid memoirs of fellow actor John Fraser reveal how reclusive star became a Narcissus seduced by his own leather-clad likeness
John Ezard, arts correspondent
Saturday October 2, 2004
The Guardian
The billboard outside the Odeon cinema, Leicester Square, said: "Michael Redgrave and Dirk Bogarde in The Sea Shall Not Have Them". Passing by, Noel Coward said: "I don't see why not. Everyone else has."
As the actor John Fraser suggests in his remarkably candid memoir, Coward's quip would have baffled the film's audiences. Redgrave's bisexuality remained unknown during his lifetime. Bogarde had hoped to have taken the secret of his sexuality with him to the grave when he died five years ago.
But Fraser - in his book due to be published on October 8 - goes further than any previous author towards unravelling Bogarde's secret.
Bogarde, says Fraser, indicated to him that the physical side of his homosexual affair with his long-term companion, Tony Forwood, had ceased but that he dared not take casual lovers for fear of publicity.
Then the top British romantic screen star of the post-war era gave the younger actor a demonstration of the substitute he had found to turn him on: high-revving a static Harley-Davidson motorcycle in his loft while gazing at a poster of himself clad in crotch-hugging leather trousers as a Spanish bandit in the 1961 film The Singer Not the Song.
"It looked like a Narcissus fantasy come to life," Fraser said yesterday.
Fraser was one of the most handsome UK leading screen actors of the 1950s and 1960s. His best-known role was as Lord Alfred Douglas in The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), opposite Peter Finch. He acted with Bogarde in The Wind Cannot Read (1958). Fraser's own gay orientation was unknown to audiences.
His autobiography, Close Up: An Actor Telling Tales, though intelligently generous about his contemporaries, is also exceptionally open in portraying some of the celebrities he worked with:
Bogarde lived in "a wonderland sustained by doting fans";
The British star Laurence Harvey was "a whore";
Harvey's lover and career booster, the producer James Woolf, joint boss of Romulus Films, whose output ranged from The African Queen to Room at the Top, used the casting couch to snare young men;
Rex Harrison, star of My Fair Lady and of films stretching back to the 1930s, "was a cruel, manipulative man";
Harrison's fourth wife, the actor Rachel Roberts, was "a wild Welsh witch to whom moderation was a stranger";
The dancer Rudolf Nureyev - "bewitching, vulnerable, generous, and above all, scruffy" - often made love to Fraser without showering after a performance or workout.
Fraser, now 73, lives in retirement in Tuscany, writing books. Yesterday he said in an interview: "I am old, and I live in Italy, and, I suppose - what the hell?
"Most of the people I write about are dead. It seems mealy-mouthed not to tell the truth. Honesty is one of my first priorities, although kindness is even higher. I paid to be psychoanalysed when I was 20. It gave me a lot of understanding of other people."
In the book, he describes supper with Bogarde and Forwood at their mansion near Pinewood in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, in one of a series of visits after filming The Wind Cannot Read. This was at a time when consenting homosexual relations between adults were still illegal.
Fraser's then lover was with him. "I was in my 20s at this time, and both Dirk and Tony, though supremely handsome men, seemed to me settled and middle-aged", he writes.
When he and Bogarde were alone, he asked: "Do you and Tony still make love?" Bogarde, smiling, answered: "We've been together a long time. Now, we're like brothers."
Fraser asked: "What do you do for sex? Do you have casual affairs?" Bogarde said: "God, no. How could I possibly in my position?
"Everyone knows me. I can't go anywhere without being recognised. There's blackmail the News of the World. I would be ruined."
According to Fraser, Bogarde, shaking his head sadly, added: "Completely, utterly out of the question."
Fraser says he asked the star in wonder: "Do you reckon it's worth it, money, fame, all the rest of it, if you have to live like a monk?"
Bogarde gestured at the mansion and grounds: "Don't you think it's worth it - for all this?"
Then, taking Fraser up to the loft, he said: "Let me show you something Isn't it magnificent?" There, on a plinth, was the Harley-Davidson.
Fraser writes that the star said: "This is my playroom," his voice thick with feeling. He climbed on, kick-started and rode for 10 minutes, "his expression like the rapture on the face of a medieval saint". Afterwards, he slumped over the handlebars. Dismounting, wiping sweat from his forehead, he said: "Now you know".
Fraser writes: "Dirk's life with Forwood had been so respectable, their love for each other so profound and so enduring, it would have been a glorious day for the pursuit of understanding and the promotion of tolerance if he had s -
ducdebrabant — 19 years ago(February 20, 2007 09:35 AM)
Charleton Heston was not very easy about homosexuality, as I recall. Vidal proposed to Wyler on "Ben Hur" that the Ben Hur/Messala backstory should be that they were boyhood lovers, and that Ben Hur had sort of outgrown it and Messala had not Messala was still in love. They told Boyd (who is totally playing that) but Wyler said they couldn't even let Heston in on it, since he wouldn't be able to handle the idea at all.
There's a scene in which Rodrigo bullies Alfonso into swearing he is innocent of his brother's blood, forcing his hand down on the Bible and making him swear falsely and squirm. Heston really gets into that scene, and he really does make gay prettyboy Fraser suffer. I wonder if that came particularly easily to Heston. Whatever, it's a great scene.
You didn't suffer as much as black people so stop acting special. -
ccmiller1492 — 18 years ago(May 28, 2007 02:45 PM)
I wouldn't be a bit surprised. Ava Gardner couldn't stand him when she worked with him (Heston) on 55 Days at Peking which is why there's no chemistry evident in the very sparing "romantic" scenes. While you're rhapsodizing about John Fraser, who I admit is good, I must put my 2 cents in for Gary Raymond, who did a wonderful job as the murdered brother Sancho and actually looked more Spanish then either Heston or Fraser. Raymond was a very good-looking dude at the time and spent more time in theater than in films. Sancho was a terrific role for him and one which he acted superbly. Unfortunatley, he didn't do a lot a of filmsPlayboy of the Western World was one of his best (as the lead) and supporting roles in Look Back in Anger and Taitor's Gate, mainly. To my mind, this guy could upstage Fraser any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
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Aulic Exclusiva — 18 years ago(April 30, 2007 04:21 PM)
I first saw this movie when I was 8 or 9 and I immediately realised
- That Fraser was the best looking man I had ever seen,
- That I liked men,
- That Fraser somehow was on to this, i.e., that he was not a man like Heston or Vallone, but someone to be admired a different way.
Talk about toddler gaydar!
My mother actually noticed the way I talked about Fraser and years later brought it up.
If the Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard, It can also be like a chicken-pox mark.
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Rueiro — 12 years ago(March 29, 2014 04:54 AM)
I'm totally with you on Fraser being a real Adonis. I like him in the film so much that last year I read his autobiography "Close up", in which he dedicates a whole chapter to the making of "El Cid". Afterwards I wrote to him, and he was so kind to reply with an autographed letter! I couldn't believe it. A real sweet guy indeed, and a true gentleman.
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jihadaeon — 18 years ago(November 30, 2007 11:13 PM)
yep, the casting of this film was just incredible.except for the guy that played Sophia Loren's Father. He was a tad unimpressive. But the principals!!
And the royals all were superb! I'm not sure what else John Fraser has done in his career but his portrayal of Alfonso was MAGNIFICENT! I always marveled as a kid at how I went from disliking him as the spoiled prince to hating him as the vain and spiteful King who wronged the Cid so deeply, to awe at how the Cid finally won him over and in so doing helped give Spain a great Monarch!
Fraser truly runs a gauntlet of emotions and sides as his character develops and it is wonderful to see it!!