Dirk Bogarde

Sir Dirk Bogarde , 1921-99, English film actor, b. Hampstead as Derek Niven Van den Bogaerde. In his early career Bogarde played romantic leads in such films as So Long at the Fair (1950) and A Tale of Two Cities (1958). He later showed great versatility playing character parts, including a corrupting valet in The Servant (1963), a dying, obsessed composer in Death in Venice (1971), and a would-be murderer in Despair (1980). His other films include Darling (1965) and The Night Porter (1974). He broke a nine-year retirement from acting—during which he wrote an autobiography (1977) and several novels—to appear in Daddy Nostalgia (1990). He was knighted in 1992. His memoirs were published in 1995.

Q Theatre, Kew Bridge, London, 500-seat theatre which opened in 1924 in a converted hall with a revival of Gertrude Jennings's highly successful comedy The Young Person in Pink. Over 1,000 plays were presented there, half of which were new; of these over 100 were transferred to the West End, Frederick Knott's Dial M for Murder being probably the best remembered. Terence Rattigan's first play First Episode (1933) was tried out at the Q before being transferred, with Max Adrian, who had made his first professional appearance at the Q, in the leading role. Other well-known actors who made their débuts at this theatre were Anthony Quayle in Robin Hood (1931) and Dirk Bogarde in a revival of Priestley's When We Are Married in 1939. In 1955 the local authority refused to renew the theatre's licence unless it was rebuilt. The campaign to raise the necessary funds was a failure, and the building was demolished in 1958.