John Fraser’s entertaining, anecdotal autobiography is a glossy, pick ‘n’ mix approach to writing that somehow manages to be both gloriously revealing and indiscreet, but also terribly unsatisfactorily and superficial.
Fraser was a significant actor of his generation. He starred in over thirty films and carved out a successful niche for himself amongst the stars of the day: Rudolf Nureyev (with whom he had a brief, but passionate affair), Hedy Lamarr and Dirk Bogarde. His most famous films include the The Dam Busters, Repulsion, El Cid and Tunes of Glory. He was nominated for a British Academy Award as Best Actor for his performance, opposite Peter Finch, as Bosie in The Trials of Oscar Wilde.
While Fraser revels in the gossipy, sometimes bitchy, after dinner tales of his successful acting career (the one about Bette Davis is both wonderfully eccentric and terribly droll, and it’s worth buying for this story alone), he manages to divulge little about his actual life or feelings past the mundane facts of his existence.
This is a shame as Fraser was obviously a brave, enigmatic figure with a vibrant, colourful life and a passion for Shakespeare and taking theatre to the masses (he helped found the London Shakespeare Group which toured the world for decades), but we learn nothing about the man past the insider showbiz knowledge.
This ultimately leaves us like a fly on the wall of an A-list faggerati party: easily entertained and impressed but utterly unfulfilled, and no closer to the truth of the people we're observing – which is rather disappointing for an autobiography.
This certainly isn’t to say that Close Up: An Actor Telling Tales isn’t an interesting read, it is. In fact I laughed out loud, smiled an awful lot, and was pleasantly entertained for the entire 289 pages.
Where the book excels is in talking openly about the barriers of being gay in an age and industry where anything other than heterosexuality was illegal or forbidden.
“Homosexuals then had three choices,” Fraser writes. “One. To conform to society’s expectations. To marry and have children…. Two. To be celibate. Three. To live a double life, fraught with danger – of violence and blackmail – and to live it alone.”
Fraser chose the later. He lived a life of arriving and leaving parties separately from his partners, never letting the men he lived with answer the phone, and continually denying the existence of the people he loved.
In one fascinating chapter, Fraser talks about Dirk Bogarde’s homosexuality, citing the infamous quip by Noel Coward, said when passing a billboard that read, ‘Michael Redgrave and Dork Bogarde in The Sea Shall Not Have Them’. “Coward turns to his companion and in the bored, clipped syllables that had made his delivery famous said: ‘I don’t know see why not. Everyone else has.’”
Jokes aside, Fraser goes on to remember how he only once openly talked with the star about his sexuality. In reply to the question of what he did for sex, Bogarde took him to his huge loft where there was a Harley Davidson on a plinth in front of an “heroic sized picture” of the actor in black leather.
He proceeded to straddle the machine and ride it while gazing at the image of himself, “his expression like the rapture on the face of a mediaeval saint in awful contemplations of a vision of Our Lord”. We can only presume he stopped when he climaxed, dismounting the bike “wiping beads of sweat from his brow.”
But ultimately the clues in the title. This is a book about telling tales, not getting to the bottom of things. On that level it’s a gripping, entertaining and honest roller coaster of a ride that lets you into the inner sanctum of that mysterious group, the Hollywood stars, and leaves you wanting more.
Close Up: An Actor Telling Tales, by John Fraser
Publisher: Oberon Books
ISBN: 1840024577
Buy Close Up: An Actor Telling Tales and read all the insider showbiz gossip for yourself. Richard E Grant called it, “A Supa-candid-gossip-tastic-expo-valid-dose-worth of Dirk, Sophia, Bette and Rudy in the sixties. Grab and gobble it.” Buy it online and save yourself some money.