Victim/ Sarah Wooley

This play written by Sarah Woolley, broadcast last Sunday on Radio 3, charts the making of the ground breaking film Victim (1961) as part of the Gay Britannia celebration of gay icons.

The film itself addresses the issue of blackmail of homosexuals. Dirk Bogarde plays barrister Melville Farr who whilst married had an affaire with wages clerk Boy Barrett. Barrett is blackmailed and steals from his employer to play off the blackmailers. He hangs himself in a police cell and at first reluctantly Farr gets involved in tracing the blackmailers.

Although this was stressed less in the radio play its a fast moving thriller with a McGuffin (red herring) of a sinister blind man and his partner seemingly involved as the blackmailers. The film, whilst now a period piece, is all the more interesting for reflecting the social and sexual mores of the late fifties. We were soon in the more liberated sixties and the decriminisation of homosexuality between consenting adults.

The play had the added dimension of the making of the film. In 1961 you still had a Board of Censors headed by John Trevelyan who eventually granted the film an X certificate. There was also the Lord Chamberlain, a censor for the theatre. At roughly the same time there was a play The Killing of Sister George which featured a lesbian couple but as lesbian was never actually mentioned he did not intervene.

Dirk Bogarde a matinee idol who made his name as heartthrob doctor in the Doctor in the House wanted more concrete roles so, whilst some actors refused to take a homosexual lead role, Bogarde was courageous enough to do so. One of the features of the film was the number of actors who were in fact gay but were less prepared to admit it. In the radio play Ed Stoppard plays Dirk Bogarde and portrays well his determination to make the film though it might tarnish his image much as in the film it will damage his career as barrister. Because the play celebrates gay icons less attention on the drama of the film. I watched the film again last night. In many ways dated in its attitudes to homosexuality, there is a pace and twist to the unravelling of the blackmailers one of whom – Sandy Youth – was played with some viciousness by Darren Nesbitt.

For different reasons I enjoyed both versions of Victim. In the film I enjoyed the performance of Dennis Price always a watchable actor and wasn’t it Peter Sallis in a minor role as an assistant in a bookshop? The play I enjoyed more for the genesis of film: the conflict between the feisty scriptwriter Janet Green who was uncompromising in any changes to the script to accommodate the censor and the depiction of the more commercially minded and flexible director Basil Dearden who before this had made much lighter films. I hope too one day there will be a documentary or drama on gay actors who never came out to protect their careers. Dirk Bogarde went to make the superb Death in Venice and his role in Victim did him no harm at all.