His flirtation with Hollywood in 1960 as Franz Liszt in Song Without End turned into a short, unhappy engagement. With contemporary films like The Bridge on the River Kwai and Suddenly Last Summer being made, wasting Bogarde’s talents by casting him as a hair-sprayed, bouffant-haired Liszt in tight taffeta trousers, frilly shirt and period clothes opposite Capucine, a beautiful but wooden actress, could not have been more unfortunate timing and casting. Bogarde recalled the fiasco of feeling ‘ridiculous’ dressed and made up ‘like something out of an Army drag show.’ (A Postillion Struck by Lightning, 259) From Bogarde’s having to endure a speed course in how to play 85 minutes of Liszt on screen, to its unplanned humorous but ‘ghastly’ dialogue, ‘Hi! Franz…this is my friend Schubert. We’re thinking of going to Majorca to see Chopin and George. You want to come along?’ Disgusted, Bogarde later noted: ‘It really was as dire as that. I never made any headway with the script.’ (Cleared for Take-Off, 150)