He sent Rank the scripts of Look Back in Anger and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning urging them to acquire the rights so he could play the lead roles. But the studio turned thumbs down. (Morley, 77), not surprising considering J. Arthur’s mission to churn out entertaining films with ‘sound moral values’. (Porter, 88) An opportunity to be part of the current social conflict, kitchen-sink dramas might have moved his career in a new direction. As Jimmy Porter and in other edgy roles he hungered to do, he would have appealed to a younger audience ready for a new wave in British film. In 1956, he revealed his frustration to Andrew Peters: ‘The trouble is the studios are afraid to let me act. Nobody will let me play with my hair parted and wearing steel-rimmed spectacles like Alec Guinness. They say I would lose all my fans. Filmgoers love stars, but on a long-term basis it is the actors they go for.’ (26)

An admirer of John Osborne’s work, Bogarde had bought the rights to Osborne’s play Epitaph for George Dillon, and then paid to adapt it for film. When he asked Earl St. John of Rank to produce it, St. John ‘pronounced it downbeat and negative’ and with his characteristic ‘family values’ focus declined. (Snakes and Ladders, 204) Perhaps the final cut was Rank’s callous conduct during the pre-production of Lawrence. Three days before shooting, the studio abruptly shut down director Anthony Asquith’s long-planned production. (Picturegoer, 3 Jan. 1959, 3). It was a role Bogarde had researched and had eagerly looked forward to playing for over a year. In a 1957 interview for Picturegoer, he described his extensive preparation for the role “studying Lawrence’s habits and mannerisms, reading everything ever written about him, talking to all the people I can find who knew him….” (31 Aug. 1957, 10). Throughout his cinema career, losing the part of Lawrence remained a major disappointment he and Asquith never completely got over.