The
Discreet Reformer
Dirk seized with relish on the role of Melville Farr, the
successful barrister with the beautiful wife, because Victim
(1961) had something important to say about a society in
which the blackmailing of homosexuals was commonplace. When
the film was made, Lord Wolfenden’s Committee had
reported on the merits of qualified reform, but the legislature
was slow to respond.
Six years later, the Sexual Offences Act was passed, partially
decriminalising homosexual acts in private between consenting
males aged 21 or over. In 1968 the Earl of Arran, who
had introduced the legislation in the House of Lords,
wrote to Dirk, acknowledging the part the latter had played
in helping to change the climate for the better. The brief
but gratifying letter is reproduced on these pages by
kind permission of the writer’s son, the 9th Earl.
Dirk never nailed his colours overtly
to the mast. In those oppressive days before 1967, how
could he - at one time the nation’s most prominent
matinée idol - have done so? Instead, as Matthew
Parris, the writer and former Conservative MP, has written,
Dirk was one of the ‘famous men who were gay, never
quite said so, may never have joined the early campaigns,
but lived and worked as openly as they dared.’ They
‘served the cause by an inner honesty, a disposition
to be themselves, which is greater than the honesty of
words.’
In his appreciation published two days after Dirk’s
death, and reproduced in full here, Philip Hensher of
The Independent said that Dirk’s work was at its
most interesting in the Sixties, during the period between
the Report and the Act: ‘In many ways he was the
archetypal Wolfenden figure, pleading not so much for
the granting of ordinary human rights, but rather for
a measure of quiet respectability.’ Read
Lord Arran's Letter >>
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