MI5 feared film star Dirk Bogarde could be target of KGB sting attempt
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Film star Dirk Bogarde was warned by MI5 that he could be the target of a gay “entrapment” attempt by the KGB, according to newly-declassified intelligence files. Documents released to the National Archives at Kew, west London, show that the actor was “clearly disturbed” after being told that his name was on a list of “six practising British homosexuals” passed to Russians.
But after he was interviewed in south of France, MI5 concluded that he was a “retiring, serious” man who was unlikely to fall victim to any kind of KGB sting operation. Bogarde, who died in 1999, never came out publicly as gay, although he maintained a long-term relationship with his manager, Anthony Forwood.
Having made his name in the popular Doctor series of comedies in the 1950, he subsequently appeared in a number of pioneering films with gay themes, most notably Death In Venice. In 1970, MI5 learned that he had been named as a homosexual to the KGB by a man who had himself been compromised by the Russians during a visit to Moscow in the late 1950s.
Around the same time, a KGB defector warned that a young British actor had been the subject of a possible recruitment attempt in the Russian capital again in the late 1950s. The actor was said to have appeared in film with a name like “The kingdom of something” with MI5 thought could be a reference to “Campbell’s Kingdom” in which Bogarde had starred.
