ART OR SEDUCTION?
He was known as the quintessential Svengali — a word derived from George du Maurier’s 1895 novel, Trilby — in which the title character, a singer, is entranced via hypnosis by the roguish antagonist, making her unable to perform without Svengali there to lead her to a state of reduced peripheral awareness. Aside from his leonine features and movie-star-turned-director/photographer status, what exactly was it that hypnotised Bo Derek about John Derek, a man 30 years her senior who became not just her lover but her mentor and sole creative collaborator?
Born Derek Harris in Hollywood in 1926 to the silent filmmaker Lawson Harris and the film actress Dolores Johnson, Bo’s beau-to-be had matinee idol looks that saw him, in his youth, singled out for a movie career by David O. Selznick (who cast him in minor roles as a boyfriend of Shirley Temple in and a sailor in ) before he was drafted into the second world war. It was Humphrey Bogart, a performance that led a reviewer to describe Derek as “plainly an idol for the girls”. , released the same year, did nothing to yank him from that pigeonhole.
