.... Joe Orton ?

Just re-reading "Prick Up Your Ears"

Never did ITK but his diaries are amazing.

I saw a play (The Diaries of Joe Orton??) about 20 years ago .... very, very funny.

I understand that he actually met John and Paul to discuss writing a screenplay for the Beatles final film (but Epstein, when he found out, was horrified !)

Very good friends with Kenneth Williams was Joe Orton and he gets a lot of mentions in KW's diaries.

I get the impression that some of the things that Orton did Kenny was horrified with (both sexually and professionally), albeit at the same time was rather fascinated as well....

steveimp wrote:
Very good friends with Kenneth Williams was Joe Orton and he gets a lot of mentions in KW's diaries.

... and vice versa

the things they defaced in library books were very clever and funny.

today they would be hailed as artists like Banksy.

get a video of Prick Up Your Ears directed by Stephen Frears..superb with Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina, Vanessa Redgrave and written by the great Alan Bennett

hedda wrote:
the things they defaced in library books were very clever and funny.

today they would be hailed as artists like Banksy.

get a video of Prick Up Your Ears directed by Stephen Frears..superb with Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina, Vanessa Redgrave and written by the great Alan Bennett

A post by Hedda NOT about Australia? How refreshing!

Edna Welthorpe?

I just wrote a long post about a conversation I had a few years ago with Joe Orton's sister Leonie. Unfortunately, when entering the code (I can't log in from this PC in Budapest) the whole post was wiped.

That's annoying, as I put a lot of thought into the post. Maybe I'll write it again sometime.

In the meantime, a couple of points I remember from what she said-

What we know as the Orton Diaries were to a ceratin degree a deliberate work of semi-fiction, as were the photos he had taken of himself, they and the diaries were from the outset intended for publication. He did engage in the cottaging etc but far from being the macho type he sought to portray himself as, he was softly spoken and gentle. The rest was an act.

She was very critical of the book and film Prick Up Your Ears, especially in its portrayal of the relationship between 'John' as she called him, and Kenneth Halliwell. She described the couple as always having been very close. She was at pains to stress the enormous influence Halliwell had on Orton's development as a writer, and that in a more liberal age Orton would have felt free to acknowledge his contribution, and to take him along to public engagements.

Finaly, she mentioned something that is not in any accounts of the days preceding the couple's death. Halliwell had been to see his GP, who was sufficiently worried on the night before they died, that he tried to contact him several times to no avail.