As any decent Beatles fan worth their salt, I have read pages and pages of info. on how they got to be ‘The Fabs’ that they became. In the course of this research many years ago I discovered the name Joe Orton, who had once been in discussion to write the next Beatle film after ‘Help’, which was to be called ‘Up Against It.’
It said in the ripped out of a magazine article I was reading that Orton had met with Beatles director Richard Lester and then had got on particularly well with Paul McCartney, but eventually his screenplay had been turned down, due to the controversial nature of some of scenes.
I was intrigued. I mean, getting the chance to write that must have been a plum job, and this Orton fella must have been good to even get the opportunity. But why hadn’t I heard of him? It was obvious I needed to find out more. My first port of call was in Foyles the bookshop and once in there, I was directed to the book ‘Prick Up Your Ears’ by John Lahr, which had first seen the light in 1978.
The first thing that I found interesting about this was that the writer was the son of Bert Lahr who played the cowardly lion in the film ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (Lahr, trivia fans, is also currently married to Connie Booth who played Polly in ‘Fawlty Towers’ which she co-wrote with her then husband John Cleese.)
But enough about those two already.
Upon picking up the book, I found it hard to actually stop reading it. This was simply a fascinating, if at times, an alarming book. Orton’s life as described here, was one of being at the edge.
He was named John at birth into a working class life in Leicester, and he dreamed of being an actor and working in the theatre. Elocution lessons were taken aged 17 by way of preparation in getting into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, RADA to the rest of us, and in he got in 1951, which also meant a move to London.
There he met fellow struggling actor Kenneth Halliwell and before long they had moved in together, very much the couple in the days when ‘that sort of thing’ was still illegal. Halliwell was also seven years older than Joe. Upon leaving RADA, a few months in repertory theatre was followed by them spending their days cooped up in a bedsit, writing a series of novels that were forever being rejected. They survived on dole money and Halliwell’s meagre funds.
Then came the bizarre episode of them defacing the covers of library books, in which they replaced the original photos and text with cut and paste images of their own, semi nude men with tattoos for example, on the jacket of a book by John Betjeman. I recall it said recently, that Orton could be viewed as an early ‘Banksy’ for such work.
They were eventually arrested and sentenced to six months in prison. It was suspected at the time, that the sentence was particularly heavy for such a minor crime, due to them being homosexual. Double punishment if you will.
Orton, now free from the shackles of Halliwell, actually blossomed at Her Majesty’s Pleasure . ‘I had a marvelous time in prison’ he later said and his subsequent play written without Halliwell, ‘The Ruffian on the Stair’ was accepted by the BBC for broadcast.
So, the playwright Orton was born. In three years, he wrote four stage plays. ‘Entertaining Mr. Sloane’ ‘Loot’, ‘The Erpingham Camp’, and ‘What The Butler Saw’ as well as two TV plays, ‘Funeral Games’ and ‘The Good and Faithful Servant’
Halliwell by contrast, had suffered in prison, and was now playing second fiddle to Orton in all aspects of their life together, acting as his secretary in effect, a role he didn’t take too well to.
The continued success of Orton, tortured Kenneth. The relationship was all but over, but Orton was struggling to end it. Sadly, Halliwell beat him to it.
On the 9th of August 1967, he bludgeoned Orton to death with several hammer blows to the head and he then overdosed on Nembutal. Orton was 34.
Lahr’s book was turned into a film in 1987 directed by Stephen Frears, from a screenplay by Alan Bennett. It starred Gary Oldman as Orton and Alfred Molina as Halliwell. I highly recommend it, if you haven’t seen it.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prick-Up-Your-Ears-Biography/dp/0747560145/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1514731850&sr=8-1&keywords=prick+up+your+ears+book
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prick-Your-Ears-Special-DVD/dp/B000S3990Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1514731828&sr=8-1&keywords=prick+up+your+ears
The Mumper of SE5
