Joe Orton has been one of my heroes for a good few years. I've seen the film about his life which came to an abrupt end when his lover killed him in his sleep. They lived in a tiny flat and Joe’s other half gradually covered the walls in pictures, many cut from library books. So by the end the flat resembled a huge collage.
This was always my dream - to cover my walls with pictures. The only time I ever came close was back in the 80’s, when Boy George covered every available wall space even venturing onto the ceiling. At one time the wall above my bed was covered with various icons like The Primitives and Terence Trent D’Arby. They’re the ones I’ll admit to... Since I left home, the nearest I ever got was a Manics collage round the stereo. You suddenly realise what your parents meant when they told you not to ruin the walls - especially when you have to paint them.
Anyway Joe Orton was the queen of the double entendre during those years when his sexuality was illegal and heterosexuals didn’t talk about “those kind of things” either. He was ahead of his time.
He was a typically working class lad dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans. And when he went out he’d wear a Beatle-style jacket and hat. He also kept a Diary and when he still lived at home, would write the naughty bits in shorthand.
In entry after entry, the words tumble out, long passages of prose concerning his desire for young working class men. Although Kenneth Halliwell inspired his intellect, he was never faithful to him. Infact in the end theirs was a purely platonic relationship. They’d even been in the middle of a fight when Paul McCartney’s chauffeur rang to say that they were on their way to the flat. Of course it was Joe that got in the limousine, Kenneth left behind with just his Valium for company.
Joe’s sister said “The most important thing in his life was writing. If you don’t realise that, you don’t grasp the essential man”. Joe and Kenneth had been utterly devoted to eachother for 10 years until the local library finally got sick of them defacing books and adding rude verses to book jackets. They were sent to prison and seperated for the first time. Joe wrote his first successful play without Kenneth’s knowledge. This is where it all started to go horribly wrong and Kenneth slowly became more jealous and neurotic.
Worse was that Kenneth lost his hair. With his first pay-cheque, Joe bought him a wig. It seemed like a touching gesture until they went to a local park to see if it “worked”. Joe stood a distance away from Kenneth and of course, the first man to come along strode right past Kenneth to his better half. Joe saved the day by paying the man to go back over and feign interest, and not as one might have expected, gone off with him under Kenneth’s nose.
Long before George Michael reached the age of consent, Orton was the queen of the Holloway Road lavatories, lying that he was a warehouseman rather than telling them he was one of London’s most brilliant and fashionable playwrights. “It seemed ridiculous in this situation to tell the truth” he noted. Unlike in his plays.
He understood the way people were corrupted by the world and it’s institutions. That under the piety of moral expression and apparent courtesy there seethed a morass of desire, greed and prejudice. And he shone laughter on that to expose truth.
He took English gentility and our use of code and hypocrisy and amplified them through language to make complete anarchy. And by jousting with the lies people make sacred and hold to themselves for warmth, he told the truth.
The fact that I found some of this info in a middle class newspaper says it all really - he did not, as his brother-in-law said, “ever mean anything” where he came from. A bit like the fact that Brian Epstein, the Beatles manager, will never be seen as a Liverpool hero. This is sad but reinforces the notion that as a nation we do not give credit to anyone who is “different”.
Whatever the views of the moral majority Joe Orton came, he saw and he went (maybe wrong choice of wording!) His life had become just like one of his plays when, after Kenneth killed him, he realised he should have used a recent award Joe had received to batter him. After all, that’s how Joe would have written it.
Joe Orton has been one of my heroes for a good few years. I've seen the film about his life which came to an abrupt end when his lover killed him in his sleep. They lived in a tiny flat and Joe’s other half gradually covered the walls in pictures, many cut from library books. So by the end the flat resembled a huge collage.