Arena: Joe Orton: A Genius Like Us

you have before you a man who was quite a purse ledge in his way Truscott Abdi odd never heard of Truscott the man who tracked down the limbless girl killer or was that sensation before your time dude killer limbless girl she was the killer how'd she do it if she was limbless I'm not prepared to as they're questioning when I want outside the profession don't want a Carbon Copy murder on our hands do you realize what I'm doing here no your every actions been a mystery to me that is as it should be the process by which the police arrive a solution to a mystery is in itself a mystery and we've reason to believe a number of crimes have been committed under your roof there's no legal excuse for a warrant we had no proof however the water board doesn't need a warrant to enter private houses and so I avail myself for this loophole in the law it's your own good authority behaves in this seemingly alarming fashion does my explanation satisfy you oh yes inspector you have a duty to do my personal freedom must be sacrificed I've no further questions good I shall now proceed to bring the crimes to light beginning with a least important what's that murder the circumstances of Joe Orton's death were as bizarre as anything in his plays the author of loot and entertaining mr. Sloane was battered to death at the height of his career by his lover Kenneth Halliwell in their one-room flat but Noah Road Islington did you go to the flat yes I would the flat now yes it returned one the place respect at the time he says it asked me if I was squeamish saying it could it were in a terrible state really a lot so many been throwing red oxide over the wall and ceiling that's our buddy one but I never seen John Marler obviously when I went down to identify him it was sitting up in bed with a bandage around his head there were no bruising on his face whatsoever he must have been laying face down and think when Kenneth went crackers for fifteen years Joe Orton and Ken Halliwell had lived and sometimes written together in their shabby bed sitter in North London they'd shared everything except success but on August the 9th 1967 as John Lotter biographer puts it murder made them equal again well I started writing prick up your ears I very much wanted to come down Noah Road just to get a sense of the world that Wharton in Halliwell lived in wrote about a world of no circumstances and I remember walking in the door the smell of ammonia on the linoleum the wallpaper which was peeling and it was rather dilapidated sad feeling when got in the sheds at the back there Orton and how well kept their bikes where they used to take sorties out and around London to look at the architecture to go up to Hampstead Heath when I got to the top floor I didn't want to go in because the house was reoccupied it had been redecorated and I had a very strong feeling about that room I came home and I looked up at my bedroom which is above here and the lights were out thank god they're asleep but I saw their light on I thought that strange the boys clothes called him the boys boys having their light on at this time of the night I got up in the morning gotta knopf to school I'll do came down by the way Eleanor he said I saw Joe Harper seven last night and he told me was going down to meet the beach was manager and if everything went well he would be a son in a contract four hundred thousand pounds he said when he comes back he's going to come in and let us know how he's got on when I came back in the afternoon there was the BBC the ITV the police I thought could it Smith really had a hit I was so thrilled for him and I came to the doorstep and I looked it out and I said oops it's all happen come inside I said he's had a hit he said he has is dead I just couldn't believe it cuz while we were in the kitchen they were dead upstairs had been dead I don't know how long both of them Halliwell who's bald head was just visible through the letterbox had taken 25 nembutols which he'd swallowed with a glass of grapefruit juice to get into to make him get into his blood quickly Orton was had his head I caught in the book I say was created like a candle and from the coroner's reports that's indeed what happened that there was an estimate of nine blows with a hammer there was a note on Orton's Diaries that said if you read this especially the latter part all will be explained KH what happened that night to me is still a mystery and I really never could believe that II would have done a thing that is now because I think Joe would always have been with cam would always stay with cam and thing because I think they would sue that probably if they did wrong but I think they would you that would still have kept don't matter what happened you know everybody went forward or dried out or whatever I think he would have stuck and I bow stuck together that's whether the other chap didn't think this I don't know he must have some sort of a fear I think it was fear must have that something yeah fear bother oh yeah a blues in Joe when we got home we talked about ourselves in our relationship I think it's bad that we live in each other's pockets 24 hours a day 365 days of the year when I'm away Kenneth does nothing meets nobody what's to be done he's now taking tranquilizers to calm his nerves Monday May the 1st Kenneth aged had a long talk about our relationship he threatens or keeps saying he will commit suicide he says you'll learn them won't you and what would you be like without me we talked and talked until I was exhausted going round in circles he said he wasn't going to come away to Morocco he was going to kill himself I've led a dreadful unhappy life I'm pathetic well this is where how we'll said we're living Strindberg this is the dance of death and where the fights occurred and also to some degree where they had all their tremendous pranks it was from that front window that they drop prophylactics that they blow up as balloons of one of the cordons hollyhocks and do all those pranks which were in a sense typical of the Wharton's unmastered aggression that the kind of aggression that he mastered finally in his plays I'm not asking for my handbag back nor for the money or stolen unless my dress and wigger returned I should file a complaint with your employer you have until lunchtime she'll be sodden before long how do you a family sir my wife felt the breastfeeding might spoil her shape so from what I remember it would have been improved by a bit of nibbling ah she's a fine example of inbreeding amongst the OB Leah growing classes a failure in eugenics accompanied by liking for alcohol sexual intercourse maybe most undesirables you become a mother I hardly ever have sexual intercourse you were born with your legs apart they'll send you to the grave in a y-shaped coffee my trouble stems from your inadequacy as a lover it's embarrassing you must have learned your technique from a Christmas cracker rejuvenation pills have no effect on you I never I take pill you take them all the time during our lovemaking the deafening noise of your chewing is my reasons we're never having an orgasm so that your book on the climax in the female was largely autobiographical or have you been masquerading as a sexually responsive woman my uterine contractions have been bogus for some time Orton was the child of an unusually bleep marriage his father was a gardener his mother a barmaid he his brother and two sisters were brought up in a working-class district of Leicester during the 40s and 50s the world that we inhabited and in the early days was just a world of work and scraps of bought pleasures you know Marilyn Dougie and Joel myself in the summer holidays who's gone on bites and me was just swimming the canal hello can I come in mmm does it bring back memories hmm does yeah it's very mixed feelings actually about the place not very nice wouldn't like to run to go back to my childhood certainly not very impoverished in what way not nice I don't know very lonely no in a physical love and sort of children when they think back usually think about a Mormon dad and brothers and sisters with fondness I suppose that's but it was big mum being out at work all day and having to fend for oneself and those memories and out God the estate was labeled a slum area really maybe said he lived in the suffering Lane people sort of her own do you know what sort of people they are but looking at it yesterday it seemed to be lying the line the same as I wrote about in entertain mr. Sloane this term when Sloane says a perfect skyline you've got here Lord Snowdon would give you something for a shot of that stunning it is stunning perfect skyline you got there stunning it is stunning we tried putting in for one of them flats no good my boss was alive I'd have gone to him he you to write people dead is it no it was murdered on the unsolved crimes live he's a murderer brother justice that's a sobering thought somebody said all your father once in his life is a green house and he never had one much chance of putting a green house here was there no no he he was a man of little ambitions really would have loved a green house but he never aspired to that so and Joe used to have a hammock suspended between these two posts and he used to lay in this hammock and think he was on some Caribbean island and he used to put his his glass of water in that there and it was hot the use nobody else could get in the hammock because he used to that was his he made it out of a bit of old carpeting rope molasses he shot you once oh yes he used to lay here outstretched and fiddle with his nipples and I was thinking was also rooms doing that I guess I think well see it was it in that voice of getting some sort of sexual excitement out of that if he came to the suffering Lane area he wouldn't poke fun Oh mark and the person it was really trying to be sincere it was just the pretentious sort of person and practice of it that he wasn't that made Jonah like my mother was a very pretentious woman in many ways and I mean us out in the most fondest way she would do things and wear things that remind me of Kathy in the early diaries he wrote wish I was a member of the idle rich what was his way of escape um well he had elocution lessons from a woman called Madame Roderick it was nothing Madame is about her door and it through her she sort of coached him up to rod a standard but she was absolutely convinced that he'd never get to Rada he had a slight list and but Joe sort of Burt was determined to get out of Leicester and it will scholarship to Rada it was summer 1951 that they both entered in fact and here in this role a battered volume you'll seed John Aldens named John autumn as he was down here having entered that year and also on another page because he was in a slightly different group Kenneth Halliwell it's quite interesting because every term actors were tested up to a point you know in certain parts they play and the then principal used to make notes his name was Sir Kenneth Barnes and he used to make notes I suppose snap decisions or snap judgments in fact which perhaps it's a little unfair to quote but of course it's rather interesting with hindsight and I noticed that in John Orton's case he played the clown in Twelfth Night in his first term and Kenneth Barnes had written against it surprisingly mobile at the same time his pal Ken Halliwell was playing Jake wheeze and as you like it and all we get from that was seems to have a sense of philosophy in fact I suppose the remarks made about John Walton a slightly more intriguing than those made about Halliwell who gives me the impression of being something of a plotter how well came from a middle-class environment he was a mother's boy his father was very taciturn and quiet and a great trauma and how it was life happened at the age of 11 when Abbey stung his mother on the tongue and she died within 10 seconds in front of him the whole family life ended when he was 17 only seven years later when he what came downstairs and found his father with his head in the oven this is very interesting what he did was he stepped over his father put on the kettle turned off the gas in the oven made a cup of tea went upstairs to shave and went next door to tell next-door neighbors that his father was dead Kenneth was always sort of rather self-conscious he blushed and another thing I remember he carried about him always an enormous pocket handkerchief I'm saying enormous because he was so small he had an acute sense of the ridiculous and a very very good eye for inventiveness for comedy and this was very useful in my more movement you see and he had certain personal mannerisms that I suppose were rather curious but I found fascinating I liked his appearance you see the shaved head she had a shaved head yes it was rather egg-like and I told him so and asked him why he shaved his head he said it was cooler and he liked all that to get up I think he found it rather practical so it's Holywell always is the stronger personnel oh yes yes comes out as the more dominant one safe in it did you get the impression then that hallouwe Naughton were beginning their affair because that's where it started right only bad at learned of shyness when we met afterwards around the corner and we're having a coffee and Joe with that lovely little bright face would be listening looking be rather shy of intruding in any way they were then walked me to good street tube station say cheerio to me and won't have sensed so something that can be able was starting in the look in the eye something Halliwell who was an orphan who wanted friends who was 20 by the time he went to Rada 26 and bald and very morose and very unappealing in the sense that his own insecurities his own self-consciousness made him even then make claims for himself which were preposterous he was going to win the the this prize or that prize and that performance was terrible and his was good etc um he needed a friend he needed someone to as it were to be to be the perfect friend here comes this country boy who looks at a man who's actually well-read who is eager for friendship and miss misapprehends him he thinks that how well is sophisticated how I wasn't particularly sophisticated at all at that time what are the other time but he thinks that this is sophistication because he is ill read because he isn't really educated at all and he very much like Sloane is talked into a relationship that we know he didn't necessarily want it was a man who had some money who inherited some money who would keep him who had a lot in common they all they both are what they also had income was they both wanted to be famous and Orton provided the Gaiety the the the fun and how well provided the the learning the mind the kind of Orton was the sort of Donnie Asian force to some degree to one play that up too much but that is simply an end and how old was discipline control uh order you know and some sent knowledge and those two opposites combined and made I think for a while from all we can gather a very happy a happy team because they had a mission they had a goal their goal was to get educated and get published and get famous the first people to hear from this extraordinary literary partnership were to publishes Richard brain and Charles Monteith I'll show you a fight I just might interest you one of the submission letters now the next one that came along was a boy hairdresser signed well the meat cleaver see Kenneth C Halliwell and John K Orton always for the first year at who they came in with this sort a very Krim old-fashioned little submit a submission sign to get there was two separate signatures and they were all the work of both of them that's right though certain hysteria who'd think wrote what in those early works well we hadn't any of you at all until we actually met them we'd like me to talk about that yes I would aside things how we first began to speculate that naturally we talked a lot about this strange pair sending in this flood of stylish but ultimately unpublishable manuscript not unpublished belong runs of obscenity but they just weren't quite right up to that stratum you need for the deformation of this particular kind of thing so we got some curious about another participate curiosity about and we should be rich and said we'd like to meet them and we made an appointment we met them in imperial hotel in Russell Square and the bomb cord bar I think and there we saw this bizarre couple of for the first time we thought it was some difficulty spotting them but something the lips a peculiar that we no doubt at all it was them Halliwell began Alton's literary education together they made lists of metaphors titles fragments that might be of use to a writer as Alton wrote in his posthumously published novel head to toe gombauld bought a dictionary and began to study the construction of a sentence he started to construct the perfect sentence he studied the chemistry and behavior of words phrase designed the forging casting and milling the theories of paraphrase the fusing and aiming I think John did the typing the actual writing and the awkward over elaboration of this role of hands as a style was very much Ken Halliwell's what Don like when a rope it was no play exactly there down behind a prose I think the first hang we knit is what subsequently we learnt be a dramatist of work because when we at no read heard the wizard Dale mrs. Dale's diary which they had tape recorded and included every manner of sort of obscene conference that the characters in this standard mrs. Jones diary could take part in dead tape-recorded from the radio the introductory music a mrs. Dale's diary which of course is nice but semi have forgotten program but everybody listened to knows dates were in the afternoon tape recorded the music and by the way this tape recorder dad bought was one of their luxuries with his extra bit of savings had built up and then led into a scene cept I think in the drawing room in the kitchen of the Dale's house held and I certainly mrs. Dale played a prominent part and was certainly either a broken broom handle or a kind of umbrella was one of those nobly handles but all sorts of antics forgot up to and what the only funny fact remember was the doctor death or himself as he used to do I think in the serial on the radio was to come in at the wrists are an embarrassing moment would say well time for a cup of coffee and they adored Peter Douglas they I'm telling or music we used to visit Joe my sister and myself and my mother I want to see ya had a day trip to London once every year and I can remember I'm your first went down my mother wanted to go to the lavatory and you showed her into the bathroom and she was absolutely amazed cuz over the bath is this huge naked man that somebody had painted she thought it was just terrible she looks awful amused have things like Battenberg cake and sandwiches it was always he was always I got the feeling at those times it not always but at times he was setting his up just to see our reaction he just loved to be the fly on the wall Joe did and he used to have this Battenberg cake and he was to bring it in and it was just an ordinary Marks and Spencers Battenberg and he used is wonderful look at the shape so symmetrical isn't it it's something wonderful he was used my mother the king's new clothes isn't it always the are and absolutely they entertained us and it was one of the most bizarre and terrible meals I've ever eaten because to save that money to make the lump of savings last as long as possible they used to live MIT misty on rice and fish and some golden sit-ups it was very nourishing the Hilton cost very little so we the meal consisting mainly rice fish and guilt and cipro first course with rice and soybean the second course was differently cooked rice with 1000 that's right and then we did discover down in fact how they passed a day which I've never been quite clear about you know I Drive around with absolutely fascinating if they were living officer savings and there were nothing's it has B to do except right they didn't write all day but to save electricity they would get up at first light they passed the time by reading a large to each other very long books they were then right and then somehow we all break off and was one very sad day and I can holiday in Greece I remember years ago when I picked up I've been wandering around when the healthy turkey is him in the north of Greece and with the couple friends drifted into Salonika as a zani chief for a day or two and they're bought it's one thousand a weak-minded sort away I think some of the English papers for their own self vastly expensive prized and lurking at the time sold as a polling report of two young men being sent to jail for mutilating books from public libraries and then I read tons of oh my goodness me and it since it's a challenge on that robe rate the more fat that I thought their job you know that one it wasn't altogether appalling it was also quite funny well it was one evening and my father was watching no I was reading a Daily Mirror and it had a headline something like thriller among the roses and father who was keen darkness always I read this ain't Matt babe it but I breads and and he realized that him it was his son so he went mother was always in bed anyway earlier and he dashed upstairs said they're more used to call him mom mother that's right I use got a mother mother a job's been nicked it would be somewhere around about 1960 now and again some reader will bring in a book and say look I think this is wrong we'd find that they've been a neatly typed captioned pasted in over the original caption at the foot of a picture in a book sometimes amusing sometimes mildly obscene gradually these increased and then we found a second type of thing started developing and this was alterations to the actual book jackets there's one here it may not be very visible there the pictures are rather small to book about the great tutors and each one of the pictures has had a different face that in fact is a monkey's face carefully pasted over the original face on the photograph a certain number of biographies where there's a portrait of the original biography on the front of the book were chains this one of Robert Helpmann has got a couple of people wrestling there on the front another biography was this one of John Betjeman where the portrait of Benjamin has been replaced by a man with his whole body tattooed then we started getting these rather surrealistic ones there's a similar one one which was mentioned in the original trial for theft of the picture of a monkey pasted over the middle of a rose in a book on roses there's another one here which is mildly amusing it's the novel the steel cocoon and there's a very tight jockstrap pasted there underneath the title then we started getting some worked on the illustrations inside the books this one here in a biography of I think it was Gertrude Lawrence I'm not quite sure this is a viewer still from the film which has shown as an illustration in which she's playing the part of Edith Cavell in a prison cell and over here on this side as the water looking through the prison cell door at her and in the middle is the middle torso section from the Greek statue which she's gazing underneath it says during the Second World War I was working from dawn to dusk to serve the many thousands of soul sailors soldiers and airmen American GIS came in shoals to my surgery and some had very peculiar orders for me and that was the picture to administrated it we had quite a series of these Galang books this is an old and rather tacky cover now but you can see they used to have an almost facsimile typewriter blurb down here and by carefully taking this lot out cutting down there reversing the paper to get the blank side they were able to place that back in position with a typewritten blurb on it most of these blurbs were written in the true style so that one started reading almost without realizing that this was a thing which had been adopted I'll read you a little bit of this one when little Betty McMurray says that she's been interfered with her mother at first laughs it is only something the kiddies picked up off the television but when sorting through the laundry mrs. MacMurray discovers that a new pair of young Betty's knickers are missing she thinks again it goes on like that they go to the police station and young Betty identifies PC Brenda Coolidge as the attacker a search is made of the women's Police barracks what is found there is a 7-inch phallus and a pair of knickers of the kind used by Betty all looks black for kindly PC Coolidge what can she do this is one of the most enthralling stories ever written by miss Sayers it is the only one in which the murder weapon is concealed not for reasons of fear but for reasons of decency and he goes on to say read this behind closed doors and have a good [ __ ] whilst you're reading it that's the sort of thing that shocked quite a number of our readers the elderly more ladylike ones I must say that I and many of my colleagues almost looked forward to seeing these they were they were amusing to us but at the same time of course this was this was an attack on our books our book stock of which we were very proud was being attacked by predators well we had the names of Alton and Halliwell who lived at 25 no Road Islington we called in the Islington Police and I saw with mr. Croft at the time Detective Sergeant Hermitage and I remember correctly it was Easter Thursday just before could Friday 1962 and he said well look this is not a matter for the place this is a civil matter an asset with the deputy will look this is nonsense these books are obscene we've got a whole cabinet full office and he said well no definitely civil matter but his parting shot was look if you can get a letter written on the typewriter that's been used on these dust covers of the books then we'll have a look at it so that was our problem I said okay if you're settling as that problem we'll see what we can do Sidney Porat wrote to Halliwell in an official capacity and accused him of being the owner of a car illegally parked in Knoll Road needless to say Halliwell did not own a car and did you get the reply in came a reply dear sir I should like to know who provided you with this mysterious information whoever they are they must be a liar and [ __ ] probably both I have never possessed a car of any mate whatsoever and never wish to I can only presume that someone is staging a leg pool with you or me or both I would suggest that in future you obtain your information from some more reliable source before pestering people with inexplicable letters yours contemptuously signed Kenneth L Halliwell Kenneth L hallouwe well the letter did the trick I being quite zealous about here already got myself a watchmakers glass and I was satisfied that it was the same typewriter I'm sorry I have to say this but in my view it was nothing else but common theft he might become successful later on but to me he was a they were both stealer of library books stealer of other people's probably their term was six months actually Joe did quite enjoy prison I mean Halliwell tried to commit suicide twice but Joe didn't and I was determined to write to him even though I didn't want and I think I was only about two letters that came from prison and wonders at the beginning one was right at the end and the one at the end was quite revealing really because he said that term he'd found attachment in his writing well not in my naive way really I didn't understand what he really meant by that I mean didn't really mean much and the old horse society had really lifted up a skirt and the stench was pretty foul I realized that that it had some sort of revelation in prison I'm gonna ask you a question or two I want straight answers now you're pissed take is that understood do I make myself plain I'm talking English do you understand yes all right then as long as we know now be sensible where's the money by now I'd say it was halfway up the aisle of the church some Barnabas and sand dude oh there you he's only a boy not impressed with these six miss I asked for the throne I'm telling the truth understand this land you can't get away with teach kids nowadays treat any column authorities a change will challenge you if you oppose me my duty I'll kick those teeth to the back of your head is that clear yeah would you excuse me inspector you're at liberty to answer your own doorbell miss that is how we tell whether or not we live in a free country where's the money it's in church ha ha wait am I not lying Fincher and her any other political system whatever you want a floor in tears got me on the floor in tears where's the money judge I've told you they're quoting some ball over on ok they're quoting a highway fell over it one last chance where is it judging jerked my dad's watching the last right one hundred four thousand quid Oh hold you down Oh chlorinate yeah you'll be laughing on the other side of your bloody face they've had an accident loot was Orton's mature revenge on society on his release from prison he wrote his first perform play ruffian on the stair for BBC radio it explored the world in which he and Halliwell had lived with detachment and compassion are filled in a form did he affect the armored derelict yeah my brother me at the same trouble ah AMD insight into the human art that we have in Ireland we lived in Shepherds Bush we had a little room and I live this way quite comfortable by the NAB for almost a year but a lot of friends all creeds and colors but we know circumstances oh we were happy then we were young I was 17 he was 23 well you can't do better for yourself than that can you we were bosom friends I've never told anyone that before I hope haven't shocked you uh as close as that or we had separate beds it was a stickler for convention but that's as far as it went we spent every night in each other's company it was the reason we never got any worked yeah well there's no word in the Irish language for what you were doing in Lapland I've no word for C I'd rather not hear about it oh ma I'm not a priest Jenna Orton wrote entertaining mr. Sloane later the same year he came to see me after he'd written off he'd written Sloane and I read and said are all enacted thought it was funny a little bit derivative a little bit conventionally written and I told him so and he said well if you don't like it I'll try write you a better one so when he was leaving I said to him what are you living on so he said he was living on national assistance which at that time was two pounds ten a week my god having anybody live on two pounds ten a week so I rang at Michael card room and said there's a rather interesting play and the authors living on two pounds ten a week you've got the Arts Theatre why not read it and within six weeks it was on I met Joe to dinner it was given by Michael cauldron he rang me and said that he be put on the production of entertaining mr. Sloane which I'd seen at Wyndham's and Michael service was the most singular new talent to come into the British theatre and he thought I should meet him he was then Joe engaged on writing the the play lute which hadn't got title and it was I think about halfway completed and Michael said he thought that I should meet him because there might be a very interesting part for me and Joe liked my work and I went along to meet him at Michael's house he said to me Michael before the whole him again I warn you we'll have to have the friend rare and I didn't realize the implications of this until I actually met Harry well and the conversation object rated by interruptions from Kenneth Halliwell he he would say Joe and oh yeah we went to see this thing on Wednesday night Nitin and then another one had a Bob would say no it wasn't Wednesday how could it be when Steve Joe when that was the time we were seeing and then he mentioned something else and so joseon Oh was Tuesday right - yes it was - there's a anyway we went there - you got about seven and then how do I know it wasn't seven how could it been seven we didn't leave the house and and I found this aggravating extremely annoying and I member saying to Joe afterwards some judgement we were alone that endless correction some shrewish wife like business master Q and he said I'm quite used to it that's right he's got nothing by accuracy and that was true because the editing mind of Halliwell which was very much in evidence when you came to things like rewrites manifested itself in a very interesting way I know on two different occasions Joe would suggest a line and Halliwell would say no that's over long and condense it now saw that happen twice and I thought oh yes that is interesting there were both tremendously devoted to one another the kind of relationship that only men have and probably English men there's a special kind of friendship between men don't you think not necessarily homosexual but this happen to be as well and he used to talk about our play Slim was always our play and after he'd seen me for the first time and we were going to do it he brought Kenneth the second time himself and he was Kenneth was included with everything and it had always seemed to me that Halliwell was an influence in the work they read the same things together they enjoyed the same things together they laughed a lot of the same things together Joe was very funny they Hal a will and his their letter-writing which was the Edna well-thought stuff they both got a tremendous kick out on they were very funny those letters he wrote The Vicar and said you know can we have the church hall as Edna well thought because he said they wanted to mount their controversial the the homosexual tolerance and title Nelson was intense and we know that the vicar would somehow get the church hall for nothing and worthy causes and they got her an irate letter back saying on the contrary where I can't possibly commit the short we used to that was and I don't prove either of the lampooning of a national hero and so they wrote again and said Oh calm surely the church of all people still no civil of you went on and on about everyone should be understanding about these Queens and then another letter came back saying I'm sorry no I don't share of yours and then he wrote again as mrs. well folks saying doubtless you read my daughter Edna's demise as she's passed away and I found in a cupboard under the stairs about a ruminant had a correspondence dealing with her work with these Specter amateur players the spective group they were called I'm mounting her controversial play Nelson was an ends and could we have the Churchill and went on and on again the Vick Oh drew bouncing Drury had not rid of the de Mario's it was very sorry to get about Edna passing away that he couldn't help feeling that she'd got in with the wrong set which I thought was a riot and they read these things back and they kept carbons of their originals and these all were read back and they did the voices you know reading a bigger I don't agree at all and they were doing all these acts you'll see how they were writing as though it in a well thought oh dear vicar I feel and of course you did laugh a broader steady they both tell about they love that kind of thing dear sir I recently purchased a tin of Morton's blackcurrant pie filling it was delicious chock full of rich fruit then wishing to try another variety I came upon smell is raspberry pie filling and really how can you call such stuffed pie filling I was very disappointed after trying Morton's black currant please try to do better in future and what on earth is edible starch and locust bean gum if that is what you put into your pie fillings I'm not surprised at the result I shan't try any more of your pie fillings until the fruit content is considerably higher my stomach really turned out what I saw when I opened the tin you're sincerely Edna well thought missus dear madam we acknowledge with thanks your letter and are concerned to receive a report Smedley scanned a raspberry pie filling the most modern methods of production are employed in Smedley factories and at every stage the strictest supervision is exercised to ensure that quality is maintained at the very highest level your help or they some Daffy Mad dialogues were written and they both got tremendous kick out of it and that's why I feel the two of them were essentially sparking off things in each other an event a lively combination but professionally their creative paths were separating while Halliwell worked on unsaleable collage Orton wrote the first draft of what was to be his most successful play yes I suppose that was route certainly look was a much better play and again Michael bought it and then he thought it would spend a great deal of money on it and he got stars he got Peter Ward and a very fancy set and it was a disaster people were emptying the auditorium all the time you know with that production because we came under the watch committee in Manchester because we hadn't got the seal of the Lord Chamberlain and we had policemen in the wings saying if you show that line to show that line the Watch Committee and banning that line if you say that line because the policemen have to say where do you do it where the streets are will ditch that in open spaces where do you do it five pregnancies in one week whether you done it and the boy had to say on crowded dance floors during the Rumba and they said it was a definite special and rudeness about the local dance halls and they weren't handing it in the script and these policemen were they had to drag us off if we said these lines while the play was on its pre London tour Orton was made to write and rewrite constantly in a desperate attempt to redeem faults of production and casting I think it possibly opened in Cambridge the first Lieut but it was quite extraordinarily unfunny and it never got funny and a Goda's Green was that was Michael had to decide when it was a go disc whether to bring it into London and he asked me to go and see it on the Saturday and it was really very very bad indeed and when it was withdrawn Joe was frightfully upset he knew it wasn't funny and he knew it was a failure but he had got very fond of Kenneth Williams and Peter wooden everybody but then he said to me well if we withdraw it do you think it'll ever go on again I said oh yes it'll go on of course it will and within six months back out of miracle it did Michael White got heard of it and he decided to do it in a very small theatre with Charles Maddox as a director and very sordid little set and rather real actors very funny he's a uniformed policeman at the door but on twist that's bluff no God works for them they have him in their pocket like we've always been taught got to get rid of him you'll find the body next remember when we were roughing her up it's not something I care to reminisce about something dropped out we couldn't find it yes I know what it was what one of her eyes just a Bobby Maitland nuisance of himself the theft of a pharoah is something which hadn't crossed my mind whose mummy is this it's mine whose was it before I'm an only child a word of warning don't take the mickey it makes me angry okay it's not a mummy it's a dummy I used it for my sewing what sex is it I call it she because of my sewing the garments were female and because I'm literal minded I chose to believe I was making them on a lady splendid excellently foot no actual evidence of sex can be given it's contrary to English law yes tailor's dummy provided with evidence of sex would fill the mind of the average magistrate with misgiving why is it ripped we were taking it in the car to a carnival she's part of a display what Paul sewing class pre-war the difference in technique is to be demonstrated is this dummy a frequent visitor to exhibitions yes when is the object selling to take place she's not going now the treat has been cancelled yes why my mate Denis was to arrange transport he let us down I can believe that from what I've heard of your friend I'd say I was quite capable of disappointing a tailor's dummy now you claim this object is awaiting transport to a carnival where it will be used to demonstrate the continuity of British needlework yes there's a reasonable explanation quite reasonable what were you doing on Saturday night I was in bed can you confirm that miss certainly not what were you doing in bed sleeping do you seriously expect me to believe that a man of your age behaving like a child what was your mate doing on Saturday night he was in bed as well what coincidence miss don't you agree two young men who know each other very well spend their nights in separate beds asleep sounds highly unlikely to me what is your excuse for knowing him he's clever I'm stupid see why do you make such stupid remark I'm a stupid person that's oh I'm trying to say what proof of AI that you're stupid give me an example of your stupidity I can't why not don't believe you're stupid at all I am I had a hand in the bank job that's stupid isn't it telling you that that's me stupid if you expect me to believe you what you can't hand in a bank job you wouldn't tell me unless he was stupid very stupid he's just admitted it he must be the stupidest criminal in England unless unless he's the cleverest what was your motive in confessing to the bank job prove I'm stupid but you proved the opposite yes it's more to this case than meets the eye I'm tempted to believe you did have a hand in a bank job yes Aisling for my superior officer he will take whatever steps he thinks fit I may be required to make an arrest the water board can't arrest people can in certain circumstances what circumstances I'm not prepared to reveal the inner secrets of the water board to remember the general public where's the money what was interesting and really riveting about the play was that here was a naturally wicked talent I mean Orton was wicked he wanted to be wicked he tried to be wicked and he was a play which was like a kind of essay of Peck's bad boy which was it was absolutely natural of course it did have these allusions to Wilde and fur bank and all the people that Joe had been reading and had been learning his craft by but underneath all of those derived influences there was this a moral character who absolutely enjoyed sex and all its convolutions and saw the absurdity of sex and saw the absurdity of psychiatry and the law and everything else and was able to write about that from the standpoint of an outsider Orton always insisted that he was more than simply a comic writer Truscott who posed as a waterboard official in loot was based on detective Superintendent Challinor a policeman who'd planted evidence on student demonstrators Orton felt he and Halliwell had been so severely treated in the affair of the library books only because they were homosexual I mean I know from all my conversations with him that he deplored the what he regarded as hypocritical their nature of the established English view of homosexuality yes he regarded that as totally hypocritical and maintained they would turn a blind eye to all kinds of situations it suited them he thought that was evil ironically of course it is that very combination that it does in turn to strike em because there's no question about it it is a homosexual entanglement that does destroy Joe there's no question about that I mean Halle welds jealousy I mean he's like let her the agency's the answer to this can be found in the Diaries and the diaries of Joe were entirely I can't solve them promiscuous sex which had a well found a continual threat the time that I knew Halle walls was Halliwell that is worse and from what I can gather they both started off with they equally had strong fantasies of themselves and what had happened is one of Joe's have been totally fulfilled and Kenneth's had got nowhere and Kenneth had become very very grotesque and Queenie the problem was that Joe was actually on 467 Circle Sergeant Pepper all the rest of it everything was happening to Joe and nothing was happening to Kenneth and they did actually live in one room when what imagines that the hope that all of these walls which were now white were covered with a thousand book plates and that the ceilings were painted you can imagine how claustrophobic and small to sit in it actually gave going a headache the afternoon I was there it was like noise for the eyes I mean the walls were covered in these collages which Kenneth had done which weren't pleasant collages there were things like newborn babies being ripped out of Africa and sort of the lots of classical paintings around them there was no way you could look which is actually peaceful to the eye in the middle of all this they were giving us that mounds of lions jam tarts those very soul factory made things and they were very proudly playing this original sound tracks of power Joey I I don't know what this I thought they would play us of their record collection but I was rather surprised at how cozy in fact it was the relationship I mean the whole thing about the Reg it would seem that they're trying to escape convention sexual stereotyping and silence an aria that it comes back to that at the end it because no one can avoid it I don't think I did you see it's all very well to say as many homosexuals do Joe among them that they despise the husband-and-wife and the rat relationship of the the breadwinner and the house mind and thought that already well but the fact the matter is that all relationships eventually go into that kind of groove because they can't you can't have two people going out all the time otherwise there is nothing done Jimmy will it stay together I think they might well have done er I don't know that a sort of flash of success that Joe was having at that time would have sustained itself and had they got a home in Brighton or whatever but Kenneth would have had something to do it would have had a home to run and all they had was the one room they found Kenneth unattractive and witty rather poisonous and used to be if he went to a party they would Kenneth will be standing in a corner and everybody would be surrounding Joe and I think that's how it started and of course particularly in those days naturally remember any new playwright was picked up I mean they wanted to find new playwrights and because Joe was new the newspapers and everybody's spoiled him and I think it began to very slightly poison Gero too because it began to enjoy these successful parties although he always laughed at them I think he did have a slight effect on him and certainly was less at home and Kenneth was more lonely the night that just prior to him murdering Joe it was the first time that we had ever seen him on his own with either seen Joe come to rehearsal come to the play or Joe with Kenneth but this night he turned up on his own and he sat in at that time there was a panto at The Criterion alongside lute and Simon I had the same dress um he sat in our dressing room on the sofa and he was saying I thought at the title lute I he was justifying his existence in a very pathetic way because you in silently giving a hard time for them he'll wonder he no not at all we were we were indulging him but Sheila was very frightened by the state that he was in they used to they used to let us into their lives they Kenneth had once showed us a double page spread in her in a color supplement which was all pills all those plastic-coated sort of like bombs all in rows and he showed us all the ones that he had the last time I saw him I saw him alone I mean him because he'd been to the drugstore at the corner because I had got them onto national they were both our national health and I think they were suffering from withdrawal symptoms from hash or something and they'd had in I know where they've been for a holiday and I said well you must go to my doctor and so he came here by himself and the doorbell rang and he came into I live downstairs then and he sat and talked him and I've never been alone with kennel ever before and he talked in such a stir change way I don't know if you've ever met people who are mentally ill but once you have you can recognize it and when he left I rang Joe because they used to use each other's voices on the telephone you never knew which you were talking to they could only imitated it yes perfectly how extort Lee oh yes so you couldn't I mean never know but I didn't now on this occasion that Ken couldn't be there so I said to Joe the party that Dorothy Dixon had arranged for him which was one to meet all the older people like him in rooms and people like that who were very interested in him and he had agreed to go to that with me I said we better cancel that because I think you must be with Kim because I didn't he's at all well little knowing about him that was shortly before part three days if that I think the day before almost I think was a man didn't think I wouldn't choose him I mean who have ever tried to an atheist funeral the best of possible luck and I must say Jay would have laughed because when we arrived they asked us agree with 2:30 or the 2:45 which was an absolute Joe Orton line it was a sort of a Bijou crematorium and as the coffin came in to the crematorium over these crackling speakers came John Lennon singing I read the news today oh boy and the gramophone pin went wrong it went oh and it started to get oh god it was awful well Pinter and Donald Pleasance at his most sort of bald to gave these readings that I can't remember Pinter did but it was something like don't be moved us you've missed the joke and something like that and then at the end of the service after this this coffin had slid between these curtains where it's supposed to be burnt or whatever I mean it was a sort of theatrical phony front we walked into these Gardens at the end of the chapel and there were television cameras on it was difficult to look on it as real but there were lots lots of flowers and lots and lots of people and it was the difference between Kenneth who had no nobody there I think I was the only person there in the family too aren't Sandra nevio and myself but Sally wolf you know this was Halliwell's funeral whereas Jonas was a very fashionable funeral great deal of floral tributes and things the Friends of bingo have sent a wreath blooms are breathtaking she looks a treat in a wvs uniform though I did not care to spend eternity in it to myself she's - the vital organs isn't she a necessary part of the process where are they in the little casket in the hall such tranquility she has looks as though she might speak dressed her poor soul I shall miss her death can be very tragic for those who are left yeah her eyes are blue arms eyes were Brown that's a bit silly isn't it expect they ran out of materials Oh her eyes not her own then no he's actually innocent isn't he not familiar with the ways of the world I thought they were her own this surprises make not her own eyes and that large heart will probably put on top of the motor um on the coffin itself we thought just a spray of Heather from her homeland it'll be a long time before I can believe that she's dead she was such a an active sort of person you're going abroad I hear yes where did you get the money my life insurance matured tragic news about your premises was the damage extensive well a repair bill will be state we're insured of course was your Chapel of rest defiled no human remains weren't outraged no oh thank God for that of some things which deter you from criminals I've never been to a funeral before where they had the Beatles playing it was well just the most missouri's thing you ever been to I mean they didn't have any sort of him singing or anything like that I don't I'm sure I only cut that the coffee was purplevelvet and it was Croatia so but I didn't know then that they were going to have the ashes scattered together but Jim my brother gave permission for that which I condone well I feel that there were both victims and those so I mean if Joe had been a little bit more careful Kenneth wouldn't have killed him and Kenneth was driven he was so lonely and so unhappy that the only way he could see the way out was that he would like to have died but he thought he didn't want to die there him so he would have better have Joe as well I think it was really his own death he wanted rather than Joe's death he only born to have killed himself and ever drove there so he had to go to I wasn't with him when he died I'm going round the twist with the heartbreak he's dead then yes I thought of topping myself as a gesture I would have done but for my strict upbringing suicide is difficult when you've got a pious man kill yourself Adana Lipsy is the crude way of putting it off I've lived among rough people you're not gonna do it oh no I've made a will of course in case something should happen in the future what my tone I might get killed ah I don't know I knew that I'd lost a lifeline er somebody to talk to to explain things I didn't understand and I just ended up sort of having it a break now turn I mean I get any person you were the one in the family he was able to talk to about culture man to a limited degree really I mean because I was unaware I wasn't I'm not going to set myself up as being any more culturally aware than what any other member of the family but I just knew that through talking to German that that he hadn't a hell of a lot to offer and it was having this life line cut that that was very very sad it's true also that you you're very involved with Orton's work you read it a lot and try to be yes he's quite difficult up to me even now even for me and knowing the man in the beginning and now trying to understand the playwright what do you like about it would you like know his place oh they just make me laugh nobody's ever made me laugh nacho he's just so fun you

Channel: Ortonesque

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Id: 6p9gjoWHuuM

Length: 68min 34sec (4114 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 15 2016