Books, Arts & Manners: No Ordinary Joe

The playwright Joe Orton, who was bludgeoned to death in 1967 by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, after a 16 years’ relationship, is the subject of the most explicitly and exultantly homosexual mainstream film in the English language, Prick Up Your Ears. The educated, middle-class Halliwell met the eight-years-younger Orton, a working-class youth of 17 from Leicester, when both were students at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. They moved into a small flat paid for by Halliwell, who undertook the education of young John, the disciple subsequently changing his name to Joe, so he wouldn’t be confused with John Osborne.

Halliwell, who was good-looking but began losing his hair by age 23, was an unsuccessful novelist, playwright, and (later) collage-ist, who nevertheless was able to stimulate and help develop his lover’s talent. Their attempts at joint writing failed; their campy and obscene defacings of library books landed them in jail for six months. There Orton wrote—alone—what was to be his first produced TV play, which he later reworked for the stage, and so began a spectacular playwriting career that left Halliwell far behind.

JS

About the Author

John Simon

Featured Tags

The playwright Joe Orton, who was bludgeoned to death in 1967 by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, after a 16 years’ relationship, is the subject of the most explicitly and exultantly homosexual mainstream film in the English language, Prick Up Your Ears. The educated, middle-class Halliwell met the eight-years-younger Orton, a working-class youth of 17 from Leicester, when both were students at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. They moved into a small flat paid for by Halliwell, who undertook the education of young John, the disciple subsequently changing his name to Joe, so he wouldn’t be confused with John Osborne.

Halliwell, who was good-looking but began losing his hair by age 23, was an unsuccessful novelist, playwright, and (later) collage-ist, who nevertheless was able to stimulate and help develop his lover’s talent. Their attempts at joint writing failed; their campy and obscene defacings of library books landed them in jail for six months. There Orton wrote—alone—what was to be his first produced TV play, which he later reworked for the stage, and so began a spectacular playwriting career that left Halliwell far behind.