Through the closet with Ken and Joe: a close look at clothes, poses and exposure

Abstract

It is fitting that the prurient fascination that surrounds Joe Orton’s life, work and death should be fed by Orton’s determination to position his body in the public eye. It is hard to think of another playwright whose naked, or semi-naked, body has appeared in print so often, or indeed, at all. In this respect, as in many others, Orton stands out from his contemporaries. Through detailed analysis of his diaries, correspondence and interviews as well as close study of photographs of him this essay explores Orton’s self-presentation through clothing, his understanding of the politics of dress and the invitation and challenge this offered to audiences of his work and interviews. This project also requires a detailed consideration of Orton’s partner Kenneth Halliwell’s clothing and challenges the still depressingly pervasive view of him as a middle aged nonentity’. Developing Simon Shepherd’s work on Orton in Because We’re Queers (1989) in to the realm of material culture I suggest that, like the collages they produced, Orton and Halliwell’s self-presentation presented an invitation and challenge to look again, and look closely, at their work and the queer challenge it presents.

Keywords:

• Joe Orton
• Kenneth Halliwell
• Queer
• fashion
• photography
• clothes

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to Dr Simon Dixon and his colleagues at University of Leicester Special Collections and Archives.

Notes

1. Letter from Joe Orton to Peggy Ramsay, 26 May 1967. Orton Archive, MS 237/7/10/38/iii.

2. Patrick Procktor (1936–2003), an artist then at the height of his recent fame who ‘dressed flamboyantly’ and ‘flaunted his homsexuality’. ‘Patrick Procktor, ‘Obituary’, Guardian, 3 September 2003.

3. Although Sinfield (1990, 2003) and others have discussed Orton’s apparent lack of interest in gay rights it would be extraordinary if the Sexual Offences Act’s emphasis on decriminalising private acts had eluded him.

4. http://www.petergill7.co.uk/pieces/joe_orton.shtml, accessed 2 October 2016.

5. The output of photographer Harry Hammond, working across the UK in the 1950s and 1960s captures these changing styles. See Alwyn Turner’s, Halfway to Paradise: The Birth of British Rock (2008) for a good selection of Hammond’s outputs.

6. See Shepherd, Because We’re Queers (1989); Dorney, ‘Tears, Tiaras and Transgressives: Queer Theatre in the 1960s’ (2007).

7. In my 1987 paperback edition of Prick Up Your Ears, Halliwell on the cannon is plate 21. On my parents’ 1980 paperback edition, which provided me with my first encounter with Orton, the saturated colour version of Orton posing in his paper stuffed trunks was on the frontcover. This is also reproduced in Figure 8 of What the Artist Saw: Art Inspired by the Life and Work of Joe Orton, the catalogue accompanying the exhibition first staged at the Museum of Contemporary Art in London 5 February–4 March 2017 and moving to the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester in July 2017. The most recent edition of Prick Up Your Ears uses a picture from the Morley sessions.

8. This maybe the ‘striped suit’ Orton records borrowing to wear to the Evening Standards Awards lunch, as the shot is undated, it’s hard to be sure.

9. ‘Teenage Diary’, Orton Archive MS 237/1/19/1.

10. ‘Teenage Diary’, Orton Archive MS 237/1/19/1.

11. The questioning of Lahr’s construction of Halliwell and Orton’s relationship is critiqued most fiercely in Shepherd (1989), but also by a number of the contributors to Francesca Coppa’s, Joe Orton: A Casebook (1993), notably David Van Leer’s, ‘Saint Joe: Orton as Homosexual Rebel’ and Randall Nakayama’s, ‘Sensation and Sensibility: Joe Orton’s Diaries’.

12. ‘Joe Orton at Work’, Getty Images.

13. There are photographs of them in suede shoes, once, according to Cole, an indicator of homosexuality, but by the mid 1960s, part of mainstream fashion.

14. ‘It’s Still Fish and Chips for Joe Orton’, Entertaining Mr Sloane scrapbook. Orton Archive MS 237/1/28.

15. See ‘gallery’ at Joeorton.org for this image.

16. Kenneth A. Hurren, ‘Theatre’ in What’s On. Undated clipping from Sloane scrapbook, Orton Archive MS 237/1/28.

17. I Had it in Me.

18. Orton Diary, Saturday 25 February 1967.

19. Entries for 7 January 1949 (Body Bulk Course); ‘Teenage Diary’, Orton Archive, MS 237/1/19/1.

20. ‘My Favourite Portrait by Neil Tennant’, Face to Face. 19, Winter 2006. National Portrait Gallery. http://www.npg.org.uk/support/individual/face-to-face/my-favourite-portrait/my-favourite-portrait-by-neil-tennant.php, accessed 2 October 16.

21. He wrote this account up in August 1965 with a view to getting it published. A copy, along with a letter to Peggy Ramsay is in the Orton Archive, MS 237/2/12/1.

22. Orton to Ramsay, 10 June 1966, Orton Archive MS 237/7/10/30.

23. See Shepherd (1989), Coppa (1999), Sinfield (2003) and Dorney (2007) for more details of the implications and consequences of Wolfenden.

24. See Cole (2000) and Geoffrey Aquilina Ross (2011).

25. See Shepherd, Sinfield, Van Leer as detailed in FN xi.