Joe Orton
Writing
Biography
John Kingsley Orton, known by the pen name of Joe Orton, was an English playwright, author, and diarist. His public career, from 1964 until his murder in 1967 by his partner, was short but highly influential. During this brief period he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies.
Known For
ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.
ITV Playhouse
Anthology series of dramatic works.
ITV Saturday Night Theatre
A series of dramas featuring staged theatre plays.
Theatre Night
Two bank robbers, Dennis and Hal, are on the run from the police after a successful heist. Needing somewhere to hide the loot, they turn to a funeral parlour where they stash the cash in Hal's recently-deceased mother's coffin. Taking the coffin, they turn to Hal's father and hide it in the bathroom of his hotel. Before long the hotel is host to the eccentric Inspector Truscott.
Loot
Pringle, leader of the Brotherhood, recieves an anonymous letter accusing his wife of adultery. He employs a private investigator, Caulfield, who discovers things are not quite that straightforward. Joe Orton's last play for television: a farce.
Funeral Games
Mr. Sloane is a murderer. But, as both his middle-aged landlady and her homosexual brother quickly notice, he's very handsome.
Entertaining Mr. Sloane
Exploring the wit, work and world of Joe Orton through his own words, and the testimony of those who knew him and worked with him.
Joe Orton Laid Bare
An aging nymphomaniac and her closeted gay brother are enamored with their father's killer and blackmail him into satisfying their outlandish desires.
Entertaining Mr. Sloane
Dr. Prentice, a psychiatrist is interviewing an attractive secretary, Geraldine. Unwittingly surprised by his wife, he hides the girl. The affairs multiply as Mrs. Prentice, being seduced and blackmailed by young bellhop Nicholas.
What the Butler Saw
White golliwogs, cross-dressing coppers, bellboy rapists, insanity, incest, and Winston Churchill’s giant member all play their part in this BBC production of Joe Orton’s farcical, bitingly satirical 1969 play, in which the head psychiatrist of a lunatic asylum, when trying to conceal the attempted molestation of his new secretary from his wife, only succeeds in making himself (and everyone else) look completely round the bend.
What the Butler Saw
Joyce (Judy Cornwell), a fragile former prostitute, lives a life of quiet desperation with her "husband" Mike (Michael Bryant), a thuggish, zealously Catholic hitman who uses his van for "irregular contracts." Their stagnant domesticity is shattered by the arrival of Wilson (Billy Hamon), a menacingly polite young man who has his own motives for visiting...
The Ruffian on the Stair
Chris Shepherd directs a short animation in tribute to Joe Orton (Entertaining Mr Sloane, Loot) to mark the 50th anniversary of his death. Joe Orton would write letters of complaint using the pseudonym of Edna Welthorpe. Using this persona, Orton would wind up companies, vicars and even ridicule his own plays. In this short we see what mayhem ensues when Edna writes to Smedley Jams and Littlewood home catalogue service.