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The Oscar Wilde of the Welfare State

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From: The Washington Post
Date: 19870517
Author:David Richards

THE ORTON DIARIES Edited by John Lahr Harper & Row. 304 pp. $19.95

TOOK A WALK. Nobody to pick up," playwright Joe Orton wrote in his diary entry for July 14, 1967. "Only a lot of disgusting old men. I shall be a disgusting old man myself one day, I thought, mournfully. Only I have high hopes of dying in my prime."

Less than a month later, Orton's hopes were brutally fulfilled. Early in the morning of Aug. 9, he was struck nine times in the head with a hammer by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, who then swallowed 22 Nembutals. Halliwell died first. On a desk in the one-room apartment they ...

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