by Jim Bernhard
That’s where Orton and Halliwell met and soon became lovers. After each of them had a stint in provincial repertory theatres, they moved into a flat in Islington, a London suburb, and began their respective writing careers, supporting themselves with odd jobs and Halliwell’s inheritance. To Halliwell’s annoyance, Orton led a promiscuous sex life, his romantic trysts taking place mostly in public toilets. When he was not thus occupied, Orton, abetted by Halliwell, amused himself with the library hoaxes, for which the pair were eventually charged with malicious damage, fined £262, and sentenced to six months in prison—an unusually severe penalty, Orton claimed, “because we were queers.”
Orton proved to be an original voice in British theatre—harshly anti-establishment, irreligious, sexually graphic, and usually hilarious. His first success, among his several black comedies, the erotic Entertaining Mr. Sloane, won the backing of upper-crust playwright Sir Terence Rattigan and top London agent Margaret Ramsay, who shepherded Orton’s career and often advised him in personal matters.
Orton’s next play, Loot, satirizing the police, the justice system, religion, and attitudes toward sex and death, had a dismal tryout tour in the provinces, but after a thorough rewrite, it opened in the West End in 1966 to rave reviews and played 342 performances, winning several awards. During early 1967 Orton was putting the finishing touches on his final play, What the Butler Saw.
Meanwhile, Halliwell’s writing career was going nowhere. His jealousy of Orton became obsessive, and he lapsed into severe depression. John Lahr’s biography of Orton, Prick Up Your Ears, recounts the circumstances of his murder with gruesome detail.
On the morning of August 9, 1967, Orton was scheduled to meet with the film director Richard Lester to discuss a screenplay he was going to write for The Beatles. A car was sent to pick him up. At 11:40 a.m., the chauffeur knocked on the door of Orton and Halliwell’s flat and received no answer. He phoned his supervisor and was told to try once more. He did so, then peeked through the letter slot in the door. What he saw chilled his blood.
Halliwell’s body was lying nude on its back in the center of the room, spattered with blood. Orton’s was on his bed, the skull crushed. The bad boy playwright was dead at the age of thirty-four.
Police later pieced together this account of what had happened: On August 5, Orton had met a friend at a pub and told him he wanted to end his relationship with Halliwell, but was fearful of raising the subject with him. Halliwell, heavily dependent on anti-depressant medication, was to see a psychiatrist on the morning of August 9; his regular doctor spoke with him at ten o’clock the night before to confirm the appointment. Halliwell told him, “I’m feeling better. I’ll go see the doctor tomorrow morning.” Sometime in the early morning hours of August 9, Halliwell bludgeoned Orton to death, delivering nine blows to his head with a hammer—an action that allegedly inspired The Beatles’s song “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” Halliwell then took his own life by swallowing twenty-two Nembutal capsules, washed down with grapefruit juice to speed their action.
Orton was cremated on August 18 in a ceremony at Golders Green Crematorium, attended by about twenty-five people, including playwright Harold Pinter, who delivered a eulogy. Orton’s ashes were blended with those of Halliwell, who had been cremated the previous day. According to a memoir by Dennis Dewsnap, Orton’s sister was mixing the ashes and said, “A little bit of Joe, and a little bit of Kenneth.” Then she added some more ashes from each container, saying, “Perhaps a little bit more of our Joe, and then some more of Kenneth.” Orton’s agent, Margaret Ramsay, impatient to get on with it, snapped, “Come on, dearie, it’s only a gesture, not a recipe.”
SUSAN SONTAG
“Everyone who is born,” wrote Susan Sontag in Illness as Metaphor, “holds dual citizenship in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.” Sontag became a citizen of the latter kingdom on three occasions, when cancer tried to kill her. The third time, the cancer succeeded.
Sontag was born Susan Rosenblatt in New York City on January 16, 1933. Her parents were fur exporters in China, and she spent her early years in New York with grandparents. She became Susan Sontag when her mother married U.S. Army Captain Nathan Sontag after her father’s death when she was five. Hoping to relieve Susan’s asthma, the family moved to Tucson, Arizona, where Susan grew up. She graduated from North Hollywood High School, attended the University of California at Berkeley, and then transferred to the University of Chicago, where director Mike Nichols became her best friend.
At seventeen she married Philip Rieff, a Chicago sociology instructor; the marriage lasted eight years and produced a son, who was later his mother’s editor as well as a writer. Sontag did graduate work in literature, theology, and philosophy at Harvard, Oxford, and the University of Paris, studying with such academic powerhouses as Perry Miller, Paul Tillich, and Iris Murdoch. In Paris, Sontag met the playwright María Irene Fornés, with whom she moved back to New York and remained with for seven years. Sontag later had a relationship with photographer Annie Leibovitz.
Sontag’s books include four novels—The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America—a short story collection, several plays, and nine works of nonfiction, among them Against Interpretation, Illness as Metaphor, Where the Stress Falls, Regarding the Pain of Others, and At the Same Time. She also directed films and plays and wrote numerous articles for journals including the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and the Nation. Her copious honors include a MacArthur Fellowship (also known as a “genius grant”) and numerous literary awards in Germany, Israel, Italy, and France.
Although Sontag was born into a Jewish family, she said she never set foot in a synagogue until she was in her twenties. She feared death more than anything, according to her son, David Rieff, in his memoir about his mother’s final illness, Swimming in a Sea of Death. He quotes Simone de Beauvoir: “Whether you think of it as heavenly or earthly, if you cling to living immortality is no consolation for death.” Rieff adds, “My mother was equally unpersuaded and unconsoled.”
Sontag’s first brush with the Grim Reaper was in the 1970s, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She opted for radical surgery and aggressive therapy. “When it came to cancer treatment,” Rieff said of her, “more was always better.”
Uterine cancer struck in 1998, and once again Sontag conquered it and remained cancer-free for six more years.
In 2004, Sontag learned that she had myelodysplastic syndrome, a condition that involves inadequate production of certain blood cells and leads to anemia and bone marrow failure. Sontag’s reaction on the way home from hearing the diagnosis was, “Wow.” Later in the year, the disease evolved into acute myelogenous leukemia, a relatively rare form of blood cancer.
Again Sontag fought vigorously, enduring a painful bone-marrow transplant at the University of Washington Hospital in Seattle. The transplant was not successful, and Sontag returned to Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York. According to her son, she spent her last seven weeks there in agony, her body covered with sores. She wanted no one to say that she was dying, but she could not evade the awful truth, and on December 28, 2004, Susan Sontag died at the age of seventy-one.
She had a “horror of cremation,” according to her son, and he decided to bury her in the Paris that she loved, in Montparnasse Cemetery, near Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, and Charles Baudelaire.
NORA EPHRON
Even though it is rare, the same disease that caused Susan Sontag’s death, acute myelogenous leukemia, carried off Nora Ephron eight years later. Ephron was diagnosed in 2006 and lived six years with the disease, but almost no one knew she was ill.
Born May 19, 1941, in New York, she was one of four daughters of Henry and Phoebe Ephron, writers of frothy Broadway comedies and slick Hollywood movies. Nora grew up in Beverly Hills and then went to Wellesley College. She married three times, first to writer Dan Greenburg, then to Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, and finally to yet a
nother writer, Nicholas Pileggi, whose screenplays include the award-winning Goodfellas. “Writers are interesting people,” she later said.
Nora followed the family trade (“Everything is copy,” her mother told her), beginning as a newspaper reporter and magazine writer and then turning to books and screenplays. She earned three Oscar nominations for her work on the screenplays of Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally . . . , and Sleepless in Seattle. Her last film was Julie & Julia, about TV chef Julia Child. Ephron’s marriage to and acrid divorce from Carl Bernstein formed the basis of Heartburn, a novel and screenplay that starred Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. Her bestselling books include I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Remember Nothing. Theatre works were Imaginary Friends; the long-running Love, Loss, And What I Wore (with sister Delia); and the posthumously produced Lucky Guy.
Born into a Jewish family, Ephron nonetheless followed her mother’s advice to avoid both sororities and organized religion. Speaking of Julie & Julia, she quipped, “You can never have too much butter—that is my belief. If I have a religion, that’s it.” In I Remember Nothing, written when Ephron knew she was suffering from a probably fatal disease, she mused on death’s inevitability: “Everybody dies. There’s nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God.” Ephron lamented her own lack of any religious faith, acknowledging that “a belief in God would come in handy.”
While being treated for her leukemia at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Ephron developed pneumonia, from which she died on June 26, 2012, at the age of seventy-one. She had pre-planned a memorial service—including how long each speaker was allotted and what the topic of the speech was to be. The event was on a warm, sunny July 8 at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. The star-studded list of mourners included Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Steve Martin, Martin Scorsese, Rob Reiner, Alan Alda, Jon Hamm, Meg Ryan, Charlie Rose, Martha Stewart, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Ephron’s ex, Carl Bernstein. They sipped pink champagne and heard speakers Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Rosie O’Donnell, and several others pay tribute. Martin Short urged those present to be more like Ephron—“read everything, savor everything, talk to the person on your left, embrace laughter like it’s a drug, drink more pink champagne, and yes, brush up your style.”
Ephron was cremated and her ashes scattered.
ROGER EBERT
No one has ever written more extensively and eloquently about his own mortality and how to approach it than the movie critic Roger Ebert. He lived more than a decade with life-threatening diseases and devoted thoughtful commentary to their ramifications in a Facebook page, a widely read blog, a Twitter account with more than 800,000 followers, and a memoir, Life Itself, published the year before he died.
Born June 18, 1942, in Urbana, Illinois, Ebert was the son of an electrician and a bookkeeper. He attended St. Mary’s Catholic Elementary School, where he served as an altar boy; Urbana High School; and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After a year’s study on a Rotary Club fellowship at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, he began graduate studies at the University of Chicago, and at the same time went to work as a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times.
In 1967, he was named the Sun-Times film critic. He became widely known, with fellow critic Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune, on a TV series known for its “thumbs up” (or “down”) reviews. Ebert was known as the “fat one with horn-rimmed glasses,” and Siskel was the “skinny bald one.” Author of twenty books, Ebert won the first Pulitzer Prize ever given for film criticism and is the only movie reviewer with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
A member of Alcoholics Anonymous, Ebert gave up alcohol in 1979. He didn’t marry until he was fifty, after his mother died, explaining he was afraid of displeasing her. His bride, attorney Chaz Hammelsmith, became coproducer of Ebert’s various enterprises.
Illness struck Ebert in 2002, when he was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer, for which he had successful surgery, but in 2003, cancer returned in his salivary gland. More surgery was followed by radiation. Cancer struck yet again in 2006, this time in his right jaw, leaving him unable to eat, drink, or speak. He began to use a computerized device that sampled his own voice from previous recordings.
In 2008, Ebert underwent further surgery in an attempt to restore his voice, but it was not successful. Nonetheless, he resumed his career fulltime, and began to write about life and death in various online social media.
“I know it is coming,” he wrote, “and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.”
But Ebert clung to a vestige of his boyhood Catholic faith and refused to accept the label of atheist or agnostic. He said that he still considered himself to be a Catholic—“lock, stock, and barrel’’—except for the proviso that “I cannot believe in God.” He added that he still lay awake at nights pondering the ultimate questions, feeling more content with the question than he would be with an answer.
In December of 2012, Ebert was hospitalized with a fractured hip. Then he came down with pneumonia. He spent several months shuttling between hospital and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. On April 2, 2013, he announced in his blog that he was taking what he called a “leave of presence” from his duties, because recurring cancer had been found and would require radiation. He insisted he would continue to review the movies that he wanted to review. But more reviews were not to come. Two days later, on April 4, as Ebert was preparing to leave the Rehabilitation Institute to return home, he suddenly died. “He looked happy,” his wife recalled. “He looked peaceful, and he looked young.” He was seventy.
A funeral mass was celebrated at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral on the rainy morning of April 8. Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Ebert’s widow, Chaz, and his stepdaughter, Sonia Evans, were among the speakers. The homilist, the Reverend John F. Costello, said that Ebert wrestled with “the mystery of faith,” not as someone rejecting God, but as one seeking further knowledge. The Reverend Michael Pfleger ended the service by declaring, “The balconies of heaven are filled with angels saying, ‘Thumbs up.’”
Image Credits
AGATHA CHRISTIE from plaque at Torre Abbey, Torquay, licensed under GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.2, via Wikimedia Commons; HART CRANE photo courtesy of Hart Crane Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, ©Columbia University in the City of New York, used by permission; ROGER EBERT photo ©Sound Opinions, Chicago Public Radio, 2007, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons; NORA EPHRON photo ©David Shankbone, 2010, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons; GRAHAM GREENE photo ©Baron Wolman/Iconic Images, used by permission; CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE drawing, courtesy of anonymous artist; THOMAS MERTON photo by John Howard Griffin, used with permission of the Merton Legacy Trust and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University; JOE ORTON photo ©Mirrorpix; HAROLD PINTER screenshot from Nobel Prize lecture, 2005, ©Illuminations Films, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons; SYLVIA PLATH photo by Eric Stahlberg, courtesy of Mortimer Rare Book Room, ©Smith College, used by permission; DOROTHY L. SAYERS photo used by permission of The Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL; SUSAN SONTAG photo ©MDC Archives, 1994, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons; DYLAN THOMAS photo courtesy of The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, used by permission.
Public Domain:
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING printed in Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous Women, 1916; ROBERT BROWNING printed in Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors, 1916; MARGARET FULLER printed in Eminent Women of the Age, 1869; SAMUEL JOHNSON from a painting by Joshua Reynolds, printed in A Dictionary of the English Language, 1785; BEN JONSON portrait by Robert Seymour/Thomas Mosses, c. 1830, Library of
Congress Prints and Photographs Division, reproduction number LC-USZ62-138132; PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY printed in Browning’s England, 1908.
Via Wikimedia Commons: LOUISA MAY ALCOTT photo, 1857; W. H. AUDEN photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, 1939, reproduction number LC-USZ62-42537; AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, from The Hundred Greatest Men, 1885; FRANCIS BACON portrait by Jacobus Houbraken, 1738; SAMUEL BECKETT photo by Roger Pic, 1977; ROBERT BENCHLEY photo Vanity Fair, c. 1919; MIGUEL DE CERVANTES portrait by Juan de Jauregui y Aguilar, 1600 (not authenticated); SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE from Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1895; NOËL COWARD photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Bain Collection, before 1940, reproduction number LC-DIG-ggbain-38534; ROALD DAHL photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, 1954, reproduction number LOT 12735, no. 273; JOHN DONNE after a miniature by Isaac Oliver, c. 1616; ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE photo from Current History of the War, 1914; GEORGE ELIOT portrait by Frederick William Burton, 1864, printed in The Works of George Eliot, 1910; WILLIAM FAULKNER photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, 1954, reproduction number LC-DIG-ppmsca-10445; JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE portrait by Luise Seidler, 1811, from Bibliothek des allgemeinen und praktischen Wissens, 1905; OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II photo by Al Aumuller, staff photographer, New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, 1948, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, reproduction number LC-USZ62-126707; THOMAS HARDY photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Bain Collection, ca. 1910-15, reproduction number LC-DIG-ggbain-13585; HORACE drawing from Bibliothek des allgemeinen und praktischen Wissens, (1905); BEN JONSON etching by George Vertue, after Gerard van Honthorst, 1730; JAMES JOYCE photo by C. Ruf, c. 1918, Cornell Joyce Collection; FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA photo by unknown photographer, 1913; MOLIÈRE drawing from Bibliothek des allgemeinen und praktischen Wissens, 1905; JOHN HENRY NEWMAN drawing by Jane Fortescue Seymour, c. 1875, printed in The Great Testimony Against Scientific Cruelty, 1918; OVID drawing by Auréola; THOMAS PAINE drawing by George Romney, c. late 18th century, National Archives; DOROTHY PARKER photo by unknown photographer, c. 1918-22; EZRA POUND photo by Alvin Langdon Coburn, 1913, from More Men of Mark, 1922; CARL SANDBURG photo by Al Ravenna, staff photographer, New York World Telegram & Sun Collection, 1955, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, reproduction number LC-USZ62-115064; JAMES THURBER photo by Fred Palumbo, staff photographer, New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, 1954, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, reproduction number LC-USZ62-112049; JOHN UPDIKE photo: George Bush Presidential Library, 1989; EVELYN WAUGH photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, 1940, reproduction number LC-USZ62-42514; TENNESSEE WILLIAMS photo by Orlando Fernandez, staff photographer, New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, 1965, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, reproduction number LC-USZ62-128957.
