10/17/2007
Proposed Toilet 'Honoring' Gay Playwright Joe Orton Raises Stink
From the "just what we don't need" dept...
New public toilets to be constructed in London's famous Camden Passage antiques market are causing controversy after Mike Weedon, a member of the Camden Passage Association, suggested that they be named for murdered gay playwright Joe Orton. Orton, who wrote lived in the market's location, Islington, and was beaten to death in a jealous rage there by his lover Kenneth Halliwell.
Weedon suggested the toilets be named after Orton because he was known to frequent public toilets in the area looking for sex.
Said Weedon to the Islington Gazette: "I'm sure I'll get some furious reactions but I've been told by people who knew Joe Orton that he would have loved the idea. I think having a toilet with a blue plaque dedicated to him would suit his personality. Joe Orton did what he did because it was the only place he could do it in those days. I think having a bog named after him would show how attitudes have changed over the last 40 years. We wouldn't be celebrating cottaging - we would be celebrating how much more liberal we are these days. We could get Gary Oldman, who played Joe in the film, to come and unveil the plaque. The Screen on the Green could do a Joe Orton season and the King's Head could do a play on him," said Mr Weedon. We don't have that many famous people from Islington. We should be celebrating one of our own."
Area residents are opposed to the idea. Said one: "This sounds like a very bad joke to me. Frankly, I think it would be an insult to the man's memory. How many toilets are named after people? I've never seen a Winston Churchill's Release Station. I certainly wouldn't want to be remembered by a toilet. I don't think anyone would."
Said Deputy Islington Councillor Terry Stacy: "There's no doubt Islington needs more public conveniences and the council will look at any suggestions for locations from traders and residents. Joe Orton already has a blue plaque on the house where he used to live. I would only support a blue plaque on a toilet if something worth commemorating happened there, and I doubt there is a toilet in the country that can lay claim to that."
Although the "Larry Craig Layover Lounge" is drawing crowds in Minneapolis.
Sphere: Related ContentPosted 12:12 PM EST by Andy in Joe Orton, Larry Craig, London, News | Permalink
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Shocking, Outrageous, Bizarre, Offensive.
Look, there's always going to be a segment of the gay world who's very purpose is to fulfill the above goals. It isn't the outlandish gay people who mystify me, it's those who conform to society's expections of acceptable behavior. Y'all confuse the hell out of me (kinda' bore the hell of me too), but I'm glad you exist...in Rehoboth Beach, and Key West and other such places.
I long for the days of Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey movies, Dorian Corey, fabulous Harlem Drag Queens, the 1968, Candy Darling & Holly Woodlawn, the documentary "The Queen", Jackie Curtis, Divine, John Waters, Sclesingers' Midnight Cowboy, pre-Guilliani 42nd Street, etc.
Let's not all be normal, pleeeease. Y'all take the fun out of being gay-- just to be respectable to who? Your mother? Well, I don't know her.
Posted by: Derrick from Philly | Oct 17, 2007 12:42:08 PM
I suspect Joe Orton *would* have been amused by the idea, actually. In his diaries he writes about having sex with two or three guys in one toilet in the middle of the day and wondering what the reaction would have been in the street if the walls had fallen away at that moment.
Actor Dudley Sutton, who played a gay role way back in 1964 in The Leather Boys, penned an ode, The Disappearing Gentlemens' Lavatories of Old London, which he dedicated to Joe Orton:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LUfLAnA3O1g
Posted by: John C | Oct 17, 2007 12:56:10 PM
I used to on Noel Road in Angel, where Orton and Halliwell lived (and died) - the plaque is on the third floor (i.e. the exterior wall of their actual set of rooms) and completely invisible unless you know where to look - I'm indifferent to whether or not they put a plaque on these new toilets (though considering that he didn't frequent these specific toilets it does seem a bit bizarre) but the least they could do is put the existing plaque by the front door of their former flat so that passers-by can actually see it... I've always wondered if there were some crypto-homophobia relating to the obscure positioning...
Posted by: johnnzboy | Oct 17, 2007 1:03:09 PM
Weedon is not just a pig is a retarded pig when he asserts, "Joe Orton did what he did because it was the only place he could do it in those days." Do what? Have sex with other men? Orton could and did do that in countless, myriad private places. Meet other gay men? Molly Houses, variations of what we would now call "gay bars," in Great Britain go back to at least 1726. In 1925, there was the Hotel de France on London's
Villiers Street, later the scene of the famous dance club Heaven. In the 1930s, there was the Running Horse on Shepherd Market and the Caravan on Endell Street. Quentin Crisp wrote of other places in Soho of the 20s & 30s.
After WWII, the Salisbury on St Martin’s
Lane was popular, and used as a location for scenes in the 1961 film "Victim" starring Dirk Bogarde—the first mainstream movie to use the word "homosexual." While there were apparently no gay bars in Orton's neighborhood at the time, surely he could have taken public transport somewhere else in the great city like the Salisbury, after all he went all the way to Morocco for drugs and sex.
Even the tearoom [or "cottages" as Brits called them] plaques aren't a new idea. Seven years ago, a plaque was put up at the one at Highbury Fields [also seen of a major gay demo in 1970]. So Frau Weedon: shove it up your ass—and not in the good way.
As for dear Derrick, well we luv ya inspite of your fond memories for a grotesque who ate warm shit on screen fresh from a dog's ass and a great movie featuring a hideous scene of an ancient public sex obsessive having his false teeth knocked out of his head by Jon "Joe Buck" Voight.
Posted by: Leland Frances | Oct 17, 2007 1:20:45 PM
Bleah. Ok, enough "queer" already. Enough "in your face". Enough "celebrate sexuality by glorifying glory holes". Where did we put our actual pride? Let's set the shock-politics aside long enough to at least remember what it means to be human first, integrated and healthy, and then we can worry about bringing dirty back. Or am I wrong.
Posted by: Brad | Oct 17, 2007 1:21:32 PM
"inspite" "seen" for "scene" I have definitely not had my Maypo yet this morning!
Posted by: Leland Frances | Oct 17, 2007 1:24:23 PM
Well, they did a Privy after a soldier in the movie the Green Berets. (It was called Provo's Privy.) Of course, it was a movie and not realy life. But then it was *The Green Berets*. So they shouldn't be any straight guys raising an eye at the thought of it.
:-)
Ed
Posted by: Ed | Oct 17, 2007 1:41:30 PM
After my last post, I looked up the actually quote on IMDB and it seemed strangely appropriate so I thought I would share.
Ed who is doing his best to not be productibe today.
Sergeant Muldoon: Are you sure that's what he wanted?
Colonel Mike Kirby: Affimative!
Sergeant Muldoon: Maybe he liked so many guys thinking about him.
Colonel Mike Kirby: Besides that... It SINGS!
[exits]
Sergeant Muldoon: [to himself] It sings? That's what he said. Provo's Privy, It DOES sing!
Posted by: Ed | Oct 17, 2007 1:49:04 PM
Well, Leland, I'm just saying that the repressive & phony 1950s, and the unpredictable & volitile 1960s produced some of the most interesting and innovative artists the world has ever seen--gay or straight. They just didn't live very long.
But their sacrifice led to the 1970s when being gay was exotic and exciting!
Nowadays, gay men look like they could all be in a church choir, and the younger ones in a Rap video. Good for social acceptability, bad for trying to have some fun before you die.
Well, maybe I'm doing a little romanticizing...they didn't have deordorant foot powder back then.
Posted by: Derrick from Philly | Oct 17, 2007 2:04:59 PM
Well, no one informed the NJ turnpike regarding the 'area resident's' opinion. I always stop at the James Fennimore Cooper rest stop and relieve myself; it's my way of showing my feelings toward Mr. Cooper.
Posted by: Uncas | Oct 17, 2007 2:05:13 PM
I think it's a funny idea and Joe Orton would have loved it, but if it's not one of the actual toilets he favored, well then there's no point.
Posted by: Paul | Oct 17, 2007 2:11:04 PM
Howard Stern has a toilet in NJ named after him, which seems very appropriate considering his taste in humor.
Deodorant foot powder?
Posted by: anon (gmail.com) | Oct 17, 2007 3:12:35 PM
Sorry, ANON, it was just my way of coming back to reality. The 70s were fun for gay folks living on the margins of society, but for those gay people who wanted "more traditional lives" --life was still very repressive. You had no protection in the work place, you could still be evicted from your apartment for being gay, you could be fired as a publc school teacher, etc.
Like I say, the fabulous 70s were fun, but actual legal/social/political progress for gay people came later.
My reference to deordorant foot powder?
Pay it no mind, ANON. It has to do with being in intimate situations with athletic "trade". Back then, guys didn't wear gym socks all the time like they do now. They wore regular socks with dress or casual shoes. Often, it led to very powerful aromatic conditions.
Leland, I still love Divine--fresh dog shit or not.
Posted by: Derrick from Philly | Oct 17, 2007 4:21:34 PM
You squeamish types should go back to obsessing over talentless pop stars.
Posted by: Bill W | Oct 17, 2007 4:57:52 PM
Hee hee hee.
I think blowjobs in toilets are fucking gross, but the solemn dedication of a memorial pissoir is straight out of a Joe Orton play, and brilliant.
Posted by: thin mint | Oct 18, 2007 1:18:34 AM