Between Us Girls

by Joe Orton

Thirty years after his death, a work that represents a turning point in Joe Orton's career is now available. Between Us Girls is a comic novel, the diary of young would-be actress Susan Hope, whose picaresque adventures lead her from life on the London stage to servitude in the white slave trade of Mexico, and ultimately to film stardom in Hollywood. Written in 1957, Between Us Girls is an extraordinary blend of camp comedy and pent-up eroticism, featuring the first appearance of the unique voice of a writer whose plays would later achieve worldwide acclaim.

Genres: British Literature

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 1999

About the author

John Kingsley ("Joe") Orton was an English playwright. In a short but prolific career lasting from 1964 until his death in 1967, he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. The adjective Ortonesque is now used to refer to something characterised by a dark but farcical cynicism.

Joe Orton began to write plays in the early 1960s. He wrote his only novel: posthumously published as Head to Toe, in 1959, and had his writing accepted soon afterward. In 1963 the BBC paid £65 for the radio play The Ruffian on the Stair, broadcast on 31 August 1964. It was substantially rewritten for the stage in 1966.

Orton had completed Entertaining Mr. Sloane by the time Ruffian was broadcast. The play premiered on 6 May 1964 directed by Michael Codron. Reviews ranged from praise to outrage. It lost money in its 3-week run, but critical praise from playwright Terence Rattigan, who invested £3,000 in it, ensured its survival. Sloane tied for first in the Variety Critics' Poll for "Best New Play" and Orton came second for "Most Promising Playwright." Within a year, Sloane was being performed in New York, Spain, Israel and Australia, as well as being made into a film and a television play.

Orton's next work was Loot, written between June and October 1964. The play is a wild parody of detective fiction, adding the blackest farce and jabs at established ideas on death, the police, religion, and justice. It underwent sweeping rewrites before it was judged fit for the West End. Codron had manoeuvred Orton into meeting his colleague Kenneth Williams in August 1964. Orton reworked Loot with Williams in mind for Truscott. His other inspiration for the role was DS Harold Challenor. The play opened to scathing reviews. Loot moved to the West End in November 1966, raising Orton's confidence to new heights while he was in the middle of writing What the Butler Saw. Loot went on to win several awards and firmly established Orton's fame. He sold the film rights for £25,000 although he was certain it would flop. It did, but Orton, still on an absolute high, proceeded over the next ten months to revise The Ruffian on the Stair and The Erpingham Camp for the stage as a double called Crimes of Passion; wrote Funeral Games; wrote the screenplay Up Against It for the Beatles; and worked on What the Butler Saw.

The Good and Faithful Servant was a transitional work for Orton. A one-act television play completed by June 1964 but first broadcast by Associated-Rediffusion on 6 April 1967. The Erpingham Camp, Orton's take on The Bacchae, written through mid-1965 and offered to Rediffusion in October of that year, was broadcast on 27 June 1966 as the 'pride' segment in their series Seven Deadly Sins.

Orton wrote Funeral Games from July to November 1966 for a 1967 Rediffusion series, The Seven Deadly Virtues, It dealt with charity--especially Christian charity—in a confusion of adultery and murder. Rediffusion did not use the play; instead, it was made as one of the first productions of the new ITV company Yorkshire Television, and broadcast on 26 August 1968.

On 9 August 1967, Orton's lover Kenneth Halliwell bludgeoned 34-year-old Orton to death at his home in Islington, London, with a hammer and then committed suicide with an overdose of Nembutal tablets. Investigators determined that Halliwell died first, because Orton's body was still warm. Orton was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium, his coffin brought into the chapel to The Beatles song "A Day in the Life". Harold Pinter read the eulogy saying "He was a bloody marvellous writer."

In his hometown, Leicester, a new pedestrian concourse outside the Curve theatre's main entrance is named "Orton Square." John Lahr wrote a biography of Orton entitled Prick Up Your Ears in 1978. A 1987 film adaptation directed by Stephen Frears starred Gary Oldman as Orton and Alfred Molina as Halliwell. Alan Bennett wrote the screenplay.

Reviews

[David Corvine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very thin piece of work. If Orton was attempting to emulate Ronald Firbank then he failed. Some aspects of the plot seem to have been drawn from Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall. Occasional flashes of Ortonesque humour but they are sparse. Of interest to Orton scholars and those who want a lightweight campy, Carry-on style read.

[Adam Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I was in university I was in a production of Loot. I’ve since read Joe Orton’s plays as well as Prick Up Your Ears, and seen the film and a stage play of it, (Matt Lucas was Halliwell, which was odd). When I came across Between Us Girls, a novel written before he was imprisoned but without Halliwell, I was intrigued.

It begins as the diary of a young airhead called Susan, who wishes to get into theatre. Her mother borrowing a copy of her book, or a bad hair day are utterly vexing things to her. She’s jealous of a friend who has more success, staring in adverts for deodorant, and hangs around bitching with her gay best friend, Monty. He is described as hilarious, but he seems to only have three jokes that he recycles every time they meet. As she says; “I don’t often have deep thoughts and they depress me slightly.”

First, she gets a job at a revue bar, dancing in the background while the key woman stripteases. She’s keen to note though, it’s intellectual striptease, “you can literally feel intelligence guiding her hand.” This leads to a more enticing job in Mexico. The scene where she is driven to a large, country house to be interviewed has elements of the gothic, especially of Rebecca.

In Mexico, she’s locked in a large house with a guard and made to wear a nun’s outfit, to bring out her innocence. Other women wear other costumes and they have to entertain policemen. Don’t be fooled, the aren’t just dressing up, it is a brothel and there is sex, it’s just ob-scene. This is partly because Susan is not the sharpest tool in the box, and partly because she doesn’t want to admit it herself.

Escaping there, she comes to Hollywood, where everything turns out great. Her acting talents, singing voice and face - which we’ve been lead to believe are nothing special - are all lauded and she gets to star in a version of the book she was so sad to have borrowed from her. The film isn’t very good.

Somewhere along the way, the diary style of the book morphs into a more straightforward telling of it. It doesn’t register at first, because the outrageous events hide the style, but it does mean the beginning of the book is far more interesting than the end. It almost feels like Orton enjoyed the voice of the beginning but couldn’t get the story over retaining it.

There’s also something drag-like about the book. Particularly the kind of drag that has an air of gay men dressing up as women to mock them. All the women in the book are stupid or duplicitous (but then all the men are greedy and lustful). Orton’s plays feature many immoral characters and actions but there’s always a sense of rooting for them as you laugh, this book has a slightly sneery laughing-at quality. In particular, it seems to be the work of someone who had big dreams (just as Susan did) but hasn’t achieved them and now wants to laugh at anyone with them.

This is particularly shown when Susan is in Hollywood, everything goes easily for her and she lands her dream role in an adaptation of a successful book. The producers have a bunch of ill-fitting broadway songs from a different production and jimmy them in awkwardly, ruining any integrity the play may have had. It’s like Orton is saying that achieving those dreams sully them anyway. It’d have been interesting to see what he would make of this book when his own star was in the ascendancy. Susan simply retired and got married, so at least she got a happier ending than Orton did.

[Gwen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Because I loved reading Joe Orton's plays I assumed this would be of the same calibre. It isn't. To be fair, it was his first book written without his partner Halliwell, and it does have some of the bitchy humour that he hones in his later work. Still, a bit silly.

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

c1998 but written in the 50s. A short, highly improbable story that reads easily but has some cunning and cutting phrases. There really is quite a bit of humour some subtle and some not so subtle. I am sure that there are all sorts of hidden meanings that escaped me but, hey, I enjoyed the book. "I exchanged damp fingers with Jean, we all laughed with her about the merry things that villagers did, prevented MacMillan from massacring Jean's cocker spaniel and then, too exhausted with barks and screams to even say goodbye properly, we tottered to the front door" White slavery got a key mention as well. Reading this, I was keenly aware that I must use a bookmark. Not for nothing did Mr Orton end up in jail for "library-book mutilation."

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think he probably took the really good stuff out of "Between Us Girls" and used it in the plays. There's not much left to enjoy.

I thought he was very bad at putting us in London for the first part. Since everyone had the same hairdresser, I assumed we were somewhere like Leicester until there was a reference to the tube.

[Angel Serrano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Los primeros años de la vida moderna en la Inglaterra que despierta de la II Guerra Mundial. La liberación sexual, la trata de blancas y Hollywood son el marco en que Susan Hope cambia su suerte.

[Jim Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

A breezy and hilarious early novel by the playwright one critic described as "The Wilde of the Welfare State." Beautifully written with loads of (1950's) sex, camp, and bitchiness.