This is the second part to the article, The Blackmailer’s Charter: Victims in British Film and Theatre.
I can’t neglect to mention a bold play that preceded it by a few years. Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958), staged by the innovative and brilliant Theatre Workshop under Joan Littlewood, also depicted a gay character in an honest and sympathetic manner. This is one of the prime representatives of the fresh and vibrant theatre scene just coming into its own in the late 50s, including some young playwrights vowing to tear down the walls of the old, overly sedate and bourgeois theatre scene in London. A Taste of Honey was penned by Delaney when she was all of 18 and the catalyst was her viewing of a play by Terrance Rattigan in the older, more distant mode that had dominated the West End for decades. She returned to her working class home in Salford, in the north of England convinced she could do a better job of capturing the reality of an England struggling to free itself of some of the suffocating constraints that blunted the efforts of a growing number of rebels who sought change. Delaney’s heroine, Jo is a largely unloved and unwanted young woman who develops a brief relationship with a black sailor. He leaves Salford and it becomes increasingly apparent that he will not return despite the fact that Jo has become pregnant. In this critical period she is befriended by Geoff, a young and clearly gay art student who steps up to offer genuine warmth and surprising resourcefulness, promising assistance in the bringing up of the child. While the quiet student is not the central figure in the play, nonetheless the ways in which he is discriminated against and bullied are dramatized in a matter-of-fact yet somehow eloquent manner.
It’s possible to obtain a DVD of Tony Richardson’s acclaimed film adaptation of the play, also made in 1961, starring Rita Tushingham as Jo. Incidentally, one of Delaney’s many admirers is Morrissey, front man for the seminal Manchester rock band The Smiths before he embarked on a solo career. The song “This Night Has Opened My Eyes” that he wrote with Johnny Marr encapsulates the play as well as a four minute song can do (“The dream has gone/ but the baby is real … / She could have been a poet/ or she could have been a fool”).
The emergence of this “kitchen sink” drama came just a few years after a series of repressive measures by British police had ordinary citizens and those in the arts who might be particularly vulnerable on their heels. A new Commissioner of Police had in 1954 pledged to “rip the cover off all of London’s filth spots” and initiated a nation-wide campaign designed to dramatically increase the number of arrests for homosexual behavior. One of those caught up in the sweep was the legendary actor John Gielgud. After his arrest for “importuning” and subsequent conviction on a less serious charge, he briefly contemplated suicide. Although he resolved ultimately to carry on with his career, he was most apprehensive up until returning to the stage in Liverpool over the reaction he would receive. In the end, he was given a standing ovation. That being said, few could doubt that while the existing laws remained on the books, potential persecution and punishment were ongoing spectres. In such an environment, Shelagh Delaney and Basil Dearborn, and the writers and actors who brought Victim to the screen played a welcome and valuable role in helping to change attitudes amongst the lawmakers and general public.
About Rob Normey
