World Cinema Strategies: Britain and America from the 1960s

In 1967, audiences had put down their money and waited breathlessly for the brief glimpse of female pubic hair in Antonioni’s Blow-Up, but the candlelit nude wrestling between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in Ken Russell’s Women in Love two years later and the nude tableaux of male and female actors in the rock musical Hair began to accustom audiences to such hitherto forbidden sights. Literature had long blazed a trail in the sexual arena, from James Joyce’s Ulysses to John Updike’s Couples (1968) with its partner-swapping lovers, while the theatre — always ahead of the cinema when it came to épater les bourgeois territory — had seen great success with Mart Crowley’s gay-themed The Boys in the Band, a show that enjoyed the imprimatur of such theatregoers as Jacqueline Kennedy. In Britain, the drama critic Kenneth Tynan — celebrated for the first use of the word ‘fuck’ on British television — was certainly not going to be outdone by American theatre producers when it came to edgy material. Inspired by the success of Hair, Tynan created the nudity-filled review Oh! Calcutta!, which resulted in the entire cast being arrested for obscene behaviour at its Los Angeles premiere. But this was no mere catchpenny endeavour written by a collection of hacks; the contributors included no less than the highly successful (and shortly to be murdered) gay playwright Joe Or ton, no stranger to outraging staid audiences with such thoroughly amoral plays as Loot and Entertaining Mr Sloane.