Biography

[b]The Hackney Child[/b][br /]
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Harold Pinter was born on October 10, 1930 in Hackney to Jack Pinter, a hard-working ladies’ tailor who went on to establish his own firm in Stoke Newington, and his wife Frances. Hackney is just beyond the borders of traditional East End. In The Queen Of All The Fairies, an unpublished autobiography written in his early 20s, Pinter recalls his youth at Hackney :[br /]
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"It brimmed over with milk-bars, Italian cafes, 50 shilling tailors and barber shops. Prams and busy ramshackle stalls dogged up the main street along with street violinist, trumpeters, and match-sellers. Many Jews lived in the district, noisy but candid; mostly taxi drivers and pressers, machinists and cutters who steamed all day in their workshop ovens. Up the hills lived the richer, the ‘better-class’ Jews, strutting with their mink-coats and American suits and ties. Bookmakers, jewelers and furriers with gown shops in Great Portland Street."[br /]
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The Pinter family was among the immigrant Jews that reached East End and then ultimately towards North London boroughs of Hackney, Ishington and stoke Newington. Pinters were sephardic Jews of perhaps Spanish or Portuguese origin and the original name of Pinter was Pinto, da Pinto or da Pinta.[br /]
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Harold’s paternal side had artistic leaning while his maternal side was noted for its entrepreneurial flair. His maternal grandfather, though barely able to write his name, lived off his wits. While passing through pawnshops, if he saw trousers in the window he would buy them and then renovate them. He thus created his own clothing business. When his first wife died he married Rose Franklin, who was a Polish born and they had four children. Harold’s mother was the eldest. Second child Ben met a tragic end while the third child Judah was an ‘enormous ox of a man’ who became an East End boxer, popularly known as Joe Mann. He was the black sheep of the family. It was uncle Judah who left the most indelible and remarkable impact on young Harold. He recalled :[br /]
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"This is a true story and it happened about 1940 or ’41. I never saw Uncle Judah fight but he definitely was a boxer – whether professional or not, I don’t know. But he fought in the East End and lived for a while round the corner from my parent’s house in Thistelewaite Road. At that time, my grandmother Rose was living with us during the Blitz. We had the Morrison shelter and incendiaries in the back garden and all that. Anyway, one day Judah disappeared. He didn’t die in raid or anything. He simply moved out of his room. He’d gone. My grandmother and mother were absolutely appalled. He didn’t say good-bye or anything. He didn’t explain himself. About seven or eight months later, my grandmother, my mother and I were walking along the street by Clapton Pond. I was about 11. Suddenly a great big dustbin-van passed and on it was Judah. He was just hanging off the back of this dust-bin-van. My mother and grandmother looked up and I was agape. They cried out loudly "JUDAH!" and he looked at the three of us and unequivocally raised two fingers and van went on…and we never saw him again…I’ve been looking for him all my life and I’ve never found him.’[br /]
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[b]Jewish Background[/b][br /]
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Harold’s upbringing was in a large extended family. Constant get-togethers took place at the paternal grandparents’ residence. Mostly the big event was – "the Jewish festival commemorating the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage". Everybody including young Harold, participated in the ritual of the symbolic descent of the Angel of Death, which was followed by a long, and remarkably dramatic pause. Grandma Fanny was always the life and soul of such get-togethers.[br /]
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But as in every family, they had their own problems and tensions. Pinter’s paternal side was Orthodox Jewish, while the maternal side was much more secular and skeptical. Once when Harold’s mother was asked if she was going to a synagogue, she firmly replied, "No, the synagogue is for those who feel they have a strong sense of sin.[br /]
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" Probably, for this reason, she never approved of Grandma Fanny’s attitude to domesticity. However, the gatherings were cheerful in spite of the blending of music loving Pinters (paternal) with the noisy, robustly extrovert Franklin’s (maternal).[br /]
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[b]Childhood Days[/b][br /]
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Harold was not only the part of a large extended family, but he was also the sole son of loving Jewish parents. His natural capacity for introversion made him the exclusive focus of attention. At the age of six he was admitted to an elementary school. At this early age he developed a capacity for imaginative dialogue.[br /]
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"I don’t know," he said, "how it would have changed my life if I’d had brothers and sisters, but I can say one thing. I created a small body of imagery friends in the back garden when I was about eight or nine. We had a lilac tree with an arch and beyond that arch was an untended piece of garden. I made that my home where I met these invisible friends who certainly weren’t brothers and sisters but were definitely all boys. I had this total fantasy life in which we talked aloud and held conversations beyond the lilac tree. There was also – still is apparently – a laundry at the back of the garden so I was having this fantasy life with the laundry roaring away." This isolation demanded the creation of characters and exchange of dialogues. The image of the back garden was rooted in Harold’s mind and it reflected in his autobiographical novel The Dwarfs ("The sun was setting. Lilac hung heavy on the arched tree. The garden flickered.").[br /]
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[b]Evacuation[/b][br /]
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For all his tendency to isolation, his place became a refuge for love, warmth and security. This childhood idyll was disturbed by the outbreak of war in 1939 and Harold had to leave his Hackney home as a part of a nationwide evacuation process. Twenty-four other children and Harold were sent to John Nash (a fabricated castle) from the elementary school. The sudden expulsion of these children separated from a secured home and maternal affection was a traumatic and disturbing experience. For him, a solitary, sensitive nine-year-old boy, the experience was no different from others. However, some working class city kids were happy to get exposed to rural life. For Harold, the disturbing experience blended with magical eye opening encounter of rural life and his tendency to introspect blossomed. At the same time his awareness to sounds and images, permeated his later life and work.[br /]
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Today, what he can make out of ‘evacuation’ is nothing except loneliness, bewilderment, separation and loss, which is reflected in all his works. The boys had to sleep on uncomfortable wooden bunks set up in converted stables in the castle grounds. Mr Nelson, their teacher, who accompanied them from Hackney, was an authoritarian…"A big fat Nelly with the cast iron belly and who had a great habit of hitting you in the back with the knuckle of his middle finger extended." Often the agony would intensify with the news of death : Maurice, one of the students, was shocked to learn that his parents had been killed in a London air-raid. But for Harold, the pangs of separation were hardly distinguishable from death. The brief reunion with their family became more painful when it was time to part. For Harold’s parents, it was difficult to manage the rail fare to Cornwall. When they did, however, manage to come down, the parting ended with highly emotional and fearful farewells. Harold recalled one such incident : "On one visit when they left to get the bus it was a long way back to the lodge for me to walk. But I went all the way to the castle and looked back and could just see them as pinpoints waiting for the bus on the road; and I suddenly ran all the way back to them over the mounds of grass, racing towards them and of course they came towards me too."[br /]
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But, along with agonies, confusions and a sense of exile, evacuation certainly had a positive effect and that was the acute moment of self-realization. Once he was enjoying tea with his parents when his mother automatically gave him a cake from her own plate. This was seen by all the boys, who then started taunting him for weeks about ‘being hopelessly spoilt’. Harold, for the first time, experienced the low tactics and cruelty of boys in isolation. "I think as a result of that loss and confusion one became, generally speaking, nastier; just horrid is the word. I think we were all a bunch of horrid little boys because of the loss of security." The remote part of Cornwall made the highly sensitive Harold sullen. Yet the place had something attractive about it. Probably the image of the rhododendrons seen during the morning walks, of the lake in the castle grounds, of the glades stumbled across while walking though the greenery, the roar of the Cornish Sea with its bay. These were reflected in his later works such as A Slight Ache, Landscape, Old Times, and Moonlight. However, the deepest impact of the evacuation was the loss of identity and the sense of living in some enigmatic in-between world, an emotional and bizarre land. ‘There was’ said Pinter later, ‘no fixed sense of being…of being…at all’.[br /]
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[b]Results of Evacuation[/b][br /]
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Evacuation held a profound impact on Harold’s childhood, and is confirmed by the fact that as an adult he constantly and obsessively visited Cornwall. In his adulthood he went round the Cornwall with one of his intimate Hackneymate, Marn’s Wernick. Later, his first wife, Vivien Merchant, visited all his childhood haunts when they were on their honeymoon. Pinter revisited the places with his second wife, Antonia Fraser. He found the old converted stables, with bunk beds still existing.[br /]
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The experience was like a series of graphic snap shots lodged in Harold’s memory. Even today, while talking about his past experiences the people, places and the incidents become alive in Pinter’s imagination. When Harold came back to London he once again faced the plight of the Blitz (the German air raid on Britain in 1940). In 1941, he was again evacuated to Reading, along with his mother. At Reading, he took his School Matriculation and cleared it in second attempt. He recalled – ‘Reading was also the place where I did my eyes in through devouring books every night by candle light.’ He also had a temporary affiliation with Reading Football club that he visited every week for games. But his lifetime support was Yorkshire Cricket club. Norfolk was the place where Harold came at the end of the war. Once again the image of a country garden enrooted his memory which he later mentioned in A Slight Ache. There was a garden and lots of flowers – honeysuckle, convolvulus and so on – the like of which I’d never seen before. There wasn’t a match-seller…but that opening image came from Norfolk and, in a sense, triggered the play."[br /]
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[b]Influence of War[/b][br /]
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His intense sense of death was the result of a childhood that lived through war. The influence of war helped speed up Harold’s transition from boyhood to early manhood. He became a straightforward patriot. But his own stubborn independence overpowered his faith.[br /]
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For other young boys the experience was fearful and horrible. "They stopped being child and came face to face with the reality of the world." Though sporadic, the bombardment was intense. Air-raid warnings never stopped. The blackout added fear to the atmosphere. They lived in the world where it was totally dark after five o’clock in winter. Even the traffic lights were dimmed and one had to find his way with torches. They thought their lives could end any moment. He recalled : "Of course you tried to get on with whatever the hell you were doing, but fear was definitely about…at one point we were all evacuated from one house when there was a raid, and we opened the door and that famous garden I told you about was alight all along the laundry wall including the lilac tree. We were evacuated straight away. Though not before I took my cricket bat !"[br /]
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Sexually, he was always precocious. He could remember himself as a 12-year-old boy, huddling up to a girl in her 20s, in a Morrison shelter during a wartime air raid. When he turned 13, he fell in love with a 14-year-old girl. This incident developed his inherent taste for drama. "I didn’t know what to do about it," he recalled, "I kept seeing this girl pass up and down the street. I couldn’t speak to her. So I phoned her pretending to be an American soldier and said how much I admired her. I put on an American accent and said I would be at the gates of Springfield Park, which was quite close by, at a certain time." She said, ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing in all my life. How dare you ? Who are you ?’ And so on. Anyway, I went to the gates of Springfield Park and she turned up. I remember it well because it was a drizzly day and she came to the gates and saw me standing there forlornly in a raincoat and cried out, ‘Harold Pinter ! What on earth are you doing here?’ He later said, ‘I just wanted to see her, and we had a tortured relationship that lasted through the year.’[br /]
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The war turned out to be a turning point in Harold’s life. The cosseted-protected boy grew up with a sense of precariousness and fragility. The emotional boy, swathed in affection of a large family, saw in himself the development of what Proust called ‘involuntary memory’. "The idea that a fragment of one’s experience, suddenly overtaking one or conjured up from the depths of one’s consciousness, can convey the full quality of the past", explained eminent biographer Michael Billington. He further added "Like many children who grew up in wartime, Pinter had a strong sense of life’s drama and impermanence; and like any incipient artist, he was alert to the significance of his own experience."[br /]
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[b]School Days[/b][br /]
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Harold was at Hackney Downs Grammar School from 1944 to 1948, the period of acute self-realization. He highly admired Joseph Brearly, his English teacher, who was not only his counselor and intellectual mentor but also a lifelong good friend. There was a series of long walk during which they discussed passages from Webster. Later, when Pinter received David Cohen British Literature Prize, he recalled : "That language made me dizzy. Joe Brearly fired my imagination. I can never forget him." However, the most significant role of Brearly was to discover the gift of acting in Harold. He directed him as ‘Macbeth’ and ‘Romeo’.[br /]
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The Grammar school days was a golden period in Harold’s life when he became almost a charismatic figure. Already infatuated by poetry and fiction, he now gradually developed his power of drama. Acting stimulated his desire for theatre while sport satisfied his intense competitive instinct. Cricket was his prime passion. He was a stylish batsman and never missed the radio commentaries from Australia during the 1947 winter. Soccer too was his passion. ‘At school’, he said, ‘I was also a fairly good soccer player…center-forward…I was on occasion a bit of a cheat. On one immortal occasion in a house match…I never forget it…I cried out in agony and collapsed. The whole game stopped…and I got up and continued and scored a goal. It was disgraceful…But my one real strength was sprinting. It’s true I didn’t really train but I was fast…I think this is why I lost contact with a friend I’d made around the age of 12 called Barry Supple. When I was 16 I beat him in the 220 yards and broke the school record. He trained hard and was a beautiful stylish, whereas I had no style whatsoever. I beat him by brute force…and we haven’t spoken for 50 years. He had a hell of a career and went on to become Master of a Cambridge College. But we never quite hit it off after that race and I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me."[br /]
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The Grammar school helped introverted Harold to blossom in true sense, the process that continued at Hackney Downs University also.[br /]
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He engaged himself in late night chats, showed great passion for acting and sport, and was actively involved in intellectual life. He wrote for the school magazine on various subjects like ‘the screen of the subconscious mind’ in Ulysses of James Joyce. According to him ‘A United States of Europe would be the only means of preventing war’, but later admitted that ‘War is inevitable’. He also gave his views on ‘Realism and Post-Realism in the French Cinema’ and was of the view that ‘Film is more promising as an art form than Theatre.'[br /]
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He was open enough to pass his discoveries to others. One of his intimate friend B J Law recalled about Pinter : "He had a certain cockiness. He had opinions on all manner of things and wasn’t afraid to voice them. He was given to extraordinary sweeping generalizations about literature and life. But it has to be said that it was Harold who introduced us to many of the great writers, particularly, Kafka and later on, Beckett".[br /]
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[b]A Poet Is Born[/b][br /]
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Harold’s absolution was the result of immense love for his parents. Nevertheless, at times his father got enraged at him, if he didn’t get a haircut and would snarl at him if he was slow in clearing the dinner things or his shoes. But all this reflected his parents' overwhelming love and sympathy. Harold passionately recalled a moment when he was 14, writing love poetry in the kitchen. Though it was late in the night, his father encouraged him to continue with his poetry. His friends were always welcomed to the house. Once several of his friends slept out in the garden, under the lilac tree, and one of them sang ‘Come Away Death’ and ‘When that I was and a little tiny boy’ from Twelfth Night.[br /]
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Beneath the violence and emotional fluctuations of childhood the immediate post-war period represented a golden age in Harold’s own development. He struck many friendships, learnt to challenge existing beliefs, read extensively and went to the stage of profound self-realization through acting, writing, cricket, soccer and sprinting. He often became gloomy but his vitality, great looks and intellectual energy were unquestionable. Even today he has a photo of the Hackney gang, the symbol of splendid youth, hanging on his study wall. [br /]
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[b]Drama And Art[/b][br /]
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Instead of pursuing a university career, Harold decided to join Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in Gower Street. However, he felt uncomfortable at RADA. He started bunking classes on the pretext of having a nervous breakdown and finally left RADA.[br /]
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Harold turned 18 and became eligible for National Service in the armed forces. His moral conscience did not allow him to join the services and he gave an application for deferment, which was rejected. As he didn’t turn up when summoned he was fined, first £10 and then £20. Fortunately, he was not imprisoned.[br /]
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Harold was a great admirer of Samuel Beckett and even today the enthusiasm for Beckett has not dwindled. He never forgets to send Beckett copies of the final typescripts of his plays.[br /]
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In 1950, his two poems, New Year In The Midlands and Chandeliers And Shadows were published. Due to printing errors they were again published after three months but this time under the pen name of Harold Pinta.[br /]
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[b]Attached to Media[/b][br /]
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His first professional performance was for BBC radio in the same year on Focus On Football Pools. Then came the first professional Shakespeare role of Abergavenny in Henry VIII aired BBC in 1951. Pinter than joined the Central School of Speech and Drama as an acting student. He then got registered with Anew McMaster’s company and toured Ireland. In 1953, he appeared at the King’s theatre with Donald Wolfit. He met actress Vivien Merchant (Ada Thomson) there for the first time. Under the stage name of David Baron, Pinter played Broadway comedies and mysteries in provincial repertory theatres from 1954 to 1957. In 1956, Pinter married Vivien Merchant.[br /]
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Apart from acting during these years, Pinter also engaged himself in writing poetry and fiction, which included a short story, The Black And White. He also wrote a novel called The Dwarfs, which accounted his youth in Hackney. Later on, a play was also written based on this novel with the same title.[br /]
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During a party in London, Pinter saw two men in a room. It was a conversation between a small man and a large lorry driver with his cap on. There and then he struck the idea of writing a play based on two people in a room. He composed his first play, The Room. Henry Woolf directed the play and it was premiered at Bristol. The Play was a great success. It entered The Sunday Times student drama competition. Harold Hobson, one of the judges of the competition, was highly impressed and gave his views on the play. Michael Cordon, when he read Hobson’s views about the play, made up his mind to work with Pinter.[br /]
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On January 29, 1958, son Daniel was born to Pinter and Vivien Merchant. The same day Michael Cordon gave Pinter a £50 option to produce The Birthday Party. The play opened at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge.[br /]
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The Birthday Party initially had a poor reception. But Harold Hobson was of the opinion that Pinter and the play ‘will be heard of again’.[br /]
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Pinter then himself directed The Birthday Party in Birmingham in 1959. A year later it was shown by Associated Rediffusion TV to reach millions of TV viewers.[br /]
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A Slight Ache, which was on BBC in 1959, was written in 1958. Pinter then started writing review sketches, radio plays and also TV plays. One To Another opened at Lyric Theater, which had two Pinter sketches Trouble In The Works and The Black And White. The next in line was Pieces Of Eight, with new sketches Request Stop, Last To Go, Special Offer and Getting Acquainted. In 1964, BBC aired nine sketches. A Night Out was completed in 1959 and was aired in 1960. Same year it was televised. On December 2, 1960, a radio play called The Dwarfs extracted from his unpublished novel was also televised. The Collection was telecast in 1961. The Royal Shakespeare Company staged it in 1962.[br /]
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Meanwhile, the plays originally written for the stage were produced. The Room and The Dumb Waiter were staged at the Hampstead Theatre club. The Caretaker, one of the most prominent of Pinter’s full-length plays, opened at the Arts Theatre. It became the first popular success for Pinter. The Caretaker received Evening Standard Drama Award. However, it remained a critical success and not a commercial one. It also became the first play to be filmed. The next in line to be filmed was The Birthday Party. It was directed by William Friedkin, the director of the popular movies like The French Connection and The Exorcist.[br /]
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Pinter now started writing screen adaptations of novels written by other authors. The Servant, The Pumpkin Eater, The Quiller Memorandum, The Berlin Memorandum and Accident were some of these work.[br /]
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But along with these works he never stopped his own writing of original plays. The Lover written in 1962 was televised in 1963. Tea Party was written in 1964 and was telecast on BBC in 1965. The Basement was televised in 1967.[br /]
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The Homecoming written in 1964 was his next major stage work and Royal Shakespeare Company produced it at the Aldwych Theatre, London. Pinter’s fame was now widespread and he was included in the Queen’s Birthday honors list. He was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire. The Homecoming received Antoinette Perry Award and New York Drama Critics Award.[br /]
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Landscape became a major issue before going to the stage as Pinter was not ready to make any changes or cuts demanded by Lord Chamberlain. ‘Fuck all’ was the disputed phrase for stage censorship and ‘Bugger all’ was the alternate given, but Pinter gave explanation for his refusal : ‘I need a monosyllable’. When Lord Chamberlain’s authority was gone, the Royal Shakespeare Company produced it with the original phrase at Aldwych Theatre, London.[br /]
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No Man’s Land was another full-length play written in 1974. It was produced by the National Theatre in 1975.[br /]
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When Pinter was engaged in directing Otherwise Engaged in 1975, his wife Vivien filed for divorce. The reason probably was Lady Antonia Fraser, in whom Pinter had become interested. However, Vivien withdrew the suit, but in 1980, she applied again for divorce. The same year Pinter declared that he and Lady Antonia were married. The Times quoted: ‘In suitably Pinteresque secrecy they would not say where or when the ceremony took place.’ To invalidate the new marriage, Vivien refused to sign the divorce paper. Later, she agreed to sign them, where upon Pinter and Lady Antonia married again in a grand ceremony. Betrayal opened at National Theatre. It was Pinter’s first major commercial success in American theatre. The movie Betrayal was released in 1983. The Hothouse written in 1958 opened at Hampstead Theatre Club in 1980. Pinter staged it himself.[br /]
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[b]Pinter, The Man[/b][br /]
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The more we learn about Pinter the more it becomes difficult to understand him as he is a man of infinite complexity and abundant contradictions. He experienced a few setbacks in his life, such as failure of his first marriage, his estrangement from his son and political discontent. Antonia Fraser’s love became the bedrock of his existence. His past experience of happiness successfully permitted his work and the second marriage had given him satisfaction, security and passion. And the poem written by him in 1990 confirms this fact.[br /]
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[i]What sound was that ?[br /]

I turn away, into shaking room.[br /]

What was that sound that came in on the dark ?[br /]

What is this maze of light it leaves us in[br /]

What is this stance we take,[br /]

To turn away and then turn back ?[br /]

What did we hear ?[br /]

It was the breath we took when we first met.[br /]

Listen it is here.[/i][br /]
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Apart from a successful married life, he had other things to rejoice about : poetry, cricket, friends. Currently, he is with Greville Press, where he’s been working for 20 years.[br /]
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Awards and honors have become a way of life for Pinter. He Received Moli Re D'honneur in Paris in recognition of his life's work, The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence and Bafta Fellowship, all in 1997. In 1998, he was made Companion of Literature by The RSL. He had recently been awarded with the Hermann Kesten Medallion for Outstanding Commitment on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers, awarded by German PEN, Berlin, Germany, in 2001.[br /]
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He is also the chairman and manager of the Gaieties Cricket Club, managing 22 summer fixtures they play each year. Pinter is totally devoted to the club, patrolling the boundary and encouraging and urging persistently the players for greater achievements. It seems that Pinter takes more pride in the Gaieties than in his world of plays.[br /]
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