Playwright Harold Pinter died 24 December 2008 of cancer (he’d been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus in 2001). Born in the East End of London on 10 October 1930, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. In addition to his more than 30 plays (written between 1957 and 2000), he also wrote screenplays, and was a director, actor (both stage and screen), and producer. Pinter also won a Tony Award for Best Play (for The Homecoming, 1967), and was nominated for two others (he also received one nomination for directing). He also won two BAFTA Awards for Best Screenplay (The Pumpkin Eater won in 1965, and The Go-Between won in 1972), and was nominated for five other BAFTAs, two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and an Edgar Award (all for screenwriting).
The New York Times, in a long, in-depth obituary, says Pinter’s “gifts for finding the ominous in the everyday and the noise within silence made him the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation.” Rather than recapitulating that obituary, which covers his life and drama career very well, we invite readers to read it there.
Pinter’s sf/f/h appearances, however, go unmentioned in that obituary. We can only add that Pinter had a small role in the 1982 film Doll’s Eye, and, of more interest to our readers, that he wrote the screenplay for the 1990 film adaptation The Handmaid’s Tale (which was based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name, and starred Natasha Richardson and Faye Dunaway).
He is survived by his second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser. He married his first wife, Vivien Merchant, in 1956 (they divorced in 1980); their son, Daniel (who has taken the last name Brand, from his mother’s family) survives him as do Lady Antonia, and his six stepchildren.