Kenneth Peacock Tynan was an English theatre critic and writer.
34 Facts About Kenneth Tynan
2.
In 1963, Tynan was appointed as the new National Theatre Company's literary manager.
3.
Kenneth Tynan had a stammer that was more pronounced as a child.
4.
Kenneth Tynan possessed early on a high degree of articulate intelligence.
5.
Kenneth Tynan was twelve at the outbreak of the Second World War.
6.
At Magdalen College, Oxford, Kenneth Tynan lived flamboyantly but was already beginning to suffer from the effects of his heavy smoking.
7.
Kenneth Tynan produced and acted in plays, spoke "brilliantly" at the Oxford Union, wrote for and edited college magazines.
8.
Lewis; in spite of their marked differences in outlook, Kenneth Tynan viewed him as a father figure.
9.
Kenneth Tynan's mother was obliged to return Sir Peter's body to his wife and family in Warrington for burial.
10.
When Kenneth Tynan was called up for National Service, he put on an act of appearing outrageously camp, including wearing a floppy hat, velvet coat, painted fingernails and a great deal of Yardley scent.
11.
On 25 January 1951, Kenneth Tynan married the American author Elaine Dundy after a three-month romance.
12.
Kenneth Tynan's career took off in 1952 when he was hired as a theatre critic for the London Evening Standard.
13.
Kenneth Tynan was highly critical of what he called "the Loamshire play", a genre of English country house drama he felt dominated the early 1950s British stage and was wasting the talents of playwrights and actors.
14.
Kenneth Tynan espoused a new theatrical realism, best exemplified in the works of the playwrights who became known as the "Angry Young Men".
15.
From 1956 to 1958, Kenneth Tynan was the script editor for Ealing Studios, and co-wrote, with Seth Holt, the film Nowhere to Go.
16.
Kenneth Tynan commissioned a film adaptation of William Golding's Lord of the Flies from Nigel Kneale, but Ealing Studios closed in 1959 before it could be produced.
17.
From 1958 to 1960, Kenneth Tynan became known in the United States by contributing "some superb reviews" to The New Yorker.
18.
Kenneth Tynan's marriage had become increasingly difficult in spite of his success.
19.
Kenneth Tynan threw the man's clothes down a lift shaft.
20.
Kenneth Tynan had been highly dismissive of Olivier's achievements as artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre, which opened in 1962, but he recommended himself for the role of literary manager.
21.
When he became the National Theatre's literary manager, Kenneth Tynan ceased to be the theatre critic for The Observer, but he stayed on the paper for several more years as a film reviewer.
22.
Kenneth Tynan persuaded Olivier to play the title role in Shakespeare's Othello, something the actor had always been reluctant to do: Olivier's Othello opened at the National Theatre in 1964 to glowing reviews, and was filmed in 1965.
23.
On 13 November 1965, Kenneth Tynan participated in a live TV debate, broadcast as part of the BBC's late-night satirical show BBC-3.
24.
Private Eye joked that Kenneth Tynan's stammer made it the first three-syllable four-letter word on British television.
25.
Mary Whitehouse, a frequent critic of the BBC over issues of "morals and decency", wrote a letter to the Queen, suggesting that Kenneth Tynan should be reprimanded by having "his bottom spanked".
26.
In 1960, "after much manoeuvring", Kenneth Tynan got the four-letter word into The Observer in an article about the Lady Chatterley trial.
27.
Kenneth Tynan fiercely opposed censorship and was determined to break taboos he considered arbitrary.
28.
Kenneth Tynan suffered a serious personal defeat in the National's internal battles over his support for the Rolf Hochhuth play Soldiers, a controversial work highly critical of Winston Churchill, whose National Theatre production was eventually cancelled.
29.
Kenneth Tynan researched and wrote half a book on Wilhelm Reich.
30.
Kenneth Tynan was listed at number 3 in Time Outs "Top 30 chart of London's most erotic writers" in 2008.
31.
Kenneth Tynan convinced her to leave her husband and live with him.
32.
On 30 June 1967, before a New Jersey Justice of the Peace, Kenneth Tynan married a six-month pregnant Halton, with Marlene Dietrich as witness.
33.
Kenneth Tynan formed a relationship with a woman to enact sado-masochistic fantasies, sometimes involving both of them cross-dressing, sometimes hiring prostitutes as "extras" in elaborate scenes.
34.
On 26 July 1980, Kenneth Tynan died in Santa Monica, California, of pulmonary emphysema, aged 53.