William Peter Blatty

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William Peter Blatty (January 7, 1928 – January 12, 2017) was an American writer and filmmaker best known for his 1971 book The Exorcist and its Academy Award-winning screenplay adaptation.

The Exorcist III was also written and directed by The Exorcist III.

Blatty reworked Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane after the success of The Exorcist. (1960) was converted into a new book titled The Ninth Configuration, which was published in 1978.

Blatty turned the novel into a film of the same name and was named Best Screenplay at the 38th Golden Globe Awards two years later.

Elsewhere (2009), Dimiter (2010), and Crazy (2010) are among his other notable works. Blatty was born and raised in New York City and earned his bachelor's degree in English from Georgetown University in 1950 and his master's degree in English literature from George Washington University.

Following completion of his master's degree in 1954, he joined the United States Air Force, where he spent time in the Psychological Warfare Division.

He worked with the US Information Agency in Beirut after serving in the air force.

Early life

Blatty was born in New York City on January 7, 1928. Mary (née Mouakad), a devout Catholic and the niece of a bishop, and Peter Blatty, a cloth cutter, was the fifth and youngest child of Lebanese immigrants, as well as a cloth cutter. When he was a toddler, his parents separated. He was raised in "comfortable destitution" by his deeply religious mother, who mainly sold homemade quince jelly in the streets of Manhattan; she once gave Franklin D. Roosevelt a jar of it; "For when you have company." Because of non-payment of rent, he lived at 28 separate addresses during his youth. In 1972, Blatty wrote, "We never stayed at the same address in New York for longer than two or three months at a time." "Eviction was the order of the day." Blatty's mother died in 1967.

On a scholarship, he attended Brooklyn Preparatory, a Jesuit academy, and graduated as class valedictorian in 1946. He later attended Georgetown University on a scholarship, where he obtained his bachelor's degree in English in 1950. "Those years at Georgetown were definitely the best years of my life," Blatty said in 2015. "I'd never had a house until then." Blatty worked menial jobs while preparing for his master's degree at George Washington University. He began working as a vacuum-cleaner, a beer trucker, and a United Airlines ticket agent, but first unable to find a job in teaching. In 1954, he received his master's in English literature from the George Washington University. He was then enlisted in the United States Air Force and subsequently enlisted.

He began Mustering Out of the Air Force and served as an editor based in Beirut, Lebanon. His writing abilities began to develop, and he began submitting humourous articles to magazines.

Personal life and death

Blatty married four times and had seven children. He had three children with Mary Margaret Rigard, his first wife, who died on February 18, 1950: Christine Ann, Michael Peter, and Mary Joanne. After 13 years of marriage, his first marriage ended in divorce. Elizabeth Gilman, his second wife, was married in 1965. He married Linda Tuero, a tennis specialist, with whom he had two children in July 1975: restaurant entrepreneur Billy and photojournalist J. T. Blatty. Blatty married Julie Alicia Witbrodt, his fourth wife, in 1983, when he had two children after the dissolution of his first three marriages. The couple remained together until Blatty's death. Blatty, who spent many years in Hollywood and Aspen, has landed in Bethesda, Maryland, in 2000.

Blatty was a Roman Catholic. He lodged a canon law lawsuit against Georgetown University, which he said has been at odds with Catholic Church teaching for decades, including speakers who promote abortion rights and challenging Pope John Paul II's instructions sent to Catholic colleges and universities in 1990. In 2014, the Vatican rejected the petition. Archbishop Angelo Zani said in a response letter to Blatty that it was because Blatty had not "suffered an objective change" at Georgetown's hands, but that Blatty's case was not "a well-founded complaint."

Blatty died of multiple myeloma at a Bethesda hospital on January 12, 2017, five days after his 89th birthday.

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Career

In the late 1950s, Blatty worked as the public relations director at Loyola University of Los Angeles and as a publicity director at the University of Southern California. He published his first book, Which Way to Mecca, Jack? in 1960, a humorous look at both his early life, and his work at the United States Information Agency in Lebanon. The book also tells of his successful masquerade as a Saudi Arabian prince when he got to Los Angeles. In 1961, while still pretending to be a prince, Blatty appeared as a contestant on the Groucho Marx quiz show You Bet Your Life, winning $10,000, enough money to quit his job and to write full-time. Thereafter, he never held a regular job.

He then published the comic novels: John Goldfarb, Please Come Home! (1963), I, Billy Shakespeare (1965), and Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane (1966). He achieved critical success with these books – Marvin Levin in the New York Times, for example, wrote: "Nobody can write funnier lines than William Peter Blatty, a gifted virtuoso who writes like [S. J.] Perelman"; but significant sales were lacking. It was at this point that Blatty began a collaboration with director Blake Edwards, writing scripts for comedy films such as: A Shot in the Dark (1964), What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966), Gunn (1967), and Darling Lili (1970), a musical starring Julie Andrews and Rock Hudson. Blatty also worked on his own using the name "Bill Blatty" writing comedy screenplays such as those for the Danny Kaye film The Man from the Diners' Club (1963), and the Warren Beatty/Leslie Caron film Promise Her Anything (1965). Other screenplays include the film adaptation of John Goldfarb, Please Come Home! (1965), and The Great Bank Robbery (1969).

Later Blatty resumed writing fiction. In 1971, he wrote The Exorcist, the story of a twelve-year-old girl possessed by a powerful demon, that topped The New York Times Best Seller list for 17 weeks and remained on the list for 57 consecutive weeks. The book sold more than 13 million copies in the United States alone and was translated into over a dozen languages. He later adapted it with director William Friedkin into the film version. Blatty went on to win an Academy Award for his Exorcist screenplay, as well as Golden Globes for Best Picture and Best Writing. It also became the first horror film ever to be nominated for the best picture Oscar.

In 1978, Blatty adapted his novel Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane into a new book titled The Ninth Configuration, and in 1980 he wrote, directed, and produced a film version, which focused on the question of the existence of God. The film was a commercial flop despite critical acclaim. Movie critic Jerry Stein called it a "masterpiece" in The Cincinnati Post, and Peter Travers described it as "the finest large-scale American surrealist film ever made" in People magazine. At the 38th Golden Globe Awards in 1981 it was nominated for three Golden Globes, and won the Best Writing Award against competition that included The Elephant Man (1980), Ordinary People (1980), and Raging Bull (1980). In 1983, Blatty wrote Legion, a sequel to The Exorcist which later became the basis of the film The Exorcist III. At first he was unable to set up the production because he wanted to direct the film. Blatty's agent, Steve Jaffe, helped package the project with producer Carter DeHaven at Morgan Creek Productions. Blatty directed the film. He originally wanted the movie version to be titled Legion, but the film's producers wanted it to be more closely linked to the original. The first sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), was disappointing both critically and commercially. Blatty had no involvement with it and his own follow-up ignored it entirely.

Blatty's son Peter Vincent Blatty died from a rare heart disorder in 2006 at the age of 19. His death was the subject of Blatty's non-fiction book that is "part comic memoir, part argument for life after death", titled, Finding Peter: A True Story of the Hand of Providence and Evidence of Life After Death (2015).

In 2011, The Exorcist was re-released in a 40th Anniversary Edition in paperback, hardcover, and audiobook formats with new cover artwork. As described by Blatty, this new, updated edition features new and revised material.

Tor/Forge have also re-published The Ninth Configuration and Legion, with new, updated cover artwork.

The Exorcist was eventually adapted into a stage play starring Richard Chamberlain and Brooke Shields in 2012 and a TV mini-series some years later. The TV series debuted on Fox in 2016. Internationally, the series premiered in Brazil on FX on September 23, 2016, the same day as in the U.S. It premiered in Australia on showcase on December 4, 2016.

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