Historical records matching William Peter Blatty
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About William Peter Blatty
William Peter Blatty, author of the novel The Exorcist and writer of its film adaptation, has died aged 89.
Blatty was most famous for his 1971 horror story, which told the story of a child possessed by a demon. The image of the demonic Regan became iconic among horror fans and the novel was a huge bestseller, remaining on the New York Times bestseller list for 57 straight weeks and at the No 1 spot for 17 of them. In 1973, Blatty won an Oscar for his screenplay of his own book and later wrote and directed a film sequel, 1990’s The Exorcist III.
Blatty died on Thursday at a hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, where he lived. The news was announced on social media by Exorcist director William Friedkin on Friday. Blatty’s widow, Julie Alicia Blatty, told the Associated Press the cause of death was multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer.
Hollywood paid tribute online immediately when the news was announced, with director Edgar Wright declaring Blatty “peerless” and horror writer Stephen King crediting him for writing “the great horror novel of our time”.
Born in New York in 1928 to Lebanese immigrant parents, Blatty was raised by his devoutly Catholic mother after his father left when he was three. After completing a master’s in English literature, he worked as a door-to-door salesman for a vacuum cleaner company, a beer truck driver and as a ticket agent for United Airlines before enlisting in the US Air Force. He later joined the United States Information Agency as an editor stationed in Beirut, before leaving his career behind to focus on writing in the late 1950s.
His 1960 autobiography, Which Way to Mecca, Jack? was followed by several comic novels, including I, Billy Shakespeare (1965), and Twinkle, Twinkle, “Killer” Kane (1966). While his writing was well received by critics – Marvin Levin in the New York Times wrote: “Nobody can write funnier lines than William Peter Blatty, a gifted virtuoso who writes like (SJ) Perelman” – sales and commercial recognition had yet to come.
After winning $10,000 on Groucho Marx’s gameshow You Bet Your Life and telling the host he planned to take some time off to “work on a novel”, Blatty wrote and published The Exorcist in 1971. Despite receiving excellent reviews, Blatty later claimed the publisher, Harper and Row had deemed it a failure and that copies were being returned from bookstores by “the carload” until sales took off. The 1973 film, which sparked a hysterical wave of vomiting, fainting and fits in cinemas across the world, won two Academy Awards and four Golden Globes.
After the success of the book and film of The Exorcist, Blatty reworked Twinkle, Twinkle, “Killer” Kane! into a new book called The Ninth Configuration in 1978. He adapted, directed and produced a film version two years later. A meditation on God’s existence, the film was described as “the finest large-scale American surrealist film ever made” by Peter Travers in People magazine. It was nominated for three Golden Globes in 1981 and won the best writing award against The Elephant Man, Ordinary People and Raging Bull.
Blatty eventually returned to his Exorcist universe, writing a 1983 sequel called Legion. A film sequel to his original, Exorcist II: The Heretic, had flopped at the box office six years before, and Blatty’s own sequel ignored it entirely, instead forming the basis for the next in the film series, The Exorcist III.
In 1999, Blatty lamented that the Exorcist franchise had killed all appetite for his humour. “The sad truth is that nobody wants me to write comedy,” he said in an interview. “The Exorcist not only ended that career, it expunged all memory of its existence.”
Blatty continued to write well into his eighties, releasing novels Elsewhere, Dimiter and Crazy in 2009 and 2010. He remained a committed Catholic, writing of his mother in 2015: “My mother’s faith in God which radiated out from her like sunlight. More things were wrought by Mama’s prayers than even Tennyson dreamed.” In 2012, Blatty sued his alma mater, Georgetown University, as he claimed it was failing to adhere to its Catholic identity. He later filed a canonical petition directly to the Vatican, receiving a response from an archbishop in 2014 who called it “a well-founded complaint.”
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William Peter Blatty's Timeline
| 1928 |
January 7, 1928
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New York, New York, United States
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| 1987 |
May 17, 1987
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| 2017 |
January 12, 2017
Age 89
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Bethesda, Montgomery County, Maryland, United States
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