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Film reveals that he donated the bulk of his considerable fortune to Aids charities while living like a pauper in one room
John Hurt as Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp biopic An Englishman in New York
An Englishman in New York, the sequel to 1975's groundbreaking biopic The Naked Civil Servant, will be receive its television premiere on ITV1 on December 28.
John Hurt once again plays Quentin Crisp, whose extraordinary early life as a flamboyant, even exhibitionistic, effeminate homosexual and wit in the inter-war period was covered in the first film. The Naked Civil Servant concluded in the late 1960s, by which time Crisp had become, in his own words, "one of the stately homos of England".
While the first film dealt largely with the prejudice, threats of imprisonment and violence that Crisp encountered in London, An Englishman in New York follows his life as a lionised gay celebrity there from his arrival at the age of 73 in 1981.
Its major revelation is that Crisp, who at first, in a characteristically outrageous utterance, discounted Aids as "a passing fad, nothing more", and was ostracised as a result, donated the bulk of his million-dollar fortune to Aids charities.
"It's my feeling that he hadn't quite engaged with how important Aids was going to be," Hurt told the Radio Times. "He thought it was a passing thing, as so many people did...It wasn't in his personal remit to himself to say he was wrong."
Crisp, who died in 1999, "made his own quiet restitution" for his mistake about Aids, said Hurt. "He lived like a pauper in one room, but had amassed an enormous amount of money in the bank, which he was secretly passing off to Aids causes. That's something he would never have allowed to be seen. But I'm glad it's seen in the film."
The film shows Crisp, in a typically defiant quip, claiming that his regular donations to the charity Amfar were made "because it has long been an ambition of mine to meet Miss Taylor", referring to Elizabeth Taylor, the movie star and early Aids campaigner.
