9 min read
Reading time
1,756
Words
Published
4
Awards
William Peter Blatty won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Exorcist 1973, based on his own best-selling novel. He also wrote and directed The Ninth Configuration 1980 and wrote The Exorcist III 1990. Blatty’s career began with a hoax on Groucho Marx’s quiz show in 1950, where he won $10,000 to fund his writing. He died on January 12, 2017, at age 89 in Bethesda, Maryland.
Names, aliases, and relatives of William Peter Blatty — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
William Peter Blatty by the numbers — life, work, and family.
William Peter Blatty — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Peter Blatty, a carpenter, and Mary Mouakod Blatty, Lebanese immigrants, had William Peter Blatty on January 7, 1928, in New York City. When William was six, his father deserted the family, leaving his mother to raise five children alone. Blatty won a scholarship to Georgetown University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1950, and later a master’s degree in English from George Washington University in 1954.
Blatty broke into entertainment with a now-famous appearance on You Bet Your Life 1950, posing as an Arab sheik and fooling Groucho Marx, winning $10,000 that he used to take a year off and write a novel. That novel became The Exorcist, published in 1971, which he adapted into the 1973 film. The film earned Blatty the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and a Saturn Award for Best Writing. He also wrote and directed The Ninth Configuration 1980, which won the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay, and wrote The Exorcist III 1990.
Blatty married four times: to Mary Margaret Rigard in 1950, Elizabeth Gilman from 1967 to 1971, Linda Blatty from 1975 to 1980, and Julie Alicia Witbrodt from 1983 until his death in 2017. He had one child, J.T. Blatty. In the early 1970s, he became friends with actress Tippi Hedren, who named a lion after him. Hedren helped launch The Exorcist, but a profit dispute later ended their friendship.
The Exorcist redefined the horror genre and won Blatty an Academy Award. He received the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2002 and the Audie Award for Narration by the Author. His screenplay for The Exorcist is studied as a masterclass in adaptation. Blatty is credited with bringing demonic possession to mainstream cinema.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by William Peter Blatty — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
A wall of memorable lines from William Peter Blatty — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
How Many Husbands and Wives Must Believe They Have Fallen Out of Love Because Their Hearts No Longer Race at the Sight of Their Beloveds?
I Think Belief in God Is Not a Matter of Reason at All; I Think It Is Finally a Matter of Love; of Accepting the Possibility That God Could Love Us.
Being a Catholic, I Believe That We All Have a Foot in Two Worlds. the One That We’re Conscious of Is in Time, but Now and Then a Freak Like Me Gets a Flash from the Other Foot, and That One, I Think, Is in Eternity, Where Time Does Not Exist and so the Future and the Past Are Both the Present. so Now and Again When I’m Feeling a Tingling in That Other Foot, I Believe That I’m Seeing the Future.
We Mourn the Blossoms of May Because They Are to Wither; but We Know That May Is One Day to Have Its Revenge Upon November, by the Revolution of That Solemn Circle Which Never Stops – Which Teaches Us in Our Height of Hope, Ever to Be Sober, and in Our Depth of Desolation, Never to Despair.
Each Hour, as It Comes, Is but a Testimony How Fleeting, yet How Secure, How Certain, Is the Great Whole. It Is Like an Image on the Waters, Which Is Ever the Same, Though the Waters Ever Flow.
And yet Even from Evil – There Will Finally Come Good in Some Way; in Some Way That We May Never Understand or Even See. Perhaps Evil Is the Crucible of Goodness … and Perhaps Even Satan – Satan, in Spite of Himself – Somehow Serves to Work Out the Will of God.
Little-known facts about William Peter Blatty — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Long before The Exorcist, Blatty duped Groucho Marx on the quiz show You Bet Your Life 1950 by posing as an Arab sheik with an unknown number of wives. Groucho was fooled, and Blatty won $10,000, which he used to write a novel.
After becoming friends with Tippi Hedren in the early 1970s, she named one of her lions Billy after him. She gave him a copy of his unpublished novel The Exorcist and stayed up reading it, then urged her husband Noel Marshall to represent Blatty. For the first edition, Hedren took the author photo. A later profit dispute over the film ended their friendship.
Blatty served in the U.S. Air Force Psychological Warfare Division from 1951 to 1954.
He called the film Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist 2005 a handsome, classy, elegant piece of work in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.
His parents, Peter Blatty a carpenter and Mary Mouakod Blatty, were Lebanese immigrants. His father left the family when William was six, and his mother raised five children alone.
He won a scholarship to Georgetown University, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1950, and later a master’s degree in English from George Washington University in 1954.
He was the father of Billy Blatty.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about William Peter Blatty.
Celebrities similar to William Peter Blatty — same craft, ranked by reach.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
