The Killing of Sister George is a 1964 play by Frank Marcus. It was adapted into a 1968 film, starring Beryl Reid in the title role. It is mainly noted for its lesbian undertones. Both stage and film versions are fairly well known. 1964 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... A play is a common form of literature, usually consisting chiefly of dialog between characters, and usually intended for performance rather than reading. ... 1968 was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ... Beryl Reid was the daughter of Scottish parents and grew up in industrial Manchester, England. ... A lesbian is a homosexual woman. ...

The central character is a female actor who plays a nurse, Sister George, in a long-running radio series. She shares a house with a younger, somewhat immature woman, Childie; their relationship contains curious elements of psychological sado-masochism.

George discovers that there are plans to kill off her character in the radio series.

Although it is strongly implied that George and Childie are lesbians, as is a third woman who appears, this is never explicitly stated. The author intended the play as a farce, not a serious treatment of lesbianism, but because there was so little material about lesbians at the time it became regarded as such.

The film version was a fairly faithful adaptation. However it changed Sister George's series into a TV programme. It also briefly showed George and Childie attending a social event with a large number of other women, implying that they were part of a wider lesbian community, not found in the stage version.

Curiously, some elements of the plot (though not the lesbian elements) were similar to an episode of Hancock, The Bowmen, where he played a radio actor. Both appear to be loosely inspired by the killing of Grace Archer in The Archers. Hancocks Half Hour was a famous BBC radio comedy series of the 1950s starring Tony Hancock. ... The Archers is a British radio soap opera broadcast on the BBCs main national spoken-word radio channel, Radio 4. ...

See also

• List of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender-related films

This is a list of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender-related films. ...

External link

• IMDB entry