Osborne, John (John James Osborne), 1929–94, English dramatist. He began his theatrical career as an actor and playwright in provincial English repertory theaters. Osborne's plays usually focus on an individual character and the sheer force of his language rather than on action. His first commercial success was Look Back in Anger (1956), concerning a restless and vociferous young man of the working class who is at war with himself and society; it became the seminal work for the so-called angry young men angry young men, term applied to a group of English writers of the 1950s whose heroes share certain rebellious and critical attitudes toward society. This phrase, which was originally taken from the title of Leslie Allen Paul's autobiography, Angry Young Man
..... Click the link for more information. . His other plays depict the frustration of living without hope in a world filled with false values. Among Osborne's other plays are The Entertainer (1957), Luther (1961), Inadmissible Evidence (1964), A Patriot for Me (1965), The End of Me Old Cigar (1974), Watch It Come Down (1976), and Déjà vu (1991). He also wrote the screenplay for Tom Jones (1963).

Bibliography

See his autobiographies, A Better Class of Person (1981) and Almost a Gentleman (1994); studies by H. Goldstone (1982) and A. P. Hinchliffe (1984).

Osborne, John (James)

John Osborne

(credit: UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos)

(born Dec. 12, 1929, London, Eng.—died Dec. 24, 1994, Shropshire) British playwright and film producer. Initially an actor, he cowrote his first play, The Devil Inside Him (1950), with Stella Linden. His Look Back in Anger (1956; film, 1959) ushered in a spate of vigorously realistic plays about contemporary British working-class life, making Osborne the first of the postwar Angry Young Men. His next play, The Entertainer (1957; film, 1960), told the story of a failing music-hall comedian; it was commissioned by the actor Laurence Olivier, who starred in the stage and film versions. Osborne wrote the screenplay for the film Tom Jones (1963, Academy Award), and his other plays include Luther (1961) and Inadmissible Evidence (1964).