Osborne, John

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. 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).

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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).

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Osborne, John 

Born Dec. 12, 1929, in London. British playwright.

Osborne was initially an actor. He began writing in the late 1940’s, collaborating with A. Creighton on The Devil Inside (1949) and other works. The premiere of Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger in 1956 (Russian translation, 1959) is considered the beginning of the literary movement of the “angry young men.” In the play, Osborne depicts postwar British youth, who reject traditional bourgeois values with bitterness and contempt but see no goals worth struggling for. In his subsequent plays (The Entertainer, 1957; Inadmissible Evidence, 1964; West of Suez, 1969; A Sense of Detachment, 1973), Osborne portrays with cutting irony and emotion the crisis of contemporary British intelligentsia and scathingly criticizes the sociopolitical system and social mores of Great Britain.

Osborne’s plays combine elements of naturalism with features reminiscent of B. Brecht; farcical devices are also used along with psychological characterization. The character of Martin Luther in Osborne’s historical tragedy Luther (1961) is also presented as an “angry young man.”

WORKS

The World of Paul Slickey. London, 1959.
Plays for England. London, 1963.
A Patriot for Me. London, 1965.
In Russian translation:
“Nepodsudnoe delo.” Inostrannaia literatura, 1967, no. 7.

REFERENCES

Palievskii, P. “Odinokie medvedi.” Inostrannaia literatura, 1958, no. 2.
Shestakov, D. Sovremennaia angliiskaia drama. Moscow, 1968.
Trussler, S. The Plays of John Osborne. London, 1969. (Bibliography.)
Carter, A. John Osborne. Edinburgh, 1969. (Bibliography.)

I. M. LEVIDOVA