John Osborne

John James Osborne (12 December 1929 – 24 December 1994) was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor, and entrepreneur. Born in London, he briefly worked as a journalist before starting out in theatre as a stage manager and actor. He lived in poverty for several years before his third produced play, Look Back in Anger (1956), brought him national fame. Based on his volatile relationship with his first wife, Pamela Lane, it marked him as part of a wider cultural and literary movement in post-WWII Britain known as kitchen sink realism, which utilised social realist depictions of domestic situations to address disillusionment with British society in the waning years of the Empire. The phrase “angry young man,” used by theatrical press officer George Fearon to describe the play, was subsequently used as the name for a loosely-defined group of predominantly working class and left wing writers within this movement, with Osborne considered its leading figure. The Entertainer (1957), Luther (1961), and Inadmissable Evidence (1964) were also well-received, Luther winning the 1964 Tony Award for Best Play. Reception to his later plays was overall less favourable, and he returned to acting via a handful of film roles in the 1970s, most notably as crime boss Cyril Kinnear in Get Carter (1971) and an Arborian Priest in Flash Gordon (1980), both directed by Mike Hodges. In 1958 he partnered with Look Back in Anger director Tony Richardson and film producer Harry Saltzman to form Woodfall Film Productions, in order to produce the 1959 film adaptation of Anger, also directed by Richardson. Under Richardson’s leadership, Woodfall went on to produce some of the most celebrated British films of the 1960s, many of them part of the British New Wave which grew out of kitchen sink realism. These include the Osborne adaptations the Entertainer (1960), and Inadmissible Evidence (1968), both written or co-written by Osborne, as well as Tom Jones (1963), for which he won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar.