page_title: John Osborne
section_title: The Entertainer and into the 1960s
hierarchical_section_title: John Osborne / The Entertainer and into the 1960s
caption_attribution_description: English: Graphite drawing on card
context_page_description: John James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter and actor, known for his excoriating prose and intense critical stance towards established social and political norms. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre.
  In a productive life of more than 40 years, Osborne explored many themes and genres, writing for stage, film and TV. His personal life was extravagant and iconoclastic. He was notorious for the ornate violence of his language, not only on behalf of the political causes he supported but also against his own family, including his wives and children.
  Osborne was one of the first writers to address Britain's purpose in the post-imperial age. During his peak, he helped make contempt an acceptable onstage emotion.
context_section_description: When he first saw Look Back in Anger, Laurence Olivier was dismissive, viewing the play as unpatriotic and bad theatre, "a travesty on England". At the time, Olivier was making a film of Rattigan's The Prince and the Showgirl co-starring Marilyn Monroe, and she was accompanied to London by her then-husband Arthur Miller. Olivier asked the American dramatist what plays he might want to see in London. Based on its title, Miller suggested Osborne's work; Olivier tried to dissuade him, but the playwright was insistent and the two of them saw it together.
  Miller found the play revelatory, and they went backstage to meet Osborne. Olivier was impressed by the American's reaction, and asked Osborne for a part in his next play. John Heilpern suggests the great actor's about-face was due to a midlife crisis, Olivier seeking a new challenge after decades of success in Shakespeare and other classics, and fearful of losing his pre-eminence to this new kind of theatre. George Devine, artistic director of the Royal Court, sent Olivier the incomplete script of The Entertainer (1957, film version released in 1960) and Olivier initially wanted to play Billy Rice, the lead character's decent elderly father. On seeing the finished script, he changed his mind and took the central role as failing music-hall performer Archie Rice, playing to great acclaim both at the Royal Court and then in the West End.
  The Entertainer uses the metaphor of the dying music hall tradition and its eclipse by early rock and roll to comment on the moribund state of the British Empire and its eclipse by the power of the United States, something flagrantly revealed during the Suez Crisis of November 1956 that elliptically forms the backdrop to the play. An experimental piece, The Entertainer was interspersed with music hall performances. Most critics praised the development of an exciting writing talent:
  A real pro is a real man, all he needs is an old backcloth behind him and he can hold them on his own for half an hour. He's like the general run of people, only he's a lot more like them than they are themselves, if you understand me.
  The words are Billy Rice's, though as with much of Osborne's work they could be said to represent his own sentiments, as with this quote from Look Back in Anger:
  Oh, heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm—that's all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice cry out 'Hallelujah! Hallelujah. I'm alive!'
  Osborne followed The Entertainer with The World of Paul Slickey (1959) a musical that satirizes the tabloid press, the unusual television documentary play A Subject of Scandal and Concern (1960), and the double bill Plays for England, comprising The Blood of the Bambergs and Under Plain Cover (1962).
  Luther, depicting the life of Martin Luther, the archetypal rebel of an earlier century, was first performed in 1961; it transferred to Broadway and won Osborne a Tony Award. Inadmissible Evidence was first performed in 1964. In between these plays, Osborne won an Oscar for his 1963 screenplay adaptation of Tom Jones. A Patriot for Me (1965) drawing on the Austrian Redl case, is a tale of turn-of-the-century homosexuality and espionage which helped to end (along with Saved by Edward Bond) the system of theatrical censorship under the Lord Chamberlain.
  Both A Patriot For Me and The Hotel in Amsterdam (1968) won Evening Standard Best Play of the Year awards. The latter play features three showbiz couples in a hotel suite, having fled a tyrannical and unpleasant movie producer, referred to as "K.L." John Heilpern confirms the rumour that "K.L." was in fact a portrait of Tony Richardson, seen through Osborne's eyes. Laurie, a screenwriter, a role created by Paul Scofield, is a self-portrait: Osborne at mid-career.
caption: Osborne by Irish artist Reginald Gray, London (1957)
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