A Look at Playwriting John Osborne: The Angry Young Man


JOHN JAMES OSBORNE was born in London on December 12, 1929 to Thomas Godfrey, a Welsh commercial artist, and Nellie Beatrice, a Cockney barmaid. He loved his father deeply, but felt great disdain for his mother. He blamed her lower-class roots as part of his inability to succeed. When his father died in 1941, John was determined to get away from his mother, so he used his inheritance to attend boarding school at Belmont College in Devon. He soon became unhappy there as well. After striking the headmaster, he left and moved back in with his mother. He soon began tutoring children in a touring theatre company, where he discovered his passion for the theatre. He began acting, worked as an actor-manager, and then tried his hand at playwriting.


Osborne wrote what he knew—the plight of being young, educated, and fi lled with contempt for the disappointing results of welfare reform, unfair class structure, and living in the harsh aftermath of World War II while being too young to have participated in it. He expressed his anger toward his mother, wives, and even children in his writing. In Look Back in Anger, he voices his complaints through the character of Jimmy Porter but does not propose any solution for these frustrations. This play was particularly based on his turbulent marriage to Pamela Lane, to whom he was married at the time he wrote it (and whom he left to marry Mary Ure, ironically, the actress playing Alison). In total, John Osborne experienced four troubled marriages before entering into his fi fth, fi nal and only happy marriage to Helen Dawson.


Look Back in Anger received a wide range of reviews when it was fi rst produced: some berated it for its vulgarity and lack of polish; others praised it for its exciting, new, and unique voice. He wrote many plays concerning these unfortunate and volatile characters and even revisited the iconic Jimmy in his last play, Déjà Vu, in 1992. He died of diabetes on December 24, 1994 at the age of 65.


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