Following on from Osborne's first autobiographical book, "A Better Class of Person", this book looks at the period 1955 to 1966. It covers the foundation of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre to the death of his artistic director and Osborne's mentor, George Devine. At the Royal Court he experienced years of high theatrical achievement and low backstage comedy. For the playwright it was a decade of baffling and often ludicrous notoriety and of emotional and matrimonial upheaval. During this period Osborne wrote "The Entertainer", "Luther", "A Portrait for Me" and "Inadmissible Evidence", was propositioned by Marlene Dietrich, spent the night in a Mexican brothel, consoled Vivien Leigh, grappled with the Lord Chamberlain in St James's Palace and won an Oscar.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Less than a Gentleman,
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This review is from: Almost a Gentleman: An Autobiography : 1955-1966 (Paperback)
Having read A better Class of Person, of course I had to buy Almost a Gentleman. This picks up the story of John Osborne's life from 1955 and continues through 1966. The book was written a couple of years before Osborne's death in 1993, and he may or may not have planned to write a concluding volume. The writing is very good, although the subject matter may pall at times for someone who wasn't in England during the "Ban the Bomb" years. Osborne's love life is a different story, and gives the lie to all the tales of the sexually repressed Englishman. He flits from one wife to another with no satisfactory explanation other than "things weren't going too well": evidently he was sexually attracted to the next one and simply dumped the previous one. As Dr. Johnson said, "a triumph of hope over experience". He has little bad to say about his former wives, other than some amusing sarcasm for Penelope Gilliat, until we reach a postscript. This consists of some of the richest vituperation in literature, directed at Jill Bennett. It's the work of a cad, of course, as it was written on the occasion of Ms. Bennett's death, but it's nonetheless a gem.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Was Osborne really an "angry young jman" or just an "angry young con man"?,
By
This review is from: Almost a Gentleman: An Autobiography : 1955-1966 (Paperback)
I've just read this for the third time with the same enjoyment as the first time round which may be a bad sign as perhaps it shows I haven't developed much over the years and am becoming set in my ways.
Or perhaps like Osborne himself I am just making the usual transition from angry young man to angry old man. In fact, Osborne became such a caricature of a reactionary old buffer as he became older than one cannot help but wonder whether the younger rebelliousness was just another piece of theatre. This books starts with the first staging of Look Back in Anger, a play that must look hopelessly dated to today's "angry young men" who have even less to be angry about than Jimmy Porter*. It weaves in and out over the next decade - with a "fast forward" to 1990 - in line with Osborne's quote from Berlioz: "I shall tell only what I wish to tell". And what he tells us, he does in a take no prisoners style which spares virtually no one - relatives, friends, critics, lovers or ex-wives, like Mary Ure and Jill Bennett. Just what Jill Bennett did to deserve Osborne's contemptuous portrait of her which only increased when she died is a mystery. This bile gives the book a dimension that may seem cruel at times but, at least, he is a sadist with style and many of his victims should be almost flattered to be dispatched so elegantly. Virtually every page has something worth quoting. My favorite is:""Hamlet is too long. So is Don Giovanni. So, sometimes, is life." Another gem: "One of the advantages of being an Englishman in Italy...is that you can see over the heads of everyone else". Finally, can anyone nowadays believe that there once existed someone called the Lord Chamberlain whose permission was needed to present plays. Osborne presents a letter from this august official on The Entertainer containing instructions like "alter `pouf" (twice)", "alter `shagged'", "omit `had Sylvia'" and "a photograph should be submitted of the nude in Britannia's helmet". Best of all, is this from Look Back in Anger "as tough as a night in a Bombay brothel and rough as a matelot's arse". `Arm' was substituted for `arse'". *Sound a bit like Harry Potter? Freudian slip Ms Rowlings
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mr. Osbourne's Personal Memoir,
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This review is from: Almost a Gentleman: An Autobiography : 1955-1966 (Paperback)
This is Volume II of Osborne's diary.
It gives the reader an insider's view, with a large dose of ego. Since Osborne knows everyone who is anyone in London theatre, the cast of characters is large, including his wives and affairs. Volume II includes the years 1955-1966, when the "kitchen sink" theatre of the "angry young men" radically transformed English drama. On the flip side of all of this: apparently, the plays of Pinter and Beckett will survive; but Osborne's plays may be easily forgotten.
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