The Entertainer (play) Holm as Jean and Bertie Carvel as Frank. In 1960, a paperback novelization by John Burke was published by Four Square Books to coincide with the release of the film. Though the attribution line says "based on the play", it is actually based on the screenplay by Osborne and Nigel Kneale. The Entertainer (play) The Entertainer is a three-act play by John Osborne, first produced in 1957. His first play, "Look Back in Anger", had attracted mixed notices but a great deal of publicity. Having depicted an "angry young man" in the earlier play, Osborne wrote at Laurence Olivier's request
John Osborne Common Prayer (he had returned to the Church of England in about 1974). In his latter years, Osborne published two remarkably frank volumes of autobiography, "A Better Class of Person" (Osborne, 1981) and "Almost a Gentleman" (Osborne, 1991). "A Better Class of Person" (1985) was filmed by Thames Television featuring Eileen Atkins and Alan Howard as his parents and Gary Capelin and Neil McPherson as Osborne. It was nominated for the Prix Italia. At his memorial service in 1995, a playwright of the next generation, David Hare, said: His last play was "Déjàvu" (1991), a sequel to "Look Back in