Look Back in Anger (1959 film) Look Back in Anger (1959 film) Look Back in Anger is a 1959 British drama film starring Richard Burton, Claire Bloom and Mary Ure and directed by Tony Richardson. The film is based on John Osborne's eponymous play about a love triangle involving an intelligent but disaffected young man (Jimmy Porter) his upper-middle-class, impassive wife (Alison) and her snooty best friend (Helena Charles). Cliff, an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace. The character of Ma Tanner, only referred to in the play, is here brought to life by Edith Evans as a dramatic device to emphasise the class
John Osborne he wrote, "It is the best young play of its decade". Harold Hobson of "The Sunday Times" called Osborne "a writer of outstanding promise". During production, the married Osborne began a relationship with Mary Ure, and would divorce his wife, Pamela Lane, to marry Ure in 1957. The play became an enormous commercial success, transferring to the West End and to Broadway, touring to Moscow and a film version was released in May 1959 with Richard Burton and Mary Ure in the leading roles. The play turned Osborne from a struggling playwright into a wealthy and famous angry young man