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
Look Back in Anger best remembered for, though, are Jimmy's tirades. Some of these are directed against generalised British middle-class smugness in the post-atomic world. Many are directed against the female characters, a very distinct echo of Osborne's uneasiness with women, including his mother, Nellie Beatrice, whom he describes in his autobiography "A Better Class of Person" as "hypocritical, self-absorbed, calculating and indifferent". Madeline, the lost love Jimmy pines for, is based on Stella Linden, the older rep-company actress who first encouraged Osborne to write. After the first production in London, Osborne began a relationship with Mary Ure, who played Alison; he divorced his