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 him he would like to make the play the fourth production to enter repertory. The play was directed by Tony Richardson and starred Kenneth Haigh, Mary Ure and Alan Bates. It was George Fearon, a part-time press officer at the theatre, who invented the phrase "angry young man". Fearon told Osborne that he disliked the play and feared it would be impossible to market. In 1993, a year before his death, Osborne wrote that the opening night was "an occasion I only partly remember, but certainly with more accuracy than those who subsequently claimed to have been present and, if