John Osborne It was an ironic situation as Osborne had been playing a dentist in the company's production of Shaw's "You Never Can Tell" and that it was Osborne who had inadvertently introduced them by succumbing to a toothache he attributed to marital woes. This was in the summer of 1955 and Osborne spent much of the next two years before their divorce hoping they would reconcile. In 1956, after "Look Back in Anger" had opened, Osborne met her at the railway station in York, at which meeting she told Osborne of her recent abortion and enquired after his relationship with Mary
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