John Osborne provincial touring company. Osborne tried his hand at writing plays, co-writing his first, "The Devil Inside Him", with his mentor Stella Linden, who then directed it at the Theatre Royal in Huddersfield in 1950. In June 1951 he also married Pamela Lane. His second play "Personal Enemy" was written with Anthony Creighton (with whom he later wrote "Epitaph for George Dillon" staged at the Royal Court in 1958). "Personal Enemy" was staged in regional theatres before he submitted "Look Back in Anger". Written in 17 days in a deck chair on Morecambe pier where Osborne was performing in a creaky
John Osborne and the two of them saw it together. Miller found the play revelatory, and they went backstage to meet Osborne. Olivier was impressed by the American's reaction, and asked Osborne for a part in his next play. John Heilpern suggests the great actor's about-face was due to a midlife crisis, Olivier seeking a new challenge after decades of success in Shakespeare and other classics, and fearful of losing his pre-eminence to this new kind of theatre. George Devine, artistic director of the Royal Court, sent Olivier the incomplete script of "The Entertainer" (1957, film version released in 1960) and Olivier