The English playwright (1929-1994) was the first of Britain's "Angry Young Men"--a group of social critics and writers. He scathingly attacked many of the establishment's hallowed values in his numerous plays of the 1960s.

John Osborne was born on Dec. 12, 1929, to an advertising writer and a Cockney barmaid. After his father died, when John was a young boy, he attended Belmont College in Devon, but he hated public school. Trying first journalism, then acting, Osborne joined Anthony Creighton's provincial touring company and collaborated with him on two plays.

Osborne's first important work, The Devil inside Him, written with Stella Linden, was performed in 1950. It is a melodrama about a Welsh youth who kills a girl after she falsely accuses him of fathering her child. Personal Enemy (1955), written with Creighton, concerns the effect upon family and friends of a military prisoner's decision to refuse repatriation from Korea.

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