| George Devine | |
|---|---|
| Born | 20 November 1910 London |
| Died | 20 January 1966 (aged 55) London |
| Occupation | Theatrical producer, manager, actor |
| Spouse | Sophie Harris |
| Children | Harriet, b. 1942 |
| Parents | Georgios Devine, Ruth Eleanor Cassady |
George Alexander Cassady Devine CBE (20 November 1910 - 20 January 1966) was an extremely influential theatrical manager, director, teacher and actor in London from the late 1940s until his death. He also worked in the media of TV and film.
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Devine was born in London. His father, Georgios Devine, was half Irish and half Greek. His mother, Ruth Eleanor Cassady, was Irish Canadian.
While reading history at Oxford University, Devine became interested in theatre, and in 1932 was made president of the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS). In that year he invited John Gielgud to guest-direct a production of Romeo and Juliet which was to star Peggy Ashcroft and Edith Evans playing as Juliet and Nurse. As part of the arrangement Gielgud insisted on having the costumes designed by Motley, a newly-formed London design team consisting of Sophie Harris, her sister Margaret (known as "Percy"),[1] and Liz Montgomery. The production was a great success, and so was the meeting between George and Sophie Harris. They began living together almost immediately, and married on 27 October 1939 despite an age gap of ten years in George's favour. They returned from Oxford as a couple to London, where George became an actor, and performed in a number of Gielgud's productions. He also worked for the Motleys as their business manager.[2] In 1936 he collaborated with the distinguished French director Michel Saint-Denis and Glen Byam Shaw in founding and running an acting and directing school that they called "London Theatre Studio". (Jocelyn Herbert, who would later play a large part in Devine's life, was a student for a while). In 1939, he directed his first production on the London stage, an adaptation of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, starring Alec Guinness, and took the part of Sir Toby Belch in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, directed for television by Michel Saint-Denis.
George and Sophie had one daughter, Harriet, born 18 September 1942, but George did not set eyes on her until after long military service in the Royal Artillery, stationed first in India and then Burma.
Returning to the London theatre scene, Devine again collaborated with Glen Byam Shaw and Michel Saint-Denis, setting up and running the Old Vic Theatre School and the Young Vic Company in 1946. In 1950 severe disagreements with the Old Vic Board of Governors led all three of them to resign, along with the entire faculty.[3] The Young Vic company ceased to exist until resurrected on new premises 19 years later by director Frank Dunlop.
By this time a still-young George Devine was an acknowledged expert in stagecraft, in demand at England's elite theatres. He directed opera at Sadler's Wells Theatre and spent the summers both directing and acting at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon; he also directed at the Bristol Old Vic, for instance in a 1952 production of Ben Jonson's Volpone. In this period he also appeared in several films.
Tony Richardson was a 'hot' young director fresh from Oxford University when he cast Devine in a TV adaptation of a short story by Anton Chekhov, "Curtain Down". Richardson and Devine found they had virtually identical ideas about English theatre and how it could be revived. Eventually Richardson became a lodger in George and Sophie Devine's house on the Thames Embankment at Hammersmith. So, too, did the American sociologist George Goetschius. The three men planned what was to become the English Stage Company together.
White-haired, with a twinkle in his eye and a pipe ever-present between his teeth, the word avuncular might have been invented to describe Devine. But his outward unflappability belied the real man inside. In reality he was a driven workaholic who suffered at least two documented nervous breakdowns, brought on by overwork.[4] George was a noted lover of France and the French way of life. He spoke the language fluently and delighted in being taken as French when travelling there, in beret and all.[5]
The age difference between him and Sophie finally poisoned the marriage. In the early 1950s Harriet discovered love letters written to George over a long period of time by his neighbour and ex-student Jocelyn Herbert, who was married to Anthony Lousada at the time.[6] Sophie may already have known, but in any case she could no longer pretend ignorance and bliss. A few years after the English Stage Company came into being, George and Jocelyn moved to Rossetti Studios in Flood Street together, abandoning their families.[7] Jocelyn became resident stage designer, her first design being a production of Ionesco's The Chairs featuring Devine and Joan Plowright.
They never married, but on his death Devine willed his entire estate to Jocelyn.[8]
The George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright is named in his honor.
The form of theatre that Devine, Richardson and Goetschius dreamed of was very much a writer's theatre, and a theatre freed from the "Anyone for tennis?" upper-class milieu that English theatre had narrowed to. In January 1956, they placed an advert in the theatrical newspaper The Stage calling for scripts, and received 750 submissions. The company took over the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square and opened its first production, Angus Wilson's 'The Mulberry Bush'.
Unfortunately, the 750 scripts were largely dross. The first three productions at The Court were dismal failures, and the future of the English Stage Company was very much in the balance, when along came Look Back in Anger written by John Osborne. "This might have something", said Devine to Richardson when he'd finished reading it through. Indeed it did have something. Thanks largely to glowing reviews from the Sunday critics Kenneth Tynan and Harold Hobson, Look Back was the revolution they'd been looking for.
The English Stage Company became not just a writer's theatre but a director's theatre too. Arnold Wesker, Ann Jellicoe, Donald Howarth, Keith Johnstone, and Alan Sillitoe were some of the writers nurtured in Sloane Square. Anthony Page, Edward Bond, Lindsay Anderson, William Gaskill, Peter Gill and John Dexter some of the now-famous directors.
Several more of John Osborne's plays were staged at the Royal Court—indeed, George Devine was appearing in one, the extravagant transvestite drama A Patriot for Me, when he suffered the heart attack[9] that led quite quickly to his death at the age of 56.
He had begun to draft an autobiography, and it included these words: