James Bridie

James Bridie (3 January 1888; Glasgow – 29 January 1951; Edinburgh) was the pseudonym of a Scottish playwright, screenwriter and surgeon whose real name was Osborne Henry Mavor.

Mavor studied medicine at the University of Glasgow, then served as a military doctor during World War I, seeing service in France and Mesopotamia. His comedic plays saw success in London, and he became a full time writer in 1938. Despite this, he returned to the army during World War II, again serving as a doctor.

He was the main founder of the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow. James Bridie worked with the director Alfred Hitchcock in the late 1940s. They worked together on:

• The Paradine Case (1947). Bridie originally wrote the screenplay, and Ben Hecht contributed some additional dialogue. But due to casting, the characters had to be changed. So David O. Selznick had to write another script.

• Under Capricorn (1949)

• Stage Fright (1950)

Bridie died in Edinburgh. The Bridie Library at the Glasgow University Union is named for him, as is the annual Bridie Dinner that takes place in the Union each December.

Selected bibliography

• Some Talk of Alexander - 1926
• The Anatomist - 1930
• Jonah and the Whale - 1932
• One Way of Living - 1939
• Daphne Laureola - 1949
• Meeting at Night - 1956

Quotations

• "Boredom is a sign of satisfied ignorance, blunted apprehension, crass sympathies, dull understanding, feeble powers of attention, and irreclaimable weakness of character."

External links

• James Bridie at the Internet Movie Database
• Play performances listed in Theatre Archive university of Bristol
• James Bridie at the Internet Broadway Database