James Bridie (3 January 1888 in Glasgow – 29 January 1951 in Edinburgh) was the pseudonym of a Scottish playwright, screenwriter and physician whose real name was Osborne Henry Mavor.[1][2][3][4][5] He took his pen-name from his paternal grandfather's first name and his grandmother's maiden name.[5]
Life
He was the son of Henry Alexander Mavor (1858–1915), an electrical engineer and industrialist, and his wife Janet Osborne.[6][7] He went to school at Glasgow Academy and then studied medicine at the University of Glasgow graduating in 1913,[8] later becoming a general practitioner, then consultant physician and professor after serving as a military physician during World War I, seeing service in France and Mesopotamia.[9] He came to prominence with his comic play The Anatomist (1931), about the grave robbers Burke and Hare.[10] This and other comedic plays saw success in London, and he became a full-time writer in 1938. He returned to the army during World War II, again serving as a physician.[1]
In 1923, he married Rona Locke Bremner (1897–1985). Their son was killed in World War II.[1] His other son Ronald (1925–2007) was also both a physician and playwright.[11] Ronald became drama critic of The Scotsman after retiring from medicine, Director of the Scottish Arts Council and Deputy Chairman of the Edinburgh Festival.[5] He was Professor of Drama and Head of the Drama Department at the University of Saskatchewan and was appointed C.B.E.[5]
Bridie died in Edinburgh of a stroke and is buried in Glasgow Western Necropolis.[5] The Bridie Library at the Glasgow University Union is named after him, as is the annual Bridie Dinner that takes place in the Union each December.[12]
Contribution to drama and the arts
Bridie was the founder of the Citizens Theatre[13][14] in Glasgow, in association with joint founders art director Dr Tom Honeyman and cinema magnate George Singleton, who also created the Cosmo, predecessor of today's Glasgow Film Theatre. Many of his plays were staged at the Citizens Theatre between 1943 and 1960. Tony Paterson has argued that Bridie's output set the tone for Scottish Theatre until the early Nineteen-Sixties and gave encouragement to other Scottish dramatists such as Robert Kemp, Alexander Reid and George Munro.[15]Alan Riach described (in 2021) Bridie's plays as both serious and offering 'high spirited fun'; both contemporarily 'commercially successful' and yet 'perennially provocative'; raising open questions that Riach considers as Brechtian. He admires the quality of writing in Bridie's 1939 autobiography One Way of Living, calling it a 'modern classic'.[16]
In 1946, Bridie proposed a Scottish Theatre Festival in Perth, with Scottish theatres coming together to make the town a Scottish Salsburg.[17] He was the first chairman of the Arts Council in Scotland and was also instrumental in the establishment of the Edinburgh Festival.[5] In 1950 he founded the Glasgow College of Dramatic Art, part of the Royal Conservatoire today.
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.
Some Talk of Alexander (1926), book, his experiences as an army doctor
The Sunlight Sonata or To Meet the Seven Deadly Sins (1928), assisted by John Brandane[16] and published under the pseudonym Mary Henderson, directed by Tyrone Guthrie
The Switchback (1929), with James Brandane
What It Is to Be Young (1929)
The Girl Who Did Not Want to Go to Kuala Lumpur (1930)
^ abcdeDaniel Leary (1982) Dictionary of Literary Biography: Modern British Dramatists 1900-1945, Stanley Weintraub Ed., Gale, Detroit ISBN0-8103-0937-8
^Terence Tobin (1980) James Bridie (Osborne Henry Mavor), Twayne Publishers, Boston ISBN978-0805767865
^Winifred Bannister (1955) James Bridie and His Theatre: a study of James Bridie's personality, his stage plays, and his work for the foundation of a Scottish national theatre, Rockliff
^Helen L. Luyben (1965) James Bridie: Clown and Philosopher, University of Pennsylvania Press
^ abcdefRonald Mavor (1988) Dr. Mavor and Mr. Bridie: Memories of James Bridie, Canongate and The National Library of Scotland ISBN978-0862411985
^Kenneth Hardacre (1960) James Bridie's "Tobias and the Angel" (Chosen Eng. Texts Notes), Andrew Brodie Publications, London – Study Guide for students of the play
^Catalog of Copyright Entries. Part 1. (1940) Library of Congress
