George Alexander Cassady Devine (20 November 1910 – 20 January 1966) was an English theatrical manager, director, teacher, and actor based in London from the early 1930s until his death. He also worked in TV and film.
Early life and education
Devine was born in
Hendon
Hendon is an urban area in the London Borough of Barnet, northwest London northwest of Charing Cross. Hendon was an ancient Manorialism, manor and parish in the county of Middlesex and a former borough, the Municipal Borough of Hendon; it has ...
, London to Georgios Devine (son of an Irish father and a Greek mother) and a Canadian mother, Ruth Eleanor Cassady (from
Vancouver
Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...
).
His father was a clerk in
Martins Bank.
Ruth Devine became mentally unstable after her son's birth, and his parents' marriage, deeply unhappy throughout his early childhood, had broken down by the time he was in his early teens. Around this time he was sent to
Clayesmore School, an independent boys' boarding school founded by his uncle
Alexander "Lex" Devine, who took his nephew under his wing hoping that he would take over the running of the school. In 1929, Devine went to
Oxford University
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...
to read for a degree in history at
Wadham College.
It was at Oxford that his interest in theatre, which had begun at school, came to fruition, and in 1931 he became president of the prestigious
Oxford University Dramatic Society
The Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) is the principal funding body and provider of theatrical services to the many independent student productions put on by students in Oxford, England. Not all student productions at Oxford University a ...
, or OUDS. In early 1932, he invited the young actor
John Gielgud to direct a production of ''
Romeo and Juliet
''The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet'', often shortened to ''Romeo and Juliet'', is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare about the romance between two young Italians from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's ...
'' and, as the OUDS did not admit women, invited
Peggy Ashcroft and
Edith Evans to play Juliet and the Nurse. Gielgud insisted on having the costumes designed by
Motley, a newly formed theatre-design team consisting of sisters
Sophie
Sophie is a feminine given name, another version of Sophia, from the Greek word for "wisdom".
People with the name Born in the Middle Ages
* Sophie, Countess of Bar (c. 1004 or 1018–1093), sovereign Countess of Bar and lady of Mousson
* Soph ...
and
Margaret Harris as well as
Elizabeth Montgomery
Elizabeth Victoria Montgomery (April 15, 1933 – May 18, 1995) was an American actress whose career spanned five decades in film, stage, and television. She portrayed the good witch List of Bewitched characters#Samantha Stephens, Samantha Step ...
.
The great success of the production encouraged Devine to abandon his degree before sitting his finals and move to London to begin an acting career. He also worked for Motley as their business manager.
Pre-war years
Although Devine managed to get some work as an actor, both at
the Old Vic and for John Gielgud (whose directing career had taken off after the OUDS ''Romeo and Juliet''), he was initially not a great success. Rather overweight, dark and foreign-looking, he did not fit the conventional stereotype and tended to play relatively small character parts. Always interested in France (he spoke the language perfectly) and in French theatre, he suggested to Gielgud that they should invite the French director
Michel Saint-Denis to London in 1935 to direct a version of his successful production of
Andre Obey's ''Noé''.
This proved to be the beginning of a close and fruitful partnership between the two men. Saint-Denis remained in London and, together with Devine and their friends
Marius Goring and
Glen Byam Shaw, founded the
London Theatre Studio in 1936,
which offered training not only to actors and directors but also to stage designers. Run by Motley, this was the first course in Britain to offer training in set and costume design.
Jocelyn Herbert, who was later to become part of Devine's life, was a student on the course.
At the end of the 1930s Devine finally got the chance to direct a play himself. His first professional production was an adaptation by
Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; 2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. In the BFI, British Film Institute listing of 1999 of BFI Top 100 British films, the 100 most important British films of the 20th century ...
of
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...
' novel ''
Great Expectations'', which played at the Queen's Theatre in 1939, with Guinness as Herbert Pocket and
Martita Hunt as
Miss Havisham;
David Lean
Sir David Lean (25 March 190816 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor, widely considered one of the most important figures of Cinema of the United Kingdom, British cinema. He directed the large-scale epi ...
saw this and later acknowledged that it "exerted a tremendous influence" on his celebrated
1946 film. Devine also directed a successful production of a stage version of
Daphne du Maurier's ''
Rebecca
Rebecca () appears in the Hebrew Bible as the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau. According to biblical tradition, Rebecca's father was Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram, also called Aram-Naharaim. Rebecca's brother was Laban (Bi ...
'' at the
Queen's Theatre in 1939.
Wartime
When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, Devine did not initially expect to be called up, owing to a supposedly weak heart. He did, however, pass his army medical and went into basic training with the
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises t ...
at the end of 1941. After a period of relative inactivity in India, he was transferred to
Burma
Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...
where he spent the final part of the war engaged in jungle warfare. He attained the rank of captain and was twice
mentioned in despatches.
Post-war years and Old Vic Theatre School
Devine returned to England in 1946, and in September of that year appeared as George Antrobus in
Laurence Olivier's production of
Thornton Wilder's ''
The Skin of Our Teeth'', also starring
Vivien Leigh, at the
Piccadilly Theatre in London. Soon afterwards, together with Saint-Denis and Byam Shaw, and under the auspices of the Old Vic, he opened the Old Vic Theatre School in Thurlow Park Road,
Dulwich
Dulwich (; ) is an area in south London, England. The settlement is mostly in the London Borough of Southwark, with parts in the London Borough of Lambeth, and consists of Dulwich Village, East Dulwich, West Dulwich, and the Southwark half of H ...
, London, to continue the training courses begun at the London Theatre Studio before the war. At the same time he formed the
Young Vic Theatre Company, which was intended to bring theatre to young people. The school ran successfully for several years, training actors such as
Prunella Scales
Prunella Margaret Rumney West Scales (''née'' Illingworth; born 22 June 1932) is an English retired actress. She portrayed Sybil Fawlty, the bossy wife of Basil Fawlty (John Cleese), in the BBC comedy ''Fawlty Towers'' and Queen Elizabeth ...
and
Joan Plowright.
In 1952, the three directors were forced to resign following a dispute with the Old Vic governors, and Devine embarked on a free-lance career as a director and actor.
Byam Shaw had moved to
Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon ( ), commonly known as Stratford, is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon (district), Stratford-on-Avon district, in the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands region of Engl ...
to run the
Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, and Devine directed several successful Shakespeare productions there in the early 1950s, including a notorious version of ''
King Lear
''The Tragedy of King Lear'', often shortened to ''King Lear'', is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is loosely based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his ...
'' (1955), which starred John Gielgud and was designed by the experimental Japanese American artist and sculptor
Isamu Noguchi
was an American artist, furniture designer and Landscape architecture, landscape architect whose career spanned six decades from the 1920s. Known for his sculpture and public artworks, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Grah ...
. He also directed several operas at
Sadler's Wells Theatre in London,
and appeared in several films.
Royal Court Theatre
In 1952 the young director
Tony Richardson
Cecil Antonio Richardson (5 June 1928 – 14 November 1991) was an English theatre and film director, producer and screenwriter, whose career spanned five decades. He was identified with the "angry young men" group of British directors and play ...
cast Devine in a television adaptation of "Curtain Down", a short story by
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his b ...
. There soon developed what Devine came to call their "great friendship". Not long afterwards, together with Richardson's friend and partner the American sociologist George Goetschius, they formed a plan for a radical new theatre company, the objective of which, as Devine wrote later, "was to get writers, writers of serious pretensions, back into the theatre", and thus to make the theatre "part of the intellectual life of the country". The fulfilment of these goals led to the formation in 1955 of what was called the English Stage Company. They acquired the rental of the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, London, and Devine placed an advertisement in ''
the Stage
''The Stage'' is a British weekly newspaper and website covering the entertainment industry and particularly theatre. Founded in 1880, ''The Stage'' contains news, reviews, opinion, features, and recruitment advertising, mainly directed at thos ...
'' asking for new plays.
The Royal Court opened in April 1956 with a production of
Angus Wilson
Sir Angus Frank Johnstone-Wilson (11 August 191331 May 1991) was an English novelist and short story writer. He was one of England's first openly gay authors. He was awarded the 1958 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for '' The Middle Age of Mrs ...
's play ''The Mulberry Bush'', followed by
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are '' All My Sons'' (1947), '' Death of a Salesman'' (1 ...
's ''
The Crucible
''The Crucible'' is a 1953 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1692 to 1693. Miller wrote ...
'', in which Devine played Governor Danforth as well as directing. It was not until the third production,
John Osborne
John James Osborne (12 December 1929 – 24 December 1994) was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor, and entrepreneur, who is regarded as one of the most influential figures in post-war theatre. Born in London, he briefly worked as a jo ...
's ''
Look Back in Anger'', that the theatre really attracted public attention. Although the play was badly reviewed by traditional theatre critics such as
Milton Shulman and Philip Hope-Wallace, glowing reviews from the two Sunday critics
Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Peacock Tynan (2 April 1927 – 26 July 1980) was an English theatre critic and writer. Initially making his mark as a critic at ''The Observer'', he praised John Osborne's ''Look Back in Anger'' (1956) and encouraged the emerging wave ...
and
Harold Hobson ensured that the play eventually became a hit.
Under Devine's direction the English Stage Company remained primarily a writers' theatre, nurturing new talents such as
Arnold Wesker,
Ann Jellicoe
Patricia Ann Jellicoe (15 July 1927 – 31 August 2017) was an English playwright, theatre director and actress. Although her work covered many areas of theatre and film, she is best known for "pushing the envelope" of the stage play, devisin ...
,
Edward Bond
Thomas Edward Bond (18 July 1934 – 3 March 2024) was an English playwright, theatre director, poet, dramatic theorist and screenwriter. He was the author of some 50 plays, among them '' Saved'' (1965), the production of which was instrument ...
,
Donald Howarth,
Keith Johnstone
Donald Keith Johnstone (21 February 1933 – 11 March 2023) was a British-Canadian educator and theatre director. A pioneer of improvisational theatre, he was best known for inventing the ''Impro System'', part of which are the Theatresports. ...
, and many others. Devine's policy of taking on young directors as assistants produced some notable talents including
William Gaskill,
John Dexter,
Lindsay Anderson,
Anthony Page
Anthony Page (born 21 September 1935 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India) is a British stage director, stage and film director. Biography
When Page was 19, he went to Canada on a free passage with the Royal Canadian Air Force and hitchhiked to New Yo ...
, and
Peter Gill. Devine was also interested in continental drama. He staged several plays by
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco (; ; born Eugen Ionescu, ; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theatre#Avant-garde, French avant-garde th ...
, including a celebrated production of ''
The Chairs'', in which he appeared with Joan Plowright. He also greatly admired
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...
, several of whose plays were produced at the Royal Court, including ''
Endgame'' in which Devine played Hamm.
Several more of John Osborne's plays were staged at the Royal Court and George Devine appeared in one, the historical drama ''
A Patriot for Me'', when he suffered a second heart attack followed soon afterwards by a stroke that eventually led to his death at the age of 55.
[Devine, p. 167] He had begun to draft an autobiography, which included these words:
Personal life and death
Following their meeting in 1932, Devine and Sophie Harris formed a relationship, and he moved in with her in London after he left Oxford. They married in October 1939, and their daughter Harriet was born in September 1942, after Devine had embarked for India. The marriage ended in the late 1950s, when Devine began living with Jocelyn Herbert, with whom he remained until his death.
He was awarded the
CBE in 1958.
Devine was appearing in ''A Patriot for Me'' when he suffered the heart attack that led to his death on 20 January 1966 at age 55.
Legacy
The George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright is named in his honour.
Filmography
Notes and references
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
Royal Court Theatre websiteGeorge Devine as director listed in Theatre Archive, University of Bristol* Archival Material at
{{DEFAULTSORT:Devine, George
1910 births
1966 deaths
Military personnel from the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham
Royal Artillery officers
Male actors from London
Alumni of Wadham College, Oxford
British opera directors
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
English directors
English male stage actors
English people of Canadian descent
English people of Greek descent
English people of Irish descent
English theatre managers and producers
Instructors of the London Theatre Studio
People educated at Clayesmore School
People from Hammersmith
20th-century English male actors
20th-century English businesspeople
British Army personnel of World War II
Actors from the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham