James Bridie

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. He took his pen-name from his paternal grandfather's first name and his grandmother's maiden name. He went to school at Glasgow Academy and then studied medicine at the University of Glasgow graduating in 1913, 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. He came to prominence with his comic play The Anatomist, about the grave robbers Burke and Hare. 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. Ronald became drama critic of The Scotsman after retiring from medicine, Director of the Scottish Arts Council and Deputy Chairman of the Edinburgh Festival.

Contribution to drama and the arts

Bridie was the founder of the Citizens Theatre 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. 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'.

In 1946, Bridie proposed a Scottish Theatre Festival in Perth, with Scottish theatres coming together to make the town a Scottish Salsburg. He was the first chairman of the Arts Council in Scotland and was also instrumental in the establishment of the Edinburgh Festival. Paradise Enow 1945 The Pyrate's Den (1946) unpublished, written under the pseudonym Archibald P. Kellock Gog and Magog 1948 It Depends What You Mean 1949 The Forrigan Reel Ballad opera 1949 Dr. Angelus 1949 John Knox 1949 Daphne Laureola 1949 The Queen's Comedy 1950 Folly to be Wise 1952 The Baikie Charivari or The Seven Prophets 1953 Meeting at Night (With Archibald Batty) 1954 (Adaptation) The Wild Duck. Based on Vildanden by Henrik Ibsen (Adaptation) Liliom Based on Ferenc Molnár's play of the same name (Adaptation) Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (Adaptation) The Misanthrope Based on Le Misanthrope by Molière