Bridie, James

Bridie, James [ Osborne Henry Mavor] (1888–1951), Scottish doctor and playwright. His initial effort, The Sunlight Sonata (1928), was staged under the pseudonym ‘Mary Henderson’ and made little impact; but its director was Tyrone Guthrie, who not only directed the first play credited to ‘James Bridie’—The Anatomist (1930)—but also took it in 1931 to London, where most of Bridie's later plays were seen, giving him a wider audience than most contemporary Scottish playwrights. Among them were Tobias and the Angel (also 1930) and Jonah and the Whale (1932), modern comedies based on biblical stories, A Sleeping Clergyman (1933), a disquisition on eugenics, Storm in a Teacup (1936), an adaptation of Bruno Frank's Sturm im Wasserglass with a Scots setting, and The King of Nowhere (1938) seen at the Old Vic with Laurence Olivier in the chief part, Vivaldi. Alastair Sim scored a great success in Mr Bolfry (1943), a religious play presenting the conflict between good and evil, also playing in and directing several more of his plays. In 1943 Bridie founded the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow, and in 1949 came his popular Daphne Laureola, with Edith Evans in the title-role. For the Edinburgh Festival he then wrote what many consider his best play, The Queen's Comedy (1950); his last two plays were produced post-humously by the Citizens' Theatre. Bridie remained in medical practice until 1938 and served as an army doctor in both world wars. He encouraged Scottish drama and was instrumental shortly before his death in forwarding the foundation of a drama department within the Royal Scottish Academy of Music in Glasgow, now the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.