George Alexander Cassady Devine CBE (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.
[8] Gielgud insisted on having the costumes designed by Motley, a newly formed theatre-design team consisting of sisters Sophie and Margaret Harris as well as Elizabeth Montgomery.
[9] 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.
[2] 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.
[11] Rather overweight, dark and foreign-looking, he did not fit the conventional stereotype and tended to play relatively small character parts.
[19] After a period of relative inactivity in India, he was transferred to Burma where he spent the final part of the war engaged in jungle warfare.
[20] 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.
In 1952 the young director Tony Richardson cast Devine in a television adaptation of "Curtain Down", a short story by Anton Chekhov.
They acquired the rental of the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, London, and Devine placed an advertisement in the Stage asking for new plays.
[27] Under Devine's direction the English Stage Company remained primarily a writers' theatre, nurturing new talents such as Arnold Wesker, Ann Jellicoe, Edward Bond, Donald Howarth, Keith Johnstone, 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, and Peter Gill.
[29] 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.