Owen Robert - playwright

CRY FOR LOVE by ROBERT OWEN. This play is actually THE DEVIL INSIDE HIM, written by JOHN OSBORNE and my step-mother STELLA LINDEN. My father, Patrick Desmond (born Terence Duff), married Stella Linden in 1949 (+/- 1 year). My father had been running repertory companies since around 1930. Stella joined him and they employed John Osborne as an assistant stage manager. He showed promise as a writer and Stella, a budding writer herself, took him under her wing. They became lovers, spending much of their time at the flat in Brighton she and my father had rented. THE DEVIL INSIDE HIM was their first and only play they co-wrote and it was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Huddersfield in 1950. My father put on the play and I believe Stella directed (produced) it. (I've been searching all sorts of avenues to obtain a programme, but to no avail. I was only 13 years old at the time.) John Osborne wasn't enamoured with his first effort and refused to have it published, or even to acknowledge it as his play. My father had always liked it and, after directing Julia Lockwood in Peter Pan, thought she would be ideal as the Welsh girl. My father was adept at adapting the classics and putting them on as plays under his writing name, ROBERT OWEN. (EMMA by ROBERT OWEN is also my father.) So, 'The Devil inside Him' became 'Cry for Love' by Robert Owen and Julia Lockwood and Michael Williams starred in the play, with my father directing. As an aside, Stella left my father for the States in 1951 and was last heard of writing a script for The Monkees TV series. John Osborne wrote 'Personal Enemy' with Anthony Creighton in 1955 (Ithink), but it is possible that he wrote 'Look Back in Anger' before then, because he gave it to my father to read and put on. My father didn't like the play and told John that it was not the sort of play the general thearte-going public wanted to see. Ooops! Thought you might like to have this little bit of background information. Regards Chris Duff, Ontario, Canada"