J. B. Fagan

James Bernard Fagan (18 May 1873 – 17 February 1933) was an Irish-born actor, theatre manager, producer and playwright in England. After turning from the law to the stage, Fagan began an acting career, including four years from 1895 to 1899 with Herbert Beerbohm Tree's company at Her Majesty's Theatre. He then began writing plays, returning eventually to acting during World War I. In 1920 he took over London's Court Theatre as a Shakespearean playhouse and soon began to produce plays at other West End theatres. His adaptation of Treasure Island in 1922 was a hit and became an annual Christmas event.

He was the first manager of the Oxford Playhouse for several years in the 1920s. As a producer, he popularised Anton Chekhov and Seán O'Casey in Britain. In 1929, he was a director of the Festival Theatre, Cambridge. Several of his plays were adapted for film, and he moved to Hollywood in his last years.

Fagan was born in Belfast, the eldest of the five children (three boys and two girls). His father, Sir James Fagan, was a surgeon at the Belfast Royal Hospital and an inspector of Irish reformatories, and his mother was Mary Catherine Fagan, née Hughes. He attended Clongowes Wood College near Clane, County Kildare and then moved to England. Initially interested in a career in the church, Fagan began studying Law at Trinity College, Oxford in 1892 but left in 1893 without a degree. He worked for a time in the Indian Civil Service but abandoned this career for the stage.

Fagan began his career as an actor with the company of Sir Frank Benson for two years, then joining, from 1895 to 1899, the company of Herbert Beerbohm Tree at Her Majesty's Theatre. There he appeared in Katherine and Petruchio, A Man's Shadow, Julius Caesar, The Musketeers and Carnac Sahib. He started writing plays in 1899, with The Rebels, for the time forsaking acting. Other early plays were The Prayer of the Sword (1904); Under Which King, a revue, Shakespeare v. Shaw, and Hawthorne, USA (all 1905); Gloria (1907); A Merry Devil and False Gods (a translation of Eugène Brieux's La foi (1909); The Dressing Room (1910); Bella donna (1911; adapted from Robert Hitchens's novel); and The Happy Island (1913). In 1913 he returned to the stage touring as the Rt Hon. Denzil Trevena in his own play, The Earth (originally produced in 1909). He next wrote The Fourth of August (1914) and Doctor O'Toole (1917). In 1917 he produced his first play, his own adaptation of the Brieux play Damaged Goods at St Martin's Theatre. He next produced The Wonder Tales and The Little Brother at the Ambassadors' Theatre in London.

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