Look Back at Mary Ure

A brief tribute to a too-brief career

Lovely, ill-fated Mary Ure was born this day, Feb. 18, in 1933, in Glasgow. Please join me for a moment to recall some of my favorite movie roles for this actress, whose talent deserves a higher profile.

Ure originated the role of Alison in the epochal debut of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger on the London stage in 1956, then reprised her performance opposite Richard Burton in the movie version in 1959. To me, Look Back in Anger remains a savage portrait of what we now call “toxic masculinity.” But the problem I’ve always had with the film (and I assume it was the same in the play) is that Osborne’s sympathies are so firmly with Jimmy Porter. It was a self-portrait, and self-portraits always have a breath of self-justification—in Jimmy’s case, the breath is more like a gale. Jimmy’s class resentments have grown more tiresome, since his overblown grudges are so much about his wife coming from a slight bit of privilege. Look Back still has art and truth; it’s jolting to see so clearly what goes on in the mind of a torrentially abusive and above all self-pitying man. But once is possibly enough.