Paul Osborne

Good morning and welcome to the Thursday edition of Buyers & Company.

City Hall insider Paul Osborne in studios.

We'll be checking in with Mark Topper and Tupper on sports and our friends at the Decatur Area Arts Council.

Company starts now.

It's good to have you back.

I missed you the last couple of weeks.

Paul Osborne, City Hall Insider.

When we get back on the other side of the break, we'll check in with Mark Tupper and Tupper on sports.

James Dean, by comparison, was still largely unknown.

But Kazan's scriptwriter, Paul Osborne, had seen Dean performing on Broadway in The Immortalist, and Osborne thought he might be exactly what Kazan was looking for – So, he suggested that the two meet.

Kazan already knew James from the actor's studio, but wasn't immediately convinced.

James was brought to the Warner Brothers office and, according to Kazan's later account, the meeting was hardly an impressive audition.

I don't know, 'cause this, this next story is also Connecticut.

And it was, we were doing a show, and the name of this park show that had my illusions in it and everything, uh, I was working for a guy named Paul Osborne, who put me out on the road doing, uh, his park shows.

And we were doing a show called Kaleidoscope, and the rest of the cast all rented this old, what had been an assisted living home, like a nursing home facility.

And it was a big, giant house in Connecticut, one of those old houses that we were just talking about.

Would you like to join me in congratulating Mr. Drake, Ms. Boland, Ms. Matthews, and company for giving us such a pleasantly horrifying hour? I hope you will join us next week when we'll have a fine comedy drama, A Bell for Adano.

This is Paul Osborne's Best Plays adaptation of John Hersey's novel, and our leading roles will be played by Arthur Kennedy and Myron McCormick.

This is Chapman saying goodbye until next week.

[instrumental music]

[upbeat music] You'd never know from the outside the music made within these walls.

Inside Audio Dallas, owner Paul Osborne-

So this is, uh, what I call the Hall of Shame.

[laughs]

In 1952, John Steinbeck published East of Eden, his magnum opus, telling the interwoven story of two families set in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Central California, going all the way back to the Civil War.

In 1955, the fourth and final part of that story was adapted into an acclaimed film written by Paul Osborne and directed by Elia Kazan.

Now in 2026, the book has been adapted as a seven-part limited series on Netflix by Elia Kazan's granddaughter, Zoe Kazan, herself an accomplished actor, screenwriter, and playwright.

Welcome to Script Notes, Zoe Kazan.