San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Author humanized law school process with ‘Paper Chase’
JOHN JAY OSBORN JR. 1945-2022
John Osborn was in his third and final year at Harvard Law School when he enrolled in a one-on-one tutorial in writing.
That elective ended up overtaking everything else he did there, and resulted in “The Paper Chase,” a definitive novel, Hollywood movie and TV series that helped humanize the often grueling and authoritarian experience of getting through law school.
The novel was published in 1971, when Osborn was 26, and the film released just two years later. The movie reached a memorable climax when the lead character, James Hart, portrayed by wild-haired Timothy Bottoms, was at the seashore with the unopened envelope containing his firstyear grades.
He folded the envelope into a paper airplane, climbed upon a rock and sailed it into the Atlantic Ocean without bothering to see that he got an A in the contract law class taught by larger-than-life Professor Charles Kingsfield, as portrayed by John Houseman in an Academy Award-winning performance.
Osborn, who managed to capture the elitism and pomposity of East Coast preppies despite growing up in Marin County and attending public school there, died from cancer Oct. 19 at his hilltop home in the Mission district. His death was confirmed by his wife, Dr. Emilie Osborn, who was the first reader on “The Paper Chase” while a senior at Radcliffe. He was 77.
“John had a strong personality and he had opinions,” said Emilie Osborn, a retired family physician and dean of students at UCSF Medical School. “The profession of law worked for him as a writer because that's what law is — reading and writing.”
Osborn worked as a solo practitioner and taught at UC Berkeley and UCSF. He wrote screenplays and five novels, most recently “Listen to the Marriage,” published in 2018. Fifty years after its publication “The Paper Chase” remains in print and usually enjoys an uptick in sales each summer before law school begins.
The thematic follow-up, “The Associates,” published in 1979, still resonates with those who survive the top law schools to enter the pressure cooker of trying to make partner at top firms.
“He had a unique way of getting inside the heads of his characters,” said Jonathan Galassi, the chairman and executive editor of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which published Osborn's earliest books. “He was complicit with them in all their quirky weaknesses and desires which had the effect of making them funny, sympathetic and lovable.”
John Jay Osborn Jr. — a direct descendant of John Jay, a New York attorney, statesman and Founding Father who was the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court — was born Aug. 5, 1945, in Boston.
His father, Dr. John Jay Osborn, was involved in the development of heart-lung machines used during open heart surgery. When John Jr. was 8, his father accepted a position on the faculty of the Stanford University School of Medicine, then located in San Francisco.
The family moved to Marin, settling in a house on the Belvedere Lagoon. Johnny, as he was known, was the oldest of seven siblings and attended Reed School in Tiburon and Redwood High School in Larkspur. He was a varsity swimmer specializing in the breaststroke and served as a judge on the student court. The index of “The Log” yearbook in 1963 lists 12 clubs and associations that Osborn belonged to, including the English Club.
“Even when he was young, he was a great storyteller,” said his brother, Ed Osborn. “He was fascinated by the family history on the East Coast and wanted to go to Harvard and experience that world.”
Osborn experienced it for seven consecutive years, moving through a Harvard undergraduate program to the law school. The Vietnam War draft had a way of making continuous schooling an appealing proposition in order to earn a deferment.
In the preface to the 30th anniversary edition to “The Paper Chase,” Osborn noted that the book was a product of its time. Harvard was undergoing an occupation of its administrative building in line with college campuses nationwide, due to student unrest over the Vietnam War, and the draft board was threatening to end student deferments. The resistance was more muted at the law school, but students managed to muster a sit-in at the library. The dictatorial professor-student relationship was being challenged.
“I couldn’t have written “The Paper Chase” if I hadn’t attended law school during 1969,’’ Osborn wrote. “People were actually asking, ‘What at am I doing here? Why does the professor get to call on me when I haven’t raised my hand?’ ”
That terrifying moment of being called on in the first day of class is the launch point for the book. Kingsfield, based on a Harvard Law professor named Lon Fuller, stands before 150 first-year students, examines his seating chart and announces: “Mr. Hart.” Commanded to summarize the first case to be studied, Hart admits to the professor and 149 classmates that he had not quite read the assignment.
That did not actually happen to Osborn on his first day in contract law, nor did he unknowingly end up dating the professor’s daughter. Her character is loosely based on Emilie Sisson, a Radcliffe student whose grandparents knew Osborn’s grandparents — introduced in the grand style of the old families on the eastern seaboard.
Osborn and Sisson were married in the summer of 1968, after his first year at Harvard Law. According to his wife, Osborn had the ending to the book already in his head when he enrolled in the writing tutorial with William Alfred, a professor of Old English and author of the Broadway play “Hogan’s Goat.”
Once a week, Osborn visited Alfred at home to go over his manuscript. He was halfway through when he graduated from law school, in 1970, and finished the 245-page novel in a family cabin on the coast of Maine. Osborn was neither a braggart nor an exaggerator. Classmate Jerry Garchik, husband of former Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik, didn’t know Osborn was writing a novel until it was released, and he and and Osborn were in a study group together.
“The book was very accurate. Nobody questioned that at all,” said Garchik, now a San Francisco civil rights attorney. “The purpose of the professors was to terrorize the students.”
Osborn was serving a clerkship at the Court of Appeals in Philadelphia when “The Paper Chase” was published. The movie version was a faithful adaptation of the book, and Osborn served as a technical adviser during filming in Toronto.
When it was turned into an hourlong TV series, Osborn wrote scripts while practicing law in New York City. He then wrote “The Associates” about young lawyers eager to make partner at a prestigious Wall Street law firm. Like the first book, “The Associates” became a TV series.
In 1981, the Osborns moved to San Francisco to be near his brothers and sisters and to reduce the commute to Hollywood where he was producing scripts.
In 1991, Osborn began lecturing at both Boalt Hall, now Berkeley Law, and at the USF School of Law. He designed a course titled Law and Literature. His own works were not part of the curriculum.It was up to the students to figure out who he was.
“One of the things I loved about my dad is that he always thought of himself as an underdog and was always on the underdog’s side,” said his daughter, Meredith Osborn, chief trial deputy of the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office. “It took me a long time to realize that I was not actually an underdog.”
Osborn eventually dropped his position at Berkeley Law in order to become a full-time law professor at USF. He retired in 2018.
In 2020 he was inducted into the Redwood Avenue of Giants, the Redwood High School Hall of Fame. By the time the banquet came around, in post-COVID 2022, Osborn was too ill to attend.
“John never boasted about writing ‘The Paper Chase,’ ” said Karen Roby Barrett, a high school classmate. “He was always kind and friendly and easy to get along with. Just a nice guy.”
Osborn’s final novel, “Listen to the Marriage,” is a fictional account of a couple with young kids trying to save their marriage.
“He was very proud that he could still produce a book while in his 70s,” said his wife. “John really felt strongly about telling the story that you could save your marriage through counseling.”
Survivors include his wife of 54 years, Dr. Emilie Osborn of San Francisco; sons, Samuel Osborn of San Francisco and Frederick Osborn of Nantucket, Mass.; daughter, Meredith Osborn of San Francisco; brothers, Oliver Osborn of Corte Madera, Ed Osborn of San Mateo, and Joseph Osborn of San Rafael; sisters, Mimi Oliver of Rotorua, New Zealand; Cindi Garvey of Bend, Ore., and Anne WeiserTruchan of Apex, N.C.; and six grandchildren.
There will be no memorial service. Donations in his honor may be made to: Schoodic Arts for All, PO Box 174, Winter Harbor, ME 04693.