Clifford Odets - Life, Works

Playwright and actor, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. In 1931 he joined the Group Theater, New York City, becoming a leading US playwright in the 1930s. His works are marked by a strong social conscience, and grew largely from the conditions of the Great Depression. They included Waiting for Lefty, Till the Day I Die (both 1935), and Golden Boy (1937). Among his film scripts were The General Died at Dawn (1936), None but the Lonely Heart (1944, which he directed), and The Big Knife (1955). During the 1940s he took up painting, producing more than 600 works during 1945–57.

Clifford Odets (July 18, 1906 - August 18, 1963) was an American playwright, screenwriter, socialist, and social protester.

Life

Odets was born in Philadelphia of Jewish immigrant parents and raised in the Bronx, New York.

After briefly trying acting, Odets decided to become the Group Theatre's first original playwright.

Mainly due to misgivings from Group leader Lee Strasberg, Awake and Sing! was not produced right away. The wild success of this play brought Odets unexpected fame and fortune.

These plays, along with Odets' other major Group Theatre plays of the 1930s, are harsh criticisms of profiteers and exploitative economic systems during the Great Depression. They have been dismissed by some critics as mere propaganda, but Odets asserted that all of his plays deal with the human spirit persevering in the face of all opponents, whether they be the capitalist class or not.

In 1953, Odets was investigated by Joseph McCarthy and called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

Odets' dramatic style is distinguished by a kind of poetic, metaphor-laden street talk, by his socialist politics, and by his way of dropping the audience right into the conflict with little or no introduction.

His first wife was Academy-Award winning actress Luise Rainer;

Clifford Odets died of stomach cancer at the age of 57 in 1963 and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Works

Acted in

Midnight - 1930 1931 - 1931 Big Night - 1933 They All Come to Moscow - 1933 Men in White - 1933 Gold Eagle Guy - 1934

Wrote

(1935) Waiting for Lefty (1935) Awake and Sing! (1935) Till the Day I Die (1935) Paradise Lost (1936) The General Died at Dawn (screenplay) (1937) Golden Boy (1938) Rocket to the Moon (1940) Night Music (1941) Clash by Night (1942) The Russian People (adaptation) (1946) Humoresque (1946) Notorious (dialogue: love scenes; uncredited) (1946) Deadline at Dawn (screenplay) (1949) The Big Knife (1950) The Country Girl (1954) The Flowering Peach (1957) Sweet Smell of Success (screenplay) (1961) Wild in the Country (screenplay)

The Flowering Peach became the basis for the 1970 musical Two by Two.

A (very) loose retelling of Clifford Odets's trouble adapting to writing screenplays in Hollywood is the basis for the 1991 film Barton Fink.

Odets was the subject of a critically acclaimed biography by Margaret Brenman-Gibson, wife of playwright William Gibson: Clifford Odets - American Playwright - The Years from 1906-1940. This was supposed to be a two-volume work, with the second volume to cover the final twenty-three years of Odets's life.