Clifford Odets

Clifford Odets was born on July 18, 1906, in Philadelphia to Russian- and Romanian-Jewish immigrants, and grew up in Philadelphia and the Bronx. He left high school after two years to pursue acting and writing. At 19, he called himself "The Rover Reciter," entering talent shows and working as a radio elocutionist. He performed with Harry Kemp's Poet's Theatre on the Lower East Side and became one of America's first disc jockeys, playing records and ad-libbing on Manhattan stations like WBNY. He also worked as a drama critic, which got him into Broadway and downtown shows for free; in 1926, he saw Seán O'Casey's *Juno and the Paycock*, which strongly influenced him.

In the early 1920s, Odets spent four summers as a dramatics counselor at Jewish camps in the Catskills and Poconos. He toured with stock companies, notably Philadelphia's Mae Desmond Company, playing character roles in Chester, Pennsylvania. His first Broadway break came in 1929, when he was cast in two small roles and as understudy to the young Spencer Tracy in *Conflict*. That fall, he got his first job with the prestigious Theatre Guild as an extra, acting in small roles through 1931. There he befriended casting director Cheryl Crawford, who suggested that Harold Clurman invite Odets to a meeting about new theater concepts with Lee Strasberg. Though initially confused by the idea of acting as an art, Odets was captivated by Clurman's talks and became the last actor chosen for the Group Theatre's first summer rehearsals in June 1931 in Brookfield Center, Connecticut, making him a founding member.

The Group Theatre became one of the most influential companies in American stage history, the first to base its work on Constantin Stanislavski's acting technique, later developed by Strasberg into The Method. Odets started in small roles and as an understudy; during the 1932–33 season, he understudied Luther Adler in *Success Story*, but Adler never missed a performance. Still, Odets learned about playwriting by standing in the wings and listening. He credited playwright John Howard Lawson with showing him the theatrical power of colloquial language. At Clurman's urging, he began writing plays. His earliest efforts—an autobiographical piece called *910 Eden Street* and a play about Beethoven titled *Victory*—were dismissed by Clurman as juvenilia, but Clurman encouraged him to keep writing and steer toward familiar subjects. In late 1932, Odets started a play about a middle-class Jewish family in the Bronx, initially called *I Got the Blues*. He worked on it diligently, sharing drafts with Clurman and promising parts to fellow actors. At Green Mansions in Warrensburg, New York, during the 1933 summer rehearsal, the Group performed Act II of the play, soon retitled *Awake and Sing!* The audience loved it, but the Group's leadership, especially Strasberg, opposed producing it.

Until his debut as a playwright, Odets continued training as an actor with the Group at summer rehearsal sites in Connecticut and upstate New York, including Brookfield Center, Green Mansions, Dover Furnace (1932), Ellenville (1934), Pine Brook Country Club (1936), and Lake Grove in Smithtown, New York (1939). He later said his chief influence as a playwright was the Group Theatre acting company and that its technique "crept right into the plays." Odets became the first produced Method-trained playwright with his first publicly presented play.

In the mid-1930s, he was widely seen as the potential successor to Nobel Prize–winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, as O'Neill withdrew from Broadway's commercial pressures and critical backlash. From January 1935, Odets's socially relevant dramas were extremely influential, especially for the rest of the Great Depression. His work inspired later generations of playwrights, including Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon, and David Mamet. After his play *Clash by Night* in the 1941–42 season, Odets focused mainly on film projects, staying in Hollywood until mid-1948. He then returned to New York for five and a half years, producing three more Broadway plays, only one of which succeeded. His prominence was eventually eclipsed by Miller, Tennessee Williams, and, in the early to mid-1950s, William Inge. Odets died on August 14, 1963.