Clifford Odets
Encyclopedia
Clifford Odets was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

, screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

, socialist, and social protester.

Early life

Odets was born in Philadelphia to Romanian
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....

- and Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

-Jewish immigrant parents, Louis Odets (born Gorodetsky) and Esther Geisinger, and raised in Philadelphia and the Bronx, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. He dropped out of high school to pursue acting. He was a founding member of the Group Theatre, a highly influential theatre company in the U.S. that utilized a new acting technique, closely associated with the thinking of the Russian master Constantin Stanislavski. Odets became The Group's primary playwright.

Career

After briefly trying acting, Odets decided to become the Group Theatre's first original playwright. At the urging of Group co-founder Harold Clurman
Harold Clurman
Harold Edgar Clurman was a visionary American theatre director and drama critic, "one of the most influential in the United States". He was most notable as one of the three founders of the New York City's Group Theatre...

, he wrote Awake and Sing!
Awake and Sing!
Awake and Sing! is a drama written by American playwright Clifford Odets. The play was initially produced by The Group Theatre in 1935.-Summary and characters:...

in 1935. Although his first play, it is often considered his masterpiece. It follows the story of a large Jewish family in New York.

Mainly due to the misgivings of Group leader Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg was an American actor, director and acting teacher. He cofounded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective"...

, Awake and Sing! was not produced right away. Nor was his second Till the Day I Die, which was banned In Sydney, Australia for its anti-Nazi sentiments. Odets's first play to be produced was the one-act Waiting for Lefty
Waiting for Lefty
Waiting for Lefty is a 1935 play by American playwright Clifford Odets. Consisting of a series of related vignettes, the entire play is framed by the meeting of cab drivers who are planning a labor strike. The framing situation utilizes the audience as part of the meeting.While this was not the...

. This is a series of interconnected scenes depicting workers for a fictional taxi company. The focus alternates between the drivers' union meeting and vignettes from their difficult, oppressed lives. The climax is a defiant call for the union to strike. The play can be performed in any acting space, including union meeting halls and on the street. The play's wild success brought Odets unexpected fame and fortune. In 1938 Odets wrote what is perhaps his signature work, Rocket to the Moon, about a guilt-ridden dentist, which put him on the cover of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

magazine.

Odets would soon move to Hollywood to begin writing for the screen as well as the stage. His play The Flowering Peach was the preferred choice of the Pulitzer Prize jury in 1955, but under pressure from Joseph Pulitzer Jr., the prize went instead to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...

, which the jury considered the weakest of the five shortlisted nominees.

These plays, along with Odets's other major Group Theatre plays of the 1930s, are harsh criticisms of profiteers and exploitative economic systems during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. They have been dismissed by some critics as mere propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

, 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 later years, Odets's plays became more reflective and autobiographical, although class consciousness was ever in the background. The playwright George S. Kaufman
George S. Kaufman
George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers...

 gently tweaked him about his innocuous turn: "Odets, where is thy sting?"

Odets spent summers from 1931 to the early 1940s at Pine Brook Country Club
Pine Brook Country Club
-Introduction:Pine Brook Country Club began when Benjamin Plotkin purchased Pinewood Lake and the surrounding countryside on Mischa Hill in the historic village of Nichols, Connecticut. Plotkin built an auditorium with a revolving stage and forty rustic cabins and incorporated as the Pine Brook...

 in the countryside of Nichols, Connecticut
Nichols, Connecticut
Nichols, a historic village in southeastern Trumbull on the Gold Coast of Fairfield County, was named after the family who maintained a large farm in its center for almost 300 years. The Nichols Farms Historic District, which encompasses part of the village, is listed on the National Register of...

, which was the rehearsal headquarters of the Group Theatre (New York) formed by Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg was an American actor, director and acting teacher. He cofounded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective"...

, Harold Clurman
Harold Clurman
Harold Edgar Clurman was a visionary American theatre director and drama critic, "one of the most influential in the United States". He was most notable as one of the three founders of the New York City's Group Theatre...

 and Cheryl Crawford
Cheryl Crawford
Cheryl Crawford was an American theatre producer and director.Born in Akron, Ohio, Crawford majored in drama at Smith College. Following graduation, she moved to New York City and enrolled at the Theatre Guild's school...

. Other artists who worked at Pine Brook were; Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...

, Sanford Meisner
Sanford Meisner
Sanford Meisner , also known as Sandy, was an American actor and acting teacher who developed a form of Method acting that is now known as the Meisner technique....

, Luise Rainer
Luise Rainer
Luise Rainer is a former German film actress. Known as The "Viennese Teardrop", she was the first woman to win two Academy Awards, and the first person to win them consecutively. She was discovered by MGM talent scouts while acting on stage in Austria and Germany and after appearing in Austrian...

, Harry Morgan
Harry Morgan
Harry Morgan is an American actor. Morgan is well-known for his roles as Colonel Sherman T. Potter on M*A*S*H , Pete Porter on both Pete and Gladys and December Bride , Detective Bill Gannon on Dragnet , and Amos Coogan on Hec Ramsey...

, John Garfield
John Garfield
John Garfield was an American actor adept at playing brooding, rebellious, working-class character roles. He grew up in poverty in Depression-era New York City and in the early 1930s became an important member of the Group Theater. In 1937 he moved to Hollywood, eventually becoming one of Warner...

, Francis Farmer, Will Geer
Will Geer
Will Geer was an American actor and social activist. His original name was William Aughe Ghere. He is remembered for his portrayal of Grandpa Zebulon Tyler Walton in the 1970s TV series, The Waltons....

, Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb was an American actor. He is best known for his performance in 12 Angry Men his Academy Award-nominated performance in On the Waterfront and one of his last films, The Exorcist...

, Howard Da Silva
Howard Da Silva
Howard Da Silva was an American actor.-Early life:He was born Howard Silverblatt in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Benjamin and Bertha Silverblatt. His parents were both Yiddish speaking Jews born in Russia. He had a job as a steelworker before beginning his acting career on the stage...

 and Irwin Shaw
Irwin Shaw
Irwin Shaw was a prolific American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best-known for his novel, The Young Lions about the fate of three soldiers during World War II that was made into a film starring Marlon...

.

In 1952, Odets was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA). He disavowed any current communist affiliations and cooperated by not taking the Fifth Amendment; as a result, he did not share the fate of many of his colleagues who were blacklist
Blacklist
A blacklist is a list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a verb, to blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to ostracize a person from a certain social circle...

ed. Odets did not provide the names of anyone who had not already been mentioned to the committee. Odets was, however, reportedly tormented by the public reaction to his testimony until his death in 1963, and he wrote relatively little for stage or screen after his 1952 subcommittee appearance. Two notable scripts from his Hollywood years in the 1950s were The Big Knife
The Big Knife
The Big Knife is a film noir directed and produced by Robert Aldrich from a screenplay by James Poe based on the play by Clifford Odets. The film stars Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Wendell Corey, Jean Hagen, Rod Steiger, Shelley Winters, Ilka Chase, and Everett Sloane.-Plot:Charlie Castle, a very...

(play and 1955 movie), and Sweet Smell of Success
Sweet Smell of Success
Sweet Smell of Success is a 1957 American film noir made by Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions and released by United Artists. It was directed by Alexander Mackendrick and stars Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison and Martin Milner. The screenplay was written by Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman...

(movie, 1957). His last play, The Flowering Peach was produced on Broadway in 1955.

In the early 1960s Odets was once again a-ferment, revising librettos for projected musical versions of Golden Boy and The Flowering Peach, and signing a lucrative contract for a dozen teleplays for NBC's new dramatic anthology, The Richard Boone Show
The Richard Boone Show
The Richard Boone Show is a short-lived, award-winning anthology television series. It aired on NBC during the 1963-64 season.-Synopsis:Richard Boone hosted the series and starred in about half of the episodes, garnering an Emmy nomination for himself and a Golden Globe award for the show...

. Time magazine ran an article on his artistic rebirth, quoting the playwright as saying, "The American people don't know who they are or where they're going." The article went on to say, 'Clifford Odets knows where he's going—to NBC as a television writer." Unfortunately Odets had neglected his health in recent years and by mid-1963 was in hospital with advanced stomach and bowel cancer. He died soon after, on August 14, 1963, following many bedside visits from such movie and theater friends as Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career...

 and Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian...

 (who eventually would star in the musical version of The Flowering Peach).

Style

Odets's 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. Often character is more important than plot, which Odets attributed to the influence of Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...

. In general, Odets's political statements reflect the Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 that was common in the 1930s; he often points to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 as an example of a perfect socialist state.

Personal life

His first wife was Academy-Award winning actress Luise Rainer
Luise Rainer
Luise Rainer is a former German film actress. Known as The "Viennese Teardrop", she was the first woman to win two Academy Awards, and the first person to win them consecutively. She was discovered by MGM talent scouts while acting on stage in Austria and Germany and after appearing in Austrian...

; his second wife was actress Bette Grayson
Bette Grayson
Bette Grayson was a Hollywood actress and the second wife of playwright Clifford Odets.She died at the age of 32.-References:...

, and he also had a relationship with actress Frances Farmer
Frances Farmer
Frances Elena Farmer was an American actress of stage and screen. She is perhaps better known for sensationalized and fictional accounts of her life, and especially her involuntary commitment to a mental hospital...

. Grayson's death at 34 left Odets to care for their two children, Nora, born in 1945, and Walt Whitman, now a clinical psychologist, author and photographer, born in 1947. Odets was a close friend of Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...

, who was also working in Hollywood during the 1940s. Renoir dedicated an entire chapter of his autobiography to his friendship with Odets http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/20/theater/20odet.html including a moving visit to the playwright on his deathbed.

Clifford Odets died of colon cancer at the age of 57 in 1963 and his ashes were interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California
Glendale, California
Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population is 191,719, down from 194,973 at the 2000 census. making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the 22nd largest city in the state of California...

.

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
    Waiting for Lefty
    Waiting for Lefty is a 1935 play by American playwright Clifford Odets. Consisting of a series of related vignettes, the entire play is framed by the meeting of cab drivers who are planning a labor strike. The framing situation utilizes the audience as part of the meeting.While this was not the...

  • (1935) Awake and Sing!
    Awake and Sing!
    Awake and Sing! is a drama written by American playwright Clifford Odets. The play was initially produced by The Group Theatre in 1935.-Summary and characters:...

  • (1935) Till the Day I Die
  • (1935) Paradise Lost
  • (1936) The General Died at Dawn
    The General Died at Dawn
    The General Died at Dawn is a 1936 film that tells the story of a mercenary who meets a beautiful girl while trying to keep arms from getting to a vicious warlord in war-torn China. The movie was written by Charles G. Booth and Clifford Odets, and directed by Lewis Milestone.It stars Gary Cooper,...

    (screenplay)
  • (1937) Golden Boy
  • (1938) Rocket to the Moon
    Rocket to the Moon (play)
    Rocket to the Moon is a 1938 play by the American playwright Clifford Odets. It was adapted for television by the BBC in 1986, with John Malkovich and Connie Booth in the lead roles....

  • (1940) Night Music
  • (1941) Clash by Night
    Clash by Night (Odets drama)
    Clash by Night is a romantic triangle drama by Clifford Odets which premiered on Broadway in 1941 and was later adapted to film and television...

  • (1942) The Russian People (adaptation)
  • (1944) None but the Lonely Heart (screenplay adaptation)
  • (1946) Humoresque
    Humoresque (film)
    Humoresque is a 1946 Warner Bros. feature film starring Joan Crawford and John Garfield in an older woman/younger man tale about a violinist and his patroness. The screenplay by Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold was based upon a novel by Fannie Hurst...

    (screenplay)
  • (1946) Notorious (dialogue: love scenes; uncredited)
  • (1946) Deadline at Dawn
    Deadline at Dawn
    Deadline at Dawn is a 1946 film noir, the only film directed by stage director Harold Clurman. It was written by Clifford Odets and based on a novella by Cornell Woolrich . The RKO Radio Picture was the only cinematic collaboration between Clurman and his former Group Theatre associate,...

    (screenplay)
  • (1949) The Big Knife
  • (1950) The Country Girl
    The Country Girl
    The Country Girl may refer to:* The Country Girl , a 1915 silent film, based on an 18th-century play by David Garrick* The Country Girl , a 1954 film based on a play by Clifford Odets, starring Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly...

  • (1954) The Flowering Peach; The Big Knife
    The Big Knife
    The Big Knife is a film noir directed and produced by Robert Aldrich from a screenplay by James Poe based on the play by Clifford Odets. The film stars Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Wendell Corey, Jean Hagen, Rod Steiger, Shelley Winters, Ilka Chase, and Everett Sloane.-Plot:Charlie Castle, a very...

  • (1957) Sweet Smell of Success
    Sweet Smell of Success
    Sweet Smell of Success is a 1957 American film noir made by Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions and released by United Artists. It was directed by Alexander Mackendrick and stars Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison and Martin Milner. The screenplay was written by Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman...

    (screenplay)
  • (1961) Wild in the Country
    Wild in the Country
    Wild in the Country is a 1961 film drama starring Elvis Presley in which he portrays a troubled young man from a dysfunctional family who pursues a literary career. The screenplay was written by playwright Clifford Odets.-Synopsis:...

    (screenplay)

Directed

  • (1944) None but the Lonely Heart (film, from Odets' adaptation of the Llewellan novel)
  • (1959) The Story on Page One (film, from Odets' original screenplay)

Legacy

The Flowering Peach became the basis for the 1970 musical Two by Two
Two by Two (musical)
Two By Two is a Broadway musical with a book by Peter Stone, lyrics by Martin Charnin, and music by Richard Rodgers.Based on Clifford Odets's play The Flowering Peach, it tells the story of Noah's preparations for the Great Flood and its aftermath....

. Golden Boy was made into a 1939 film and became the basis for a 1964 musical of the same name
Golden Boy (musical)
Golden Boy is a musical with a book by Clifford Odets and William Gibson, lyrics by Lee Adams, and music by Charles Strouse.Based on the 1937 play of the same name by Odets, it focuses on Joe Wellington, a young man from Harlem who, despite his family's objections, turns to prizefighting as a means...

. His screenplay for Sweet Smell of Success became the basis for the 2002 musical of the same name.

A (very) loose retelling of Clifford Odets's trouble adapting to writing screenplays in Hollywood is the basis for the 1991 film Barton Fink
Barton Fink
Barton Fink is a 1991 American film, written, directed, and produced by the Coen brothers. Set in 1941, it stars John Turturro in the title role as a young New York City playwright who is hired to write scripts for a movie studio in Hollywood, and John Goodman as Charlie, the insurance salesman who...

.

Odets was the subject of a critically acclaimed biography by Margaret Brenman-Gibson, wife of playwright William Gibson
William Gibson (playwright)
William Gibson was an American playwright and novelist. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1938.He was of Irish, French, German, Dutch and Russian ancestry...

: 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. However, no second volume was ever published, and Brenman-Gibson died in 2004.

Odets was played by Jeffrey DeMunn
Jeffrey DeMunn
Jeffrey DeMunn is an American theatre, film and television actor.-Life and career:DeMunn was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of Violet and James DeMunn. Stepson of noted actress Betty Lutes DeMunn...

 in Frances
Frances
Frances is a 1982 American drama film starring Jessica Lange, Kim Stanley, and Sam Shepard. When it was released this film was advertised as a purportedly true account of actress Frances Farmer's life but the script was largely fictional and sensationalized...

, and by John Heard in the 1983 biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...

, Will There Be A Morning?, both about Frances Farmer
Frances Farmer
Frances Elena Farmer was an American actress of stage and screen. She is perhaps better known for sensationalized and fictional accounts of her life, and especially her involuntary commitment to a mental hospital...

.

Odets' name is mentioned in an episode of the NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 series Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was an American dramedy television series created and written by Aaron Sorkin. It ran for 22 episodes.The series takes place behind the scenes of a live sketch comedy show on the fictional television network NBS , whose format is similar to that of NBC's...

, "The Wrap Party." The episode's subplot dealt with The Hollywood Ten
The Hollywood Ten
The Hollywood Ten is an American 16mm short documentary film. In the film, each member of the Hollywood Ten made a short speech denouncing McCarthyism and the Hollywood Blacklisting.The film was directed by John Berry...

.

External links

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