page_title: Clifford Odets
section_title: Theatre
hierarchical_section_title: Clifford Odets / Career / Theatre
caption_attribution_description: w:en:Clifford Odets photographed by w:en:Carl Van Vechten Clifford Odets
context_page_description: Clifford Odets was an American playwright, screenwriter, and director. In the mid-1930s he was widely seen as the potential successor to Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, as O'Neill began to withdraw from Broadway's commercial pressures and increasing critical backlash. From January 1935 Odets' socially relevant dramas were extremely influential, particularly for the remainder of the Great Depression. His works inspired the next several generations of playwrights, including Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon, and David Mamet. After the production of his play Clash by Night in the 1941–'42 season, Odets focused his energies primarily on film projects, remaining in Hollywood for the next seven years. He returned to New York in 1948 for five and a half years, during which time he produced three more Broadway plays, only one of which was a success. His prominence was eventually eclipsed by Miller, Tennessee Williams, and in the early- to mid-1950s, by William Inge.
context_section_description: Odets pursued acting with great passion and ingenuity. At the age of 19 he struck out on his own, billing himself as "The Rover Reciter." Under this moniker he participated in talent contests and procured bookings as a radio elocutionist. He appeared in several plays with Harry Kemp's Poet's Theatre on the Lower East Side. Odets was among America's first real disc jockeys at about this time, at radio station WBNY and others in Manhattan, where he would play records and ad lib commentary. He also functioned as a drama critic, allowing him free entry to Broadway and downtown shows. In this capacity he saw the 1926 Broadway production of Seán O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock. O'Casey's work would prove to be a powerful influence on Odets as a playwright.
  In the early 1920s, Odets spent four summers as a dramatics counselor at Jewish camps in the Catskills and the Poconos. He toured extensively with stock companies, in particular Philadelphia's popular Mae Desmond Company, playing a large variety of character roles at their theater 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 by Warren F. Lawrence. Odets landed his first job with the prestigious Theatre Guild in the fall of 1929 as an extra. He acted in small roles in a number of Theatre Guild productions between 1929 and 1931. It was at the Guild that he befriended the casting director, Cheryl Crawford. Crawford suggested that Harold Clurman, then a play reader for the Guild, invite Odets to a meeting to discuss new theater concepts they were developing with Lee Strasberg. Though initially bewildered by the concept of acting as an art, Odets was nonetheless mesmerized by Clurman's talks and became the last actor chosen for the Group Theatre's first summer of rehearsals in June 1931 at Brookfield Center in Connecticut, thus becoming a founding member of the company.
  The Group Theatre proved to be one of the most influential companies in the history of the American stage. They were the first to base their work on an acting technique new to the United States, devised by the Russian actor and director Constantin Stanislavski. It was further developed by Group Theatre director Lee Strasberg and became known as The Method or Method Acting.
  From the start, Odets was relegated to small roles and understudying his Group colleagues. He understudied lead actor Luther Adler in the Group's production of John Howard Lawson's Success Story during the 1932-33 season. Much to Odets' frustration, Adler never missed a performance, but he gained much knowledge of the playwriting craft by standing in the wings and listening to the play. Odets credited Lawson with giving him an understanding of the potential theatrical power of colloquial language. With time on his hands and at Clurman's urging he began to try his own hand at writing plays.
  Odets' earliest plays were an autobiographical piece entitled 910 Eden Street, and one about his hero, Beethoven, with the working title "Victory." Clurman dismissed both as juvenilia but encouraged his friend to continue writing, while steering him towards familiar milieus. In late 1932, Odets began writing a play about a middle-class Jewish family in the Bronx, initially called I Got the Blues. He worked diligently on this play, sharing drafts of it with Clurman and promising parts to his fellow actors – often the same parts. While at Green Mansions, their 1933 summer rehearsal venue in Warrensburg, New York, the Group performed Act II of the play, soon to be retitled Awake and Sing!, for other camp residents. The audience was enthusiastic but the Group's leadership, Lee Strasberg in particular, was still, at this point, opposed to producing it.
  Until his debut as a playwright, Odets continued to train as an actor with the Group at their various summer rehearsal headquarters in the Connecticut countryside and upstate New York. In addition to Brookfield Center and Green Mansions, these venues included Dover Furnace in Dutchess County (1932) and a lar
caption: Photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1937
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