Background
Odets was born on the 18th of July, 1906, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Louis Odets (born Gorodetsky) and Pearl Geisinger, Russian- and Romanian-Jewish immigrants, and was raised in Philadelphia and the Bronx, New York.
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1935
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1955
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1955
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1957
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1994
Odets was born on the 18th of July, 1906, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Louis Odets (born Gorodetsky) and Pearl Geisinger, Russian- and Romanian-Jewish immigrants, and was raised in Philadelphia and the Bronx, New York.
Odets dropped out of high school after two years to become an actor.
In 1931 Odets joined the newly founded Group Theatre as one of its original members. Odets’s Waiting for Lefty (1935), his first great success, used both auditorium and stage for action and was an effective plea for labour unionism; Awake and Sing (1935) is a naturalistic family drama; and Golden Boy (1937; filmed 1939) concerns an Italian youth who rejects his artistic potential to become a boxer. Paradise Lost (1935) deals with the tragic life of a middle-class family.
Odets moved to Hollywood in the late ’30s to write for motion pictures and became a successful director. His later plays include The Big Knife (1949), The Country Girl (1950; U.K. title Winter Journey), and The Flowering Peach (1954).
Odets' socially relevant dramas proved extremely influential, particularly for the remainder of the Great Depression. Odets' works inspired the next several generations of playwrights, including Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon, David Mamet, and Jon Robin Baitz.
Clifford Odets was a member of the Actors Equity Association, Dramatists Guild, and Screen Writers Guild.
Odets was never a beauty, but everyone who met him was entranced: he was magnetic, a great talker, funny, with burning eyes, and that forlorn attractiveness of a natural actor (he had acted professionally) who had never got big parts.
Odets was married to Luise Rainer. They divorced in May 1940. He married for a second time, in 1943. Odets and actress Bette Grayson had two children, Nora, born in 1945, and Walt, born in 1947. Odets and Grayson divorced in 1951.
