42 Facts About Clifford Odets

Clifford Odets was an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor.

Clifford Odets's works inspired the next several generations of playwrights, including Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon, and David Mamet.

Clifford Odets returned to New York for five and a half years, during which time he produced three more Broadway plays, only one of which was a success.

Clifford Odets's prominence was eventually eclipsed by Miller, Tennessee Williams, and, in the early- to mid-1950s, William Inge.

Clifford Odets dropped out of high school after two years to become an actor and a writer.

Clifford Odets appeared in several plays with Harry Kemp's Poet's Theatre on the Lower East Side.

Clifford 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.

Clifford Odets functioned as a drama critic, allowing him free entry to Broadway and downtown shows.

Clifford Odets 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.

Clifford Odets landed his first job with the prestigious Theatre Guild in the fall of 1929 as an extra.

Clifford Odets acted in small roles in a number of Theatre Guild productions between 1929 and 1931.

Clifford Odets credited Lawson with giving him an understanding of the potential theatrical power of colloquial language.

Clifford Odets's earliest plays were an autobiographical piece, 910 Eden Street, and one about his hero, Beethoven, with the working title Victory.

Clurman dismissed both as juvenilia but encouraged Clifford Odets to continue writing, while steering him toward familiar milieus.

In late 1932, Clifford Odets began writing a play about a middle-class Jewish family in the Bronx, initially called I Got the Blues.

Until his debut as a playwright, Clifford Odets continued to train as an actor with the Group at its various summer rehearsal headquarters in the Connecticut countryside and upstate New York.

Clifford Odets became the first produced Method-trained playwright with his first publicly presented play, the one-act Waiting for Lefty, on January 6,1935, at the former Civic Repertory Theatre on Fourteenth Street in New York City.

Clifford Odets asserted that all of his plays deal with the human spirit persevering in the face of any opponent, whether or not the characters are depicted as struggling with the capitalist system.

From Golden Boy on, Clifford Odets's work focused more on the dynamics of interpersonal relationships as affected by the moral dilemmas of individual characters.

Leftist critics rebuked Clifford Odets for abandoning his formerly overt political stance and the play was only modestly successful.

The play's harsh critique of Hollywood mores was interpreted as ingratitude on the part of Clifford Odets, who had by this time made a significant amount of money writing films.

The immediate success of Clifford Odets's early plays attracted the attention of Hollywood producers.

Clifford Odets first went to Hollywood in early 1936 to write for the screen as well as the stage.

Clifford Odets declined to be credited for many of the films on which he worked, but did accept full credit as both screenwriter and director for None but the Lonely Heart, adapted from the novel by Richard Llewellyn and produced by RKO.

Clifford Odets wrote the 1957 screenplay for Sweet Smell of Success, based on the novelette and a first draft by Ernest Lehman and produced by the independent company Hecht-Hill-Lancaster.

Clifford Odets directed one other film, for which he wrote the screenplay, The Story on Page One.

Clifford Odets had belonged to the Communist Party for less than a year, between 1934 and 1935, but continued to sponsor many left-wing, progressive groups, some of which were suspected communist fronts.

Clifford Odets cooperated with HUAC to the extent that he responded to their questions and reiterated names of Communist Party members who had been previously cited by his friend and former Group colleague Elia Kazan.

Clifford Odets thereby avoided overt blacklisting though the Committee withheld thanks for his testimony, an omission generally construed as signifying their displeasure.

Clifford Odets found it increasingly difficult to garner film assignments.

Clifford Odets was tormented by public reaction to his testimony for the rest of his life.

Two of Clifford Odets's finished scripts were aired posthumously: "Big Mitch", and "The Mafia Man".

Clifford Odets worked on the libretto for a projected musical version of Golden Boy.

Clifford Odets married actress Luise Rainer in January 1937, just months before she won her first of two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actress.

Nora Clifford Odets died at Long Beach, Long Island, in 2008; Walt Clifford Odets became a clinical psychologist, author, and photographer residing in Berkeley, California.

Clifford Odets had relationships with actresses Frances Farmer, Kim Stanley, and Fay Wray.

Clifford Odets had long suffered from gastrointestinal distress and on July 23,1963, was admitted to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles to undergo treatment for stomach ulcers.

Clifford Odets received bedside visits from such movie and theater friends as Marlon Brando, Lee Strasberg and Paula Strasberg, Jean Renoir and his wife Dido, Elia Kazan, Harold Clurman, Shirley MacLaine, and Danny Kaye.

Clifford Odets's ashes were interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, in Glendale, California.

Clifford Odets is regarded as one of the American theater's most important playwrights.

Clifford Odets is a character in Names, Mark Kemble's play about former Group Theatre members' struggles in the blacklist era.

Clifford Odets was named a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.