Odets, << oh DEHTS >> Clifford (1906-1963), an American dramatist, is best known for his plays of social conflict written during the 1930’s. His most successful works were presented by the famous Group Theatre.
Odets’s one-act play Waiting for Lefty (1935) is about a taxi drivers’ strike. It ranks among the most important of the many plays written in the 1930’s that deal with the struggle of the working class. His Awake and Sing! (1935) is less propagandistic than Waiting for Lefty. It tells the story of a poor Jewish family in the Bronx during the Great Depression. Odets also wrote Paradise Lost (1935), Golden Boy (1937), Night Music (1940), The Big Knife (1948), and The Country Girl (1950).
Odets was born in Philadelphia on July 18, 1906. He helped form the Group Theatre in 1931. He was a film scriptwriter from 1936 until shortly before his death on Aug. 14, 1963.
