Odets, Clifford - ōdĕtsˈ, 1906–63, American dramatist, b. Philadelphia. After graduating from high school he became an actor and in 1931 joined the Group Theatre. Turning his attention from acting to playwriting, Odets soon came to be regarded as the most gifted of the American social-protest dramatists of the 1930s. His first work for the Group, Waiting for Lefty (1935), a Marxian drama of the awakening and insurgency of the impoverished working classes, aroused immediate international attention. Awake and Sing (1935), his first full-length play and considered to be his best work, compassionately portrays the struggles and rebellion of a financially destitute Jewish family. Other plays include Till the Day I Die (1935), Paradise Lost (1935), Golden Boy (1937), and Clash by Night (1942). Odets spent many years in Hollywood writing film scripts. In his later plays he turned from social drama to rather turgid and self-conscious dramas of the individual, such as The Big Knife (1949), The Country Girl (1950), and The Flowering Peach (1954).

See biographical studies by E. Murray (1968) and G. C. Weales (1971).

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