Clifford Odets - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography (Read)
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Clifford Odets - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography
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Clifford Odets - biography, date of birth, place of birth, filmography, clips, Writer, Director.
July 18, 1906 Philadelphia - August 18, 1963, Los Angeles - American playwright and left-wing screenwriter. Based on his works, the films The Golden Boy (1939), The Clash in the Night (1952), The Country Girl (1954), The Big Knife (1955), The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and others have been staged.
Born to a Jewish immigrant family, raised in the Bronx. He dropped out of school to devote his life to theater. In 1931, together with Lee Strasberg, he was at the forefront of the Group Theater troupe, which promoted the Stanislavsky system in the United States. In 1935 he wrote his most successful play Awake and Sing! For this troupe, which is still shown on Broadway.
Odets' early plays are based on the traumatic situations of the Great Depression. They are characterized by a straightforward, somewhat vulgar interpretation of the Marxist doctrine ("agitprop") and dialogues of "people from the street" full of poetic metaphors. The exposition and the plot component in general are minimized. Odets idealized the Soviet state, for some time (in 1934) was a member of the US Communist Party.
In the late 1930s. the theme of the great depression, which was developed by the playwright, ceased to interest the theaters of Broadway. Odets, who was romantically involved with popular Hollywood actresses Frances Farmer and Louise Rainer, married the latter and moved from the East Coast to Hollywood in hopes of making a career as a screenwriter. It took some time to adapt to the Hollywood conveyor; this episode of his biography formed the basis of the film "Barton Fink" (1991) .
In the midst of McCarthyism, Odets testified to the Anti-American Activities Committee. He disowned his connections with the Communists and named several names of the “reds” in Hollywood, which, however, were already known from the testimony of Elia Kazan.
