Clifford Odets was born in Philadelphia on July 18, 1906. He was raised in New York City by his Jewish immigrant parents, dropping out of school at 17 to become an actor. He worked in small repertory companies throughout the 1920s before becoming one of the original members of the avant-garde left-wing ensemble Group Theatre. The group was committed to radical revolutions in theater, focusing on pressing social issues of the day while ridding their original productions of the artificiality that they believed had consumed Broadway.
After joining the American Communist Party in 1934, Odets exploded onto the theater scene with Waiting for Lefty, produced in 1935 and inspired by a taxi...
