Clifford Odets

Clifford Odets ( born July 18, 1906 in Philadelphia, † August 18 1963 in Glendale ) was a North American stage and screenwriter and actor. The avowed communist was one of the most successful and influential American playwrights of the 1930s. From his pieces spoke the rebel road, albeit in a poetic way, it sometimes overloaded metaphorically. The characters and their beliefs were more important to him than the plot. His admirable use of colloquial language, the Yiddish is often praised included. Less praiseworthy was the role played Odets in 1952, when he was like so many left-wing artists, summoned before the McCarthy committee. Subsequently, his work lost noticeably bite. Therefore, the bon mot of his colleague George S. Kaufman: " Odets, where is thy sting gone? "

Life

Childhood, youth and first successes

Odets grew up in an immigrant from Eastern Europe Jewish family. His father had brought it to a successful businessman. The sensitive son, however, broke with 17 years of high school to become an actor. In 1931, Odets joined the Group Theatre in New York, for which he also wrote his first pieces, the Waiting for Lefty, Awake and Sing and Till the Day I. Even with Lefty, which brings a taxi driver strike on the stage, he caused a stir. In this enriched through flashbacks act play Odets moved the audience with a. Unlike Brecht, he did not want distanced critical, rather the affected public. In fact, it chimed in the first performances in the chants of the actors. Odets in 1934 joined the Communist Party. His breakthrough as a playwright he had in 1937 filmed with Golden Boy, a play that brought it to 250 performances and 1939 with Barbara Stanwyck and William Holden. All these pieces were dealing with the devastating effects of the Great Depression. Other pieces Odets was later made ​​into a film: Before the new day, which was founded in 1952 by Fritz Lang once again staged with Stanwyck and Robert Ryan and the young Marilyn Monroe, and The Country Girl. This film version of 1954, Grace Kelly, who played the title role opposite Bing Crosby and Willam Holden, the Oscar for best actress in.

Work in Hollywood

Clifford Odets also worked in Hollywood, where he developed the screenplay for the film The general died at dawn among other things, wrote in 1936. In 1944 he took over the direction of None But the Lonely Heart, in which Cary Grant tries desperately as seedy small-time criminal to change his life. Ethel Barrymore won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her portrayal of Grant's dying mother. 1946 Odets was involved in the screenplay by Humoresque in which Joan Crawford as a society lady, to a young man commits suicide because of unrequited love, had one of its most intense roles. The still most well-known writer, he wrote in 1957 for the film Sweet Smell of Success, in which he cast a worried glance at the manipulation of facts by the press and Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster began in the lead roles. In the Court of film sensation on page 1, he took a second and last time the director of a film.

Time of the villains

The playwright Arthur Miller delves into his memories, among others, Odets the not insignificantly influenced him. Besides Odets importance as a rebel and innovator in the theater Miller also discusses the questionable conduct during the McCarthy era. Miller portrays Odets as contradictory, ambitious, vain, yes basically megalomaniac, but always sincere and never spiteful man. Of course, he had his illusions. With regard to the communist beliefs, which he vehemently proclaimed so that it had Odet himself lacked certainty; he was an " American Romantics " basically. What wonder if he succumbed to the lure of fame. He misjudged the pressure to conform in Hollywood, where he raked in a pile of money with harmless screenplays. As he was quoted in 1952 before the McCarthy Committee, the courage, the required " cooperation " with the witch hunters lacked to refuse (in contrast to Miller and Lillian Hellman's companions example Dashiell Hammett ). His performance was mixed. Time he had criticized the process, but " without changing only his indignant tone, he revealed the next moment the names of people whom he knew that they had been in the party. " However, he had the regrets later.

In the memories of his colleague Lillian Hellman Odets play in this respect be worse. " Odets, who had to appear one day before the committee before me, apologized for his old beliefs and called many of his old friends as Communists. "

Private life

In his Hollywood period Odets had the actress Luise Rainer met, with whom he was married from 1937 to 1940. A second marriage he later spent much time with the actress Bette Grayson. In addition, he maintained love affairs with several other women, including the actresses Frances Farmer and Fay Wray. With the French film director Jean Renoir, he was a friend.

Filmography (selection)

193782
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