- published: 02 Feb 2013
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Clifford Odets (July 18, 1906 – August 14, 1963) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and director.
Odets was born in Philadelphia to Louis Odets (born Gorodetsky) and Pearl Geisinger, Russian- and Romanian-Jewish immigrants, and raised in Philadelphia and the Bronx, New York. He dropped out of high school after two years to become an actor. In 1931, he became a founding member of the Group Theatre, a highly influential New York theatre company that utilized an acting technique new to the United States. This technique was based on the system devised by the Russian actor and director Constantin Stanislavski. It was further developed by Group Theatre director Lee Strasberg and became known as The Method. Odets eventually became the Group's primary playwright.
Odets pursued acting with great passion and ingenuity. At the age of 19 he struck out on his own, billing himself as ″The Rover Reciter.″ Under this moniker he procured bookings as a radio elocutionist. He moved away from his parents, to Greenwich Village, where he acted with the Poet's Theatre under the direction of Village legend Harry Kemp. Odets claimed to have become America's first real disc jockey at about this time, at radio station WBNY, as well as a drama critic. In this capacity he saw the 1926 Broadway production of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock. O'Casey's work would prove to be a powerful influence on Odets.
Actors: Erwin Steinhauer (actor), Rupert Henning (actor), Hakon Hirzenberger (director), Michaela Ronzoni (writer),
Genres: ,Actors: Phillip Johnston (composer), Sheila McLaughlin (director), Sheila McLaughlin (actress), Victoria Boothby (actress), John Erdman (actor), Lee Breuer (actor), Lynne Tillman (director), Lynne Tillman (writer), Lucy Sanger (actress),
Genres: Drama,Actors: Billy Goldenberg (composer), Tom Brocato (miscellaneous crew), Melanie Mayron (actress), Dalene Young (writer), Lee Grant (actress), Angus MacInnes (actor), George Touliatos (actor), John Heard (actor), Dalene Young (actress), Royal Dano (actor), Jeannie Elias (actress), Susan Blakely (actress), Joe Grifasi (actor), Joan Eremin (miscellaneous crew), Fielder Cook (director),
Plot: Based on the fast and frantic life of actress Frances Farmer tracing her life from her childhood in Seattle, through her college years, her flirtation with radical politics, her success in films and the theater, her doomed love affair with Clifford Odets, her physical and mental breakdown, and her ultimate emergence from an institution where she spent five years, to her death from cancer.
Keywords: 1930s, 1940s, actress, clifford-odets, domineering-mother, drunkenness, filmmaking, frances-farmer, group-theater, mental-illnessActors: Sam Shepard (actor), Allan Rich (actor), Jack Riley (actor), David Schroeder (actor), Woodrow Parfrey (actor), John Randolph (actor), M.C. Gainey (actor), Jonathan Banks (actor), Lee de Broux (actor), Jeffrey DeMunn (actor), James Karen (actor), Kevin Costner (actor), Darrell Larson (actor), Biff Yeager (actor), Lane Smith (actor),
Genres: Biography, Drama, Romance,