Clifford Odets: American Dramatist
Audiences had been Waiting for Lefty a long time…
In December 1950 John Steinbeck wrote Clifford Odets a letter:
Dear Clifford:
I saw The Country Girl last night, and was moved by the lines and the thinking and the sweetness. And as a semi-pro I know that pure theatre can’t be learned but I could wish that it might and that I could learn from you. I’ll have to go back a few times to pick up subtleties I missed seeing square.
It is wonderful and my God it’s good to see a fine clean thing in this musty time. I have just such a sense of triumph, personal triumph, as sometimes comes to me when I hear fine music.
Written with love and admiration.
John
I’m sure Odets was pleased when he received that letter for he and Steinbeck were cut from a similar tree, and I know what Steinbeck meant when he wrote “…a fine clean thing” because when read now Odets’ plays are still clean with a fine and sharp edge.
Clifford Odets’ work is not performed much these days, least of all in the UK, consequently, and sadly, I’ve only been able to read his work recently, most notably those written in the 1930s, which deal, like Steinbeck’s earlier novels, not unnaturally with the exploitation of the working classes in those…
