Odets in Clurman’s Theater

Abstract

Harold Clurman initiated an even closer collaboration with Clifford Odets when the Group came to life again in the fall of 1937. His accomplishments as a director were totally tied to the playwright he had nurtured, who, in turn, confessed that he remained with the Group because of his friend’s special grasp of his plays, his needs, and his problems. While they were both in Hollywood, Clurman encouraged Odets to develop his idea for a play about a boy who wants to get rich quick as a prizefighter in opposition to his immigrant father’s hopes for him as a musician. The fighter’s triumph in the brutal boxing ring destroys his humanity, and in the end he destroys himself and the girl he loves. Golden Boy would not only dramatize the great American struggle between economic success and spiritual life, but also the immediate, very personal conflict between the lure of Hollywood and the idealism of the Group that Odets and Clurman, along with Elia Kazan and Luther Adler were confronting. Working in concert, they stole time from their studio assignments to confer on the script, determined to make it the first play of a reconstituted Group Theatre.