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Paradise Lost Program: Clifford Odets Timeline
FEB 8, 2010
| TIMELINE | |
| 1906 | Clifford Odets is born in Philadelphia. |
| 1912 | His family moves to the Bronx, where he spends his youth. |
| 1923 | Odets drops out of high school to pursue acting. |
| 1931 | The Group Theatre is formed by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Lee Strasberg. Odets begins as a company actor playing secondary roles and then starts to write plays. The Group Theatre is at first reluctant to stage his work, but eventually becomes one of the main producers of his plays. |
| 1934 | Odets joins the American Communist Party. |
| 1935-1940 | The Group Theatre premieres Paradise Lost on Broadway. Directed by Harold Clurman. Original cast included: Stella Adler, Elia Kazan, Luther Adler, Sanford Meisner, and Robert Lewis. |
| 1935 | The Group Theatre produces a number of Clifford Odets’s plays including: Waiting for Lefty (1935), Awake and Sing!(1935), Till the Day I Die (1935), Golden Boy (1937), Rocket to the Moon(1938), and Night Music(1940). |
| 1936 | Odets writes The General Died at Dawn, his first screenplay. |
| 1937 | Odets marries Luise Rainer, who won consecutive Academy Awards as “Best Actress” for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth(1937). |
| 1941 | Divorces Luise Rainer; The Group Theatre disbands. |
| 1941 | Odets writes Clash by Night, his first post-Group Theatre play. |
| 1943 | Marries actress Bette Grayson. |
| 1944 | Odets writes and directs None But the Lonely Heart, a film staring Cary Grant and Ethel Barrymore. |
| 1946 | Harold Clurman directs Odets’s film Deadline at Dawn. |
| 1950 | Odets writes The Country Girl, a play which was adapted into a 1954 film starring Grace Kelly. Kelly won an Oscar for her performance. |
| 1951 | Odets divorces Bette Grayson. |
| 1952 | Odets is called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He confirms names and disavows his communist affiliations. |
| 1954 | Odets writes The Flowering Peach, a play that would become the basis for the 1970 musical Two by Two. |
| 1957 | Writes The Sweet Smell of Success, the film that inspired the 2002 musical of the same name. |
| 1959 | Clifford Odets writes and directs The Story on Page One, a film starring Rita Hayworth and Sanford Meisner. |
| 1961 | Writes Wild in the Country, a film starring Elvis Presley. |
| 1963 | Odets dies of cancer. |
