Although Odets has said he was "a worker's son until the age of twelve," the family lived in one of the first apartment buildings in the Bronx that had an elevator, and they owned a Max-well automobile, two sure indicators of financial success. They later returned to Philadelphia, where Louis Odets became vice-president of a boiler company and owned an advertising agency, which he sold upon his retirement for two hundred thousand dollars. Despite a financially secure childhood, Odets claimed to have been "a melancholy kid," probably resulting from his stormy relationship with his father, who had plans for his son to enter his advertising business; but from an early age, Odets wanted to become an actor. Because he considered it "a waste of time," he dropped out of Morris High School in 1923 after two years and tried to write poetry. Odets recalled in an interview that on one occasion his father, furious with his son's rebelliousness, smashed his typewriter. Later, of course, his father replaced it, and eventually gave his permission for Odets to attempt a career on the stage.
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