SOURCE: An introduction to Golden Boy, in Six Plays of Clifford Odets, The Modern Library, 1939, pp. 429-33.

In the essay below, Clurman explores the allegorical nature of Golden Boy.

Golden Boy has already been praised as a good show, commonsense entertainment, and effective melodrama. It has also been blamed for betraying Hollywood influence in its use of terse, typical situations, story motifs which resemble that of either popular fiction or movies, and possibly too in its use of an environment (the prize-fight world) that somehow seems unworthy of the serious purpose professed by its author. There has been, in addition, almost universal admiration for many separate scenes and long passages of brilliant dialogue.

What has not been discussed very fully, however, is the total significance of these divers elements, the meaning that their configuration within one framework might have. And it is this meaning, both in relation to...