Clifford Odets is best-known for his early, Depression-era dramas, particularly Waiting for Lefty, an overt work of propaganda that tells a story of working-class struggle, intended to promote a socialist revolution. His later works were more conventional in style and content and seldom preached a political message. Though his later work often met with critical and commercial approval, he never regained the prominence he enjoyed in the 1930s. He is primarily associated with the left-wing "agitprop" (a term defined as political propaganda as proffered through literature, drama, art, and music) theatre of that time.

Odets was born July 18,1906, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants He moved with his family to the Bronx at the age of six. Though he would associate himself with the political causes of the working-class and downtrodden, his early circumstances were decidedly middle-class. Odets rebelled against his father's strong...