Born in Philadelphia to Louis J. and Pearl Geisinger Odets, Clifford Odets grew up in a Jewish section of the Bronx. Though Odets at times suggested that he was raised under the shadows of poverty, his father became a prosperous businessman in the 1920s, and the family continued to enjoy financial security in the Depression years. Late in life, Odets said of his boyhood that it was middle-class and "very ordinary." A negligent student, he quit high school after two years, vaguely in pursuit of a future as a poet. His father's disapproval of this career culminated one night in his smashing the son's typewriter.

Odets's next pursuit was stage acting, which met with his parents' halfhearted support. He joined an amateur company named the Drawing Room Players, which produced one-acts, and soon moved to the Poet's Theatre. With associates from these two groups, Odets formed a small...