SOURCE: "Golden Boy: Clifford Odets Rewards the Group Theatre with One of His Best Plays," in The New York Times, 21 November 1937, Section II, p. 1.

Atkinson compares the construction of the themes and dialogue in Golden Boy to a symphony.

After doing a long stretch in Hollywood, Clifford Odets has returned to the theatre with one of his best plays. In Golden Boy he has dissected the success story of a prize fighter. For the most part it is a pithy and thoroughly absorbing drama that restores to the theatre a pungent theatrical talent. It is not so devastatingly simple in form as "Waiting for Lefty," which was the inspiration of a lifetime, nor so complete an expression of life as Awake and Sing! but it stands head and shoulders above the self-conscious Paradise Lost. When Mr. Odets first came into the theatre with an actor's talent for dramatic...