Odets was born on July 18, 1906, in Philadelphia. Odets's father, Louis, was a printer who owned his own printing plant by the time Odets was twelve. Odets's father also eventually owned a lucrative advertising agency. When Odets quit high school in 1923 to pursue poetry and then acting, his father was infuriated. However, he eventually gave his permission for Odets to try to be an actor.

During the next seven years, Odets acted in a number of roles, but was not very successful, although in 1929 he was hired as an understudy for Spencer Tracy in Warren F. Lawrence's Conflict. Another member of the play's cast introduced Odets to the Theatre Guild, which in turn led him to the Group Theatre, which he joined in 1930. As a starving artist and a witness to the effects of the Great Depression, Odets, like others, searched for a solution to the country's...