After the production of his play Clash by Night in the 1941–42 season, Odets focused his energies primarily on film projects, remaining in Hollywood until mid-1948.

[6] Odets was among America's first real disc jockeys at about this time, at radio station WBNY and others in Manhattan, where he would play records and ad lib commentary.

Crawford suggested that Harold Clurman, then a play reader for the Guild, invite Odets to a meeting to discuss new theater concepts they were developing with Lee Strasberg.

[10] Though initially bewildered by the concept of acting as an art, Odets was nonetheless mesmerized by Clurman's talks and became the last actor chosen for the Group Theatre's first summer of rehearsals in June 1931 at Brookfield Center in Connecticut, thus becoming a founding member of the company.

While at Green Mansions, its 1933 summer rehearsal venue in Warrensburg, New York,[14][15] the Group performed Act II of the play, soon to be retitled Awake and Sing!, for other camp residents.

[17][18] Until his debut as a playwright, Odets continued to train as an actor with the Group at its various summer rehearsal headquarters in the Connecticut countryside and upstate New York.

In addition to Brookfield Center and Green Mansions, these venues included Dover Furnace in Dutchess County (1932)[19][20] and a large house in the Catskill village of Ellenville (1934).

"[28] Odets became the first produced Method-trained playwright with his first publicly presented play, the one-act Waiting for Lefty, on January 6, 1935, at the former Civic Repertory Theatre on Fourteenth Street in New York City.

Waiting for Lefty was inspired by the 1934 New York City taxi strike and is written in the format of a minstrel show with interconnected scenes depicting social and economic dilemmas of workers in various fields.

A young medical intern falls victim to anti-Semitism; a laboratory assistant's job is threatened if he refuses to spy on a colleague; couples are thwarted in marriage and torn apart by the hopelessness of economic conditions caused by the Depression.

The climax is a defiant call for the taxi drivers' union to strike, which brought the entire opening night audience to its feet with tumultuous applause.

Waiting for Lefty's unexpectedly wild success brought Odets international fame, though its strong pro-union bent caused it to be banned in many U.S. towns and cities.

"[30] The play concerns the Berger family, who struggle to maintain some respectability and self-esteem in the Longwood section of the Bronx while grappling with the stresses of economic collapse.

The two 1935 one-acts Waiting for Lefty and the anti-Nazi Till the Day I Die, along with a number of other works by various playwrights produced by the Group Theatre, are harsh criticisms of profiteers and exploitative economic systems during the Great Depression.

Odets asserted that all of his plays deal with the human spirit persevering in the face of any opponent, whether or not the characters are depicted as struggling with the capitalist system.

From Golden Boy on, Odets's work focused more on the dynamics of interpersonal relationships as affected by the moral dilemmas of individual characters.

The Big Knife is an allegory about the damaging effects of fame and money on the character of the artist; it also alludes indirectly to the politics of the early Cold War period.

The play's harsh critique of Hollywood mores was interpreted as ingratitude on the part of Odets, who had by this time made a significant amount of money writing films.

His initial intention was to make money to help subsidize the Group Theatre's run of his 1935 play Paradise Lost[35] over which the critics were divided, and to help him fulfill his own financial obligations.

The film starred Cary Grant, Ethel Barrymore (who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress), Barry Fitzgerald, and Jane Wyatt.

Odets wrote the 1957 screenplay for Sweet Smell of Success, based on the novelette and a first draft by Ernest Lehman and produced by the independent company Hecht-Hill-Lancaster.

He cooperated with HUAC to the extent that he responded to their questions and reiterated names of Communist Party members who had been previously cited by his friend and former Group colleague Elia Kazan.

In his autobiography, Kazan recalls incidents of Odets being accosted in New York City streets and snubbed in Hollywood restaurants after his HUAC appearance.

In the early 1960s, Odets contracted to write four of a proposed total of 13 teleplays for The Richard Boone Show, NBC's new dramatic anthology born of a plan for televised repertory theater.

[51][52] Odets had long suffered from gastrointestinal distress and on July 23, 1963, was admitted to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles to undergo treatment for stomach ulcers.

[59] John Lahr declared "In this distinguished, almost symphonic production, Sher and Lincoln Center have done a great thing: they have put Odets finally and forever in the pantheon, where he belongs.

"[60] Odets's early, more left-wing plays, such as Waiting for Lefty, Awake and Sing!, and Paradise Lost, have enjoyed numerous revivals since the 2008 economic crash.

According to New York Times reviewer Anita Gates, "the production easily makes the point that ethnicity is transcended by the humanity of frightened, imperfect people facing unpleasant realities.

Joel and Ethan Coen's 1990 film Barton Fink contains a number of indirect visual and historical references to Odets's personal appearance, background and career.

Apart from Brenman-Gibson's work, six critical biographies have appeared: by R. Baird Shuman (1962);[67] Edward Murray (1968);[68] Michael Mendelsohn (1969);[69] Gerald Weales (1971);[70] Harold Cantor (1978);[71] and Christopher J. Herr (2003).