Odets, Clifford (1906–1963)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Filewod
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
The Moon ◽  
The Social ◽  
Group Theatre ◽  
Experimental Group

One of the foremost American playwrights of the first half of the twentieth century, Clifford Odets is best known for his social realist plays and screenplays, of which Waiting for Lefty (1935), Awake and Sing! (1935), Golden Boy (1937), and Rocket to the Moon (1938) have attained canonical status. A committed leftist and briefly a member of the Communist Party, his meteoric trajectory from actor in the experimental Group Theatre in New York to Hollywood screenwriter has been narrated, first by Harold Clurman in The Fervent Years and then by generations of subsequent critics and biographers, as the tragedy of a tormented and politically ambivalent visionary who struggled to reconcile his radical beliefs with the rapid celebrity that took him to Hollywood. During his later life, his reputation was tainted as a result of his voluntary if ambivalent testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the McCarthy inquisitions. Odets’ importance to theatrical modernism rests on his first play, Waiting for Lefty, which enacted the cultural politics of the Popular Front by absorbing the militancy of agitprop in the social humanism of dramatic realism.

Workers’ Theater Movement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Filewod
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
International Project ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Left Turn ◽  
International Alliance ◽  
Experimental Theatre ◽  
Group Theatre ◽  
International Relief

The Workers’ Theatre Movement (WTM) was an international project, largely promoted by the Workers International Relief, to conjoin left militant radical theaters during the period of Stalin’s "Third Period" militant class struggle; it was also briefly the name of a workers’ troupe in London. The historical shape of the WTM follows the ideological progress of the Communist International (Comintern), from the hard left turn in 1929 to the collaborative politics of the Popular Front in 1933–1934. As proposed by its ideological leaders and principal activists, the Workers’ Theatre Movement was evidence of the transnational emergence of a proletarian culture derived from the universal modernity of industrialism. In practice, the movement was an aggregate of practices and theories drawn into the semblance of an organization through the cultural apparatus of the Comintern. The Workers’ Theatre Movement was both a loose international alliance and a range of local experiences that varied greatly. In metropolitan centers, the workers’ troupes occupied a gradient ranging from militant street theaters, such as Ewan MacColl’s Red Megaphone in Birmingham, UK and the Shock Troupe of the Workers’ Laboratory Theatre in New York, to the radical edges of the professional theater, such as the Group Theatre in New York and Unity Theatre in London. Outside of major theatrical centres, WTM troupes were more often organized by radical unions, or, as in the case of the Toronto Workers’ Experimental Theatre, by Communist Party cultural clubs.

Unions and the Popular Front: The West Coast Waterfront in the 1930s

1986 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 59-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Nelson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Human Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Made In

Recent discussions of the history of American communism have generated a good deal of controversy. A youthful generation of “new social historians” has combined with veterans of the Communist party to produce a portrait of the Communist experience in the United States which posits a tension between the Byzantine pursuit of the “correct line” at the top and the impulses and needs of members at the base trying to cope with a complex reality. In the words of one of its most skillful practitioners, “the new Communist history begins with the assumption that … everyone brought to the movement expectations, traditions, patterns of behavior and thought that had little to do with the decisions made in the Kremlin or on the 9th floor of the Communist Party headquarters in New York.” The “new” historians have focused mainly on the lives of individuals, the relationship between communism and ethnic and racial subcultures, and the effort to build the party's influence within particular unions and working-class constituencies. Overall, the portrait has been critical but sympathetic and has served to highlight the party's “human face” and the integrity of its members.

Matriliny, Marxism, and the Birth of the Communist Party in Kerala, 1930–1940

1978 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Jeffrey
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Family System ◽  
Traditional Society ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Upheaval ◽  
Social Turmoil ◽  
Crucial Ingredient

AbstractWhy has communism flourished in some parts of Asia and not in others? Examining the case of Kerala, this paper argues that, in India at least, social dislocation is the crucial ingredient when added to poverty, landlessness, and literacy. In Kerala, the matrilineal family system of caste-Hindus and the attendant system of extreme disabilities enforced against the low castes collapsed in the early twentieth century. The social upheaval was greater than anywhere else in India. A déraciné generation of caste-Hindus was forced to seek remedies for-the disruption and misery that daily confronted it, while increasing numbers of low castes refused to submit to the restrictions that traditional society sought to impose. This situation of social turmoil, similar in some ways to that prevailing in China and Vietnam, contributed crucially to the establishment of Kerala's vigorous, broad-based Communist party in the late 1930s.

Drowning Voices and Drowning Shoreline: A Riverside View of the Social and Ecological Impacts of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project

Rural History ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather M. Cox ◽  
Brendan G. DeMelle ◽  
Glenn R. Harris ◽  
Christopher P. Lee ◽  
Laura K. Montondo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
Commercial Vehicles ◽  
The Social ◽  
Power Project ◽  
St Lawrence River

The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project was a massive restructuring of the St. Lawrence River bordering Canada and the United States. The river had always been used for human transportation, and a shipping canal for commercial vehicles was constructed and enhanced throughout the nineteenth century. However, the river grew increasingly incapable of handling an international fleet composed of larger boats during the twentieth century. Proposals to undertake major renovations for shipping were debated at the highest levels of policy for several decades. Finally, the St. Lawrence River was substantially altered during the 1950s. These changes created a Seaway able to accommodate vessels with deeper drafts and permitted the development of hydro-electric generating facilities through the construction of dikes and dams. All of this activity involved numerous agencies in the governments of the United States, Canada, the Iroquois Confederacy, New York, Ontario, other states and provinces, as well as commercial and industrial entities in the private sector.

Unions and the Popular Front: The West Coast Waterfront in the 1930s

1986 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 59-78
Author(s):  
Bruce Nelson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Human Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Made In

Recent discussions of the history of American communism have generated a good deal of controversy. A youthful generation of “new social historians” has combined with veterans of the Communist party to produce a portrait of the Communist experience in the United States which posits a tension between the Byzantine pursuit of the “correct line” at the top and the impulses and needs of members at the base trying to cope with a complex reality. In the words of one of its most skillful practitioners, “the new Communist history begins with the assumption that … everyone brought to the movement expectations, traditions, patterns of behavior and thought that had little to do with the decisions made in the Kremlin or on the 9th floor of the Communist Party headquarters in New York.” The “new” historians have focused mainly on the lives of individuals, the relationship between communism and ethnic and racial subcultures, and the effort to build the party's influence within particular unions and working-class constituencies. Overall, the portrait has been critical but sympathetic and has served to highlight the party's “human face” and the integrity of its members.

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