"Odets and "Little Lefty

IN Cliford Odets: Playwright (New York, I97), Gerald Weales has noted that Waiting for Lefty (1935) was not based on direct knowledge of I934 New York taxi strike and has identified Joseph North's Taxi Strike (New Masses, April 3, I934) as one of Odets's chief sources: uses, almost as an epigraph, a long paragraph identified as 'Hackie's Fable,' in which wife demands-as Edna does in first scene of Lefty-that driver choose between her and company. Agate's identification of Communist salute with 'good old uppercut to chin' at end of Odets's play comes directly from North ('His left fist-a huge affair-goes up in a sort of short uppercut'), although North goes Odets one better at tough metaphor game by letting his Pondsie call it 'The left hook' (pp. 42-43). Closer examination of material confirms Weales's observation that Odets's was a flypaper talent and suggests even more analogues. Driver Joe Mitchell's description of himself and others as the black and blue boys, for instance, may have had its origin in Blue and Black Harlem taxis mentioned in North. Though Weales dutifully records importance of cartoon art in agit-prop plays of period and points to character of union boss Harry Fatt as an example of the standard cartoon stereotype (P. 44), his account does not, I suspect, fully explore influence of such material in Lefty. There are portions of play, such as Sid's outburst against big shot money men in Episode III, that are little more than cartoon drawings turned into speech: got power and mean to be damn sure they keep it. They know if they give in just an inch, all dogs like us will be down on them together-an ocean knocking them to hell and back and each singing cuckoo with stars coming from their nose and ears. In fact, cartoon art may well have supplied Odets with title to his play. By most accounts Lefty was written shortly before Group Theater's Boston run of Melvin Levy's Gold Eagle Guy. Since Levy play did not open until November I2, Odets would have had ample time to be familiar with new cartoon character Daily

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