Waiting For Lefty

In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution took place in Russia. Leftist rebels led by Vladmir Lenin successfully took control in a coup d’état that set the stage for the rise of Russian communism. This created fear in the United States that a similar revolution could occur, fed particularly by the organization of labor unions and several worker strikes, along with a series of anarchist bombings that hinted at the real potential for a communist uprising. The US government spread fear and propaganda against “Reds” and identified communists as un-American and unpatriotic. During the Great Depression, which started with the 1929 stock market crash, the Communist Party grew in the United States as people became more and more desperate. The communists worked to organize labor unions and stage worker strikes, although corruption seeped in as organized crime families infiltrated unions and used them to make money through financial racketeering, a situation that the play hints at with the corrupt Fatt as a rich union leader who uses his gunman to persuade the workers to do his bidding.

Fear of communism led to a compromising of the First Amendment with the 1918 Sedition Act, which allowed the US government to deport, imprison, or fine anyone who was seen as a threat or who published any “false, scandalous, or malicious writing” against the United States. In 1919-1920, the government conducted the Palmer Raids, which involved raiding leftist organizations, arresting and detaining thousands of people without warrants or extending civil rights, and deporting over 1,000 immigrants. In the first scene, Fatt accuses the dissenting workers of being Reds, which is tantamount to calling them un-American. When Joe takes the stage, he counters this accusation by asserting that he is a patriotic American who still carries embedded shrapnel and scars from fighting for the United States in World War I. But in his flashback, before he is emboldened, Joe echoes Fatt’s sentiment, saying that strikes are ineffective and accusing Edna of sounding like a Red.

Odets himself was briefly a member of the Communist Party for about eight months between 1934-1935. He wrote Waiting for Lefty with a clear communist message. In fact, the original benefit production included an overtly communist scene called “The Young Actor,” in which an actor is unceremoniously rejected by a rich Broadway producer, and the producer’s secretary gives him a copy of The Communist Manifesto, saying, “Come out in the light, Comrade.” The scene was cut before its second Broadway staging in July 1935. At the end of the play, Agate refutes Fatt’s attacks on communism and the common fear of being misconstrued as a “Red;” he exclaims that if wanting to strike makes them communists, then “communist” is not an insult. Moreover, when he was hungry and needed help, the communists helped him and called him Comrade.

Odets later claimed while testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joe McCarthy that the play was merely inspired by his compassion for struggling workers. However, Waiting for Lefty demonstrates clear communist sympathies. It even socializes the role of Lefty, the leftist hero, by spreading the leadership and heroic duties among all of the workers, giving them the agency to lead themselves.