When I think of large talents that were beached by a crisis in their lives, I think first of Clifford Odets. There is one sorrow that must pain men so stranded most: that they were unable to live up to the image of themselves that once gave them their pride. Clifford was what Orson was not, a celebrated member of the Communist Party. In 1935, after his first two plays hit New York, he was the artist-revolutionary of the day, honored and respected by all good men. In 1952, he did what I’d done, named the Party members in the Group to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and whereas that act, unhappy as it was, gave me an identity I could carry, naming his old comrades deprived Odets of the heroic identity he needed most. I don’t believe he was ever again the same man.