Eugene O'Neill

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 â€" November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. The drama Long Day's Journey into Night is often numbered on the short list of being among the finest American plays in the 20th century alongside A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman.

O'Neill's plays were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. Of his very few comedies, only one is well-known (Ah, Wilderness!). Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.

§Early life

O'Neill was born in a Broadway hotel room in Longacre Square (now Times Square), in the Barrett Hotel. The site is now a Starbucks (1500 Broadway, Northeast corner of 43rd & Broadway). A commemorative plaque is posted on the outside wall with the inscription "Eugene O'Neill, October 16, 1888 ~ November 27, 1953 America's greatest playwright was born on this site then called Barrett Hotel, Presented by Circle in the Square."

He was the son of Irish immigrant actor James O'Neill, and of Mary Ellen Quinlan, who was also of Irish descent. Because of his father's occupation, O'Neill was sent to St. Aloysius Academy for Boys, a Catholic boarding school in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where he found his only solace in books. O'Neill spent his summers in New London, Connecticut. He attended Princeton University for one year. Accounts vary as to why he left. He may have been dropped for attending too few classes, been suspended for "conduct code violations," or "for breaking a window", or according to a more concrete but possibly apocryphal account, because he threw "a beer bottle into the window of Professor Woodrow Wilson", the future president of the United States.

O'Neill spent several years at sea, during which he suffered from depression and alcoholism. O'Neill joined the Marine Transport Workers Union of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which was fighting for improved living conditions for the working class utilizing quick 'on the job' direct action. O'Neill's parents and elder brother Jamie (who drank himself to death at the age of 45) died within three years of one another, not long after he had begun to make his mark in the theater. Despite his depression, he had a deep love for the sea, and it became a prominent theme in many of his plays, several of which are set on board ships like those on which he worked.

§Career

After his experience in 1912â€"13 at a sanatorium where he was recovering from tuberculosis, he decided to devote himself full-time to writing plays (the events immediately prior to going to the sanatorium are dramatized in his masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night). O'Neill had previously been employed by the New London Telegraph, writing poetry as well as reporting.

In the fall of 1914, he entered Harvard University to attend a course in dramatic technique given by Professor George Baker. He left after one year and did not complete the course.

During the 1910s O'Neill was a regular on the Greenwich Village literary scene, where he also befriended many radicals, most notably Communist Labor Party of America founder John Reed. O'Neill also had a brief romantic relationship with Reed's wife, writer Louise Bryant. O'Neill was portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the 1981 film Reds, about the life of John Reed.

His involvement with the Provincetown Players began in mid-1916. O'Neill is said to have arrived for the summer in Provincetown with "a trunk full of plays." Susan Glaspell describes what was probably the first ever reading of Bound East for Cardiff which took place in the living room of Glaspell and her husband George Cram Cook's home on Commercial Street, adjacent to the wharf (pictured) that was used by the Players for their theater. Glaspell writes in The Road to the Temple, "So Gene took Bound East for Cardiff out of his trunk, and Freddie Burt read it to us, Gene staying out in the dining-room while reading went on. He was not left alone in the dining-room when the reading had finished." The Provincetown Players performed many of O'Neill's early works in their theaters both in Provincetown and on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. Some of these early plays began downtown and then moved to Broadway.

O'Neill's first published play, Beyond the Horizon, opened on Broadway in 1920 to great acclaim, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His first major hit was The Emperor Jones, which ran on Broadway in 1920 and obliquely commented on the U.S. occupation of Haiti that was a topic of debate in that year's presidential election. His best-known plays include Anna Christie (Pulitzer Prize 1922), Desire Under the Elms (1924), Strange Interlude (Pulitzer Prize 1928), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), and his only well-known comedy, Ah, Wilderness!, a wistful re-imagining of his youth as he wished it had been. In 1936 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. After a ten-year pause, O'Neill's now-renowned play The Iceman Cometh was produced in 1946. The following year's A Moon for the Misbegotten failed, and it was decades before coming to be considered as among his best works.

He was also part of the modern movement to partially revive the classical heroic mask from ancient Greek theatre and Japanese Noh theatre in some of his plays, such as The Great God Brown and Lazarus Laughed.

§Family life

O'Neill was married to Kathleen Jenkins from October 2, 1909 to 1912, during which time they had one son, Eugene O'Neill, Jr. (1910â€"1950). In 1917, O'Neill met Agnes Boulton, a successful writer of commercial fiction, and they married on April 12, 1918. They lived in a home owned by her parents in Point Pleasant, New Jersey after their marriage. The years of their marriageâ€"during which the couple lived in Connecticut and Bermuda and had two children, Shane and Oonaâ€"are described vividly in her 1958 memoir Part of a Long Story. They divorced in 1929, after O'Neill abandoned Boulton and the children for the actress Carlotta Monterey (born San Francisco, California, December 28, 1888; died Westwood, New Jersey, November 18, 1970). O'Neill and Carlotta married less than a month after he officially divorced his previous wife.

In 1929, O'Neill and Monterey moved to the Loire Valley in central France, where they lived in the Château du Plessis in Saint-Antoine-du-Rocher, Indre-et-Loire. During the early 1930s they returned to the United States and lived in Sea Island, Georgia, at a house called Casa Genotta. He moved to Danville, California in 1937 and lived there until 1944. His house there, Tao House, is today the Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site.

In their first years together, Monterey organized O'Neill's life, enabling him to devote himself to writing. She later became addicted to potassium bromide, and the marriage deteriorated, resulting in a number of separations, although they never divorced.

In 1943, O'Neill disowned his daughter Oona for marrying the English actor, director and producer Charlie Chaplin when she was 18 and Chaplin was 54. He never saw Oona again.

He also had distant relationships with his sons. Eugene O'Neill, Jr., a Yale classicist, suffered from alcoholism and committed suicide in 1950 at the age of 40. Shane O'Neill became a heroin addict and moved into the family home in Bermuda, Spithead, with his new wife, where he supported himself by selling off the furnishings. He was disowned by his father before also committing suicide (by jumping out of a window) a number of years later. Oona ultimately inherited Spithead and the connected estate (subsequently known as the Chaplin Estate). In 1950 O'Neill joined The Lambs, the famed theater club.

§Illness and death

After suffering from multiple health problems (including depression and alcoholism) over many years, O'Neill ultimately faced a severe Parkinsons-like tremor in his hands which made it impossible for him to write during the last 10 years of his life; he had tried using dictation but found himself unable to compose in that way. While at Tao House, O’Neill had intended to write a cycle of 11 plays chronicling an American family since the 1800s. Only two of these, A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions were ever completed. As his health worsened, O’Neill lost inspiration for the project and wrote three largely autobiographical plays, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. He managed to complete Moon for the Misbegotten in 1943, just before leaving Tao House and losing his ability to write. Drafts of many other uncompleted plays were destroyed by Carlotta at Eugene’s request.

O'Neill died in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. As he was dying, he whispered his last words: "I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room." (The building later became the Shelton Hall dormitory at Boston University. There is an urban legend perpetuated by students that O'Neill's spirit haunts the room and dormitory.) A revised analysis of his autopsy report shows that, contrary to the previous diagnosis, he did not have Parkinson's disease, but a late-onset cerebellar cortical atrophy.

Dr. Harry Kozol, the lead prosecuting expert of the Patty Hearst trial, treated O'Neill during these last years of illness. He also was present for O'Neill's death and announced the fact to the public.

O'Neill is interred in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

In 1956 Carlotta arranged for his autobiographical masterpiece Long Day's Journey Into Night to be published, although his written instructions had stipulated that it not be made public until 25 years after his death. It was produced on stage to tremendous critical acclaim and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957. This last play is widely considered to be his finest. Other posthumously-published works include A Touch of the Poet (1958) and More Stately Mansions (1967).

The United States Postal Service honored O'Neill with a Prominent Americans series (1965â€"1978) $1 postage stamp.

§Legacy

In Warren Beatty's 1981 film Reds, O'Neill was portrayed by Jack Nicholson, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance.

George C. White founded the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center in Waterford, Connecticut in 1964.

Eugene O'Neill is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.

§Museums and collections

O'Neill's home in New London, Monte Cristo Cottage, was made a National Historic Landmark in 1971. His home in Danville, California, near San Francisco, was preserved as the Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site in 1976.

Connecticut College maintains the Louis Sheaffer Collection, consisting of material collected by the O'Neill biographer. The principal collection of O'Neill papers is at Yale University. The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut fosters the development of new plays under his name.

There is also a Theatre in New York City named after him located at 230 West 49th Street in midtown-Manhattan. The Eugene O'Neill Theatre has housed musicals and plays such as Yentl, Annie, Grease, Spring Awakening and is now home to The Book of Mormon.

§Work

§Other works

• The Last Will and Testament of An Extremely Distinguished Dog, 1940. Written to comfort Carlotta as their "child" Blemie was approaching his death in December 1940.

§See also

• The Eugene O'Neill Award

§References

§Further reading

• O'Neill, Eugene; Bogard, Travis (1988). Complete Plays 1913â€"1920. The Library of America 40. New York: Literary Classics. ISBN 978-0-940450-48-6. 
• O'Neill, Eugene; Bogard, Travis (1988). Complete Plays 1920â€"1931. The Library of America 41. New York: Literary Classics. ISBN 978-0-940450-49-3. 
• O'Neill, Eugene; Bogard, Travis (1988). Complete Plays 1932â€"1943. The Library of America 42. New York: Literary Classics. ISBN 978-0-940450-50-9. 
• Black, Stephen A. (2002). Eugene O'Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy. Yale University press. ISBN 0-300-09399-3. 
• Clark, Barrett H. (November 1932). "Aeschylus and O'Neill". The English Journal (The English Journal, Vol. 21, No. 9) XXI (9): 699â€"710. doi:10.2307/804473. JSTOR 804473. 
• Floyd, Virginia (editor) (1979). Eugene O'Neill: A World View. Frederick Unger. ISBN 0-8044-2204-4. 
• Floyd, Virginia (1985). The Plays of Eugene O'Neill: A New Assessment. Frederick Unger. ISBN 0-8044-2206-0. 
• Gelb, Arthur & Barbara (2000). O'Neill: Life with Monte Christo. Applause/Penguin Putnam. ISBN 0-399-14912-0. 
• Sheaffer, Louis (2002) [1968]. O'Neill Volume I: Son and Playwright. Cooper Square Press. ISBN 0-8154-1243-6. 
• Sheaffer, Louis (1999) [1973]. O'Neill Volume II: Son and Artist. Cooper Square Press. ISBN 0-8154-1244-4. 
• Wainscott, Ronald H. (1988). Staging O'Neill: The Experimental Years. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-04152-7. 
• Winther, Sophus Keith (1934). Eugene O'Neill: A Critical Study. New York: Random House. OCLC 900356. 
• Clark, Barrett H. (1926). Eugene O'Neill: The Man and His Plays. Dover Publications, Inc. New York. 

§External links

• Eugene O'Neill official website
• Casa Genotta official website
• Works by Eugene O'Neill at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Eugene O'Neill at Internet Archive
• Works by Eugene O'Neill at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by Eugene O'Neill at Open Library
• Eugene O'Neill at the Internet Broadway Database
• Eugene O'Neill at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Eugene O'Neill at the Internet Movie Database
• Eugene O'Neill | PlaybillVault.com
• Eugene O'Neil Autobiography at the Nobel Foundation
• The Iceman Cometh: A Study Guide
• Eugene O'Neill: A Life in Four Acts | Robert M. Dowling at Amazon
• Book Description for Eugene O'Neill: A Life in Four Acts at Yale University Press
• Works by Eugene O'Neill at Project Gutenberg Australia
• Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site
• American Experience - Eugene O'Neill: A Documentary Film on PBS
• Works by Eugene O'Neill (public domain in Canada)
• Haunted by Eugene O'Neill Article in BU Today, Sept 29 2009
• Eugene O’Neill: the sailor, the sickness, the stage from the Museum of the City of New York Collections blog
• Carlotta O'Neill notebook of letters and photographs, 1927-1954, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The notebook contains handwritten transcriptions by Carlotta O'Neill of letters and inscriptions to her from her husband, Eugene O'Neill, and photographs, mostly portraits of Eugene and Carlotta O'Neill.

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