Eugene O'Neill

• Born: 16 October 1888
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: 27 November 1953
• Best Known As: The author of the play Long Day's Journey Into Night

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was one of the most acclaimed playwrights of the 20th century. A four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he is the only American dramatist to date to win the Nobel Prize for literature. O'Neill began writing plays after being hospitalized for tuberculosis in 1912. His mastery of the form and his experiments with technique and theme earned heaps of critical praise, and during his lifetime he was one of the world's most famous playwrights. But his plays, often prolonged and grim psychological dramas, were not financially successful, and O'Neill was sometimes accused of moral impurity for his mature approach to social and personal issues. O'Neill battled ill health and depression throughout his adult life, drank heavily at times, and in his later years suffered from an undiagnosed neurological disorder that made writing difficult. Three of his Pulitzers came in the 1920s: Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922) and Strange Interlude (1928); his fourth was awarded posthumously in 1957, for his harrowing autobiographical masterpiece Long Day's Journey Into Night (written in 1941 but not produced until 1956). His other plays include Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), Ah, Wilderness (1933), and The Iceman Cometh (1946).

O'Neill's daughter, Oona (1926-1991), was married to Charlie Chaplin from 1943 until Chaplin's death in 1977.

For more information on Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, visit Britannica.com.

O'Neill, Eugene [Gladstone] (1888–1953), playwright. Generally acknowledged as the greatest of all American dramatists, he was the son of the celebrated actor James O'Neill, and, though he was born in New York, he spent most of his first seven years accompanying his mother and older brother as they followed the actor from city to city. Six years of Catholic schooling were succeeded by four at the Betts Academy and a year at Princeton, after which he left to accept work in a mail‐order house, then spent time prospecting in Honduras. An attack of malaria forced his return to the United States, where he became assistant manager of a theatrical touring company. O'Neill then spent several years on a variety of ships, traveling as far as South America. He gave up sailing to accept a small role in his father's company, where he started to consider a writing career. His elder brother secretly helped him secure work on a newspaper, but with the onset of tuberculosis he entered a sanatorium and there more purposefully began writing plays. On his release he enrolled in Professor George Pierce Baker's classes on playwriting at Harvard, then in the summer of 1916 joined the Provincetown Players, the ensemble with which his professional career began. The young company presented his one‐acts Bound East for Cardiff (1916), Thirst (1916), Before Breakfast (1916), The Long Voyage Home (1917), The Moon of the Caribbees (1918), and others. In the Zone (1918) was first produced by the Washington Square Players, and by 1920 O'Neill's one‐acters had clearly stamped him as the most promising of young American playwrights, a promise he moved toward fulfilling with his first full‐length play, Beyond the Horizon (1920). This realistic drama was followed by the expressionistic The Emperor Jones (1920), demonstrating O'Neill's sense of experimentation that would characterize his career. Other notable works of the 1920s include Anna Christie (1921), The Hairy Ape (1922), All God's Chillun Got Wings (1924), Desire Under the Elms (1924), The Great God Brown (1926), Marco Millions (1928), Strange Interlude (1928), and Dynamo (1929). This fertile period was capped by his masterful trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra (1931); thereafter O'Neill worked at a slower pace, though he maintained the quality of his earlier writing. His only comedy, Ah, Wilderness! (1933), was followed by his “modern miracle play” Days Without End (1934) before the onset of Parkinson's disease prompted O'Neill to retire from the theatrical arena for many years. Nevertheless, in 1936 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

New York did not see another new O'Neill play until The Iceman Cometh (1946) although he was continually writing scripts that would not see the light of day for some time. His most ambitious project was a planned cycle of eleven plays tracing the history of a single American family for over a century. Before his death he destroyed most of the material for these plays, but two survived. Sickly, embittered, and overwhelmed with the despair that had long overshadowed his life, O'Neill died in 1953 believing that his life had amounted to little. It was a brilliant 1956 revival of The Iceman Cometh at the Circle in the Square that began a positive reevaluation of his art. As a result, his widow released other works, which O'Neill had hoped would not be produced for several decades. The autobiographical Long Day's Journey into Night was first produced in 1956 and remains, in the opinion of many, the playwright's finest work. Later that year A Touch of the Poet, one of the surviving plays from the projected cycle, and A Moon for the Misbegotten were given posthumous productions. In the 1960s two minor works were finally produced: the long one‐act Hughie (1964) and the unfinished More Stately Mansions (1967), also part of the planned cycle. Other one‐acts and fragments would surface over the years.

Although O'Neill was perceived early on as a master of stark, realistic tragedy, time has suggested that much of the power and beauty of his work came from its fundamental romanticism and even from a tinge of sentimentality that colored his tragic vision. These aspects, often touching on the supernatural, could be seen from the very start in the early one‐acts. But an intellectual or instinctive sureness usually allowed O'Neill to restrain his romantic impulses and weave them effectively into the basically realistic fabric of his stories. He was almost always at his best when he had a good story to tell and allowed its transcendental implications to simply speak for themselves. His understanding of the dark, labyrinthine side of human nature and of its limitations were unmatched by any other American dramatist and, whether he realized it or not, sufficed to assure him preeminence. When O'Neill attempted to analyze and expound upon his tragic vision, his theatrical acumen sometimes deserted him, so as a rule the most profoundly philosophic of his plays have been among the least actable and therefore the least commercially successful. Nor was he always comfortable when he departed from traditional dramatic structuring and essayed experiments in symbolism, expressionism, or other more or less‐novel forms. Curiously, as has long been noted, his plays rarely read well. On the printed page they often seem prolix and turgid. But O'Neill was such a natural child of the theatre that all but a handful of his works come irresistibly alive on stage. Biographies: O'Neill: Son and Playwright, Louis Shaeffer, 1968; O'Neill: Son and Artist, Louis Sheaffer, 1973.

Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) was among the foremost dramatists of the America theater. His main concern was with the anguish and turmoil that wrack the spirits of sensitive people.

Eugene O'Neill set out to create meaningful drama in America at a time when the barriers against it were significant. Although outstanding dramatists were getting productions throughout Europe, American dramatists were locked into standard commercial practices by the monopolistic forces controlling the theater. As a result, by the time of O'Neill's first production (1916), the American theater was a quarter century behind European theater. Twenty years later, when O'Neill received the Nobel Prize for literature, America had assumed a leadership position in world drama; O'Neill was preeminent in this rise.

Eugene O'Neill was born on Oct. 16, 1888, in New York City at a hotel on Broadway. His father was James O'Neill, an outstanding romantic actor. Eugene's mother was Ella Quinlan. Eugene had two brothers, James, Jr. (born 1878), and Edmund (born 1883). Edmund's death 2 years later brought deep feelings of guilt into the family.

Eugene spent his first 7 years on tour with his parents. A succession of dreary hotel rooms and a mother addicted to drugs left their impact upon him. He also received a total exposure to theater.

From the age of 7 to 12, Eugene was taught by nuns. His next 2 years were spent under the Christian Brothers. When he rebelled against any further Catholic education, his parents sent him to Betts Academy in Connecticut for high school. He was also learning about life at this time under the guidance of his brother, Jamie, who "made sin easy for him." Eugene's formal education ended with an unfinished year at Princeton University in 1907. By this time his three main interests were evident: books, alcohol, and prostitutes.

O'Neill worked halfheartedly for a mail-order firm until the fall of 1908. In 1909 he secretly married Kathleen Jenkins before leaving on a mining expedition to Honduras, where he contracted malaria. Returning in April 1910, he revealed his marriage because of Kathleen's pregnancy. Eugene O'Neill, Jr., was born the next month.

O'Neill shipped out as a seaman in 1910 and did odd jobs in Buenos Aires, spending almost 6 months as a pan-handler on the waterfront before going to sea again. Back in New York in 1911, he spent several weeks drinking in Jimmy the Priest's saloon before shipping out to England. He returned in August to his old hangout. Almost half his published plays show his interest in the sea.

In 1912 O'Neill hit bottom. His marriage was dissolved, his attempt at suicide failed, and he contracted tuberculosis. But he also decided to become a dramatist. He was released from the sanitarium in June 1913.

Early Plays

Tall and thin, dark-eyed and handsome, with a brooding sensitivity, O'Neill was a man of many paradoxical qualities. Though he was ready to work, he was by no means ready to change his way of living completely. During the next year he wrote prolifically. Except for Bound East for Cardiff, these early plays are finger exercises. With his father's aid, five of these one-act plays were published in 1914. On the basis of this work and with the assistance of the critic Clayton Hamilton, O'Neill joined George Pierce Baker's playwriting class at Harvard in September 1914.

O'Neill planned to return to Harvard in the fall of 1915 but ended up instead at the "Hell Hole," a combination hotel and saloon in New York City, where he drank heavily and produced nothing. He next joined the Provincetown Players on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The Players' production of Bound East for Cardiffin 1916 signaled a new era in American drama. By the end of 1918, the Players had produced 10 of O'Neill's plays. Such excellent exposure, combined with the support of the critic George Jean Nathan, rocketed O'Neill into prominence. His plays of the sea were most successful, particularly Bound East for Cardiff (1916), In the Zone (1917), The Long Voyage Home (1917), and The Moon of the Caribbees (1918), which are sometimes produced together under the title of S.S. Glencairn.

In his early writing O'Neill concentrated heavily on the one-act form. His apprenticeship in this form culminated in great success with the production of his full-length Beyond the Horizon (1920), for which he won his first Pulitzer Prize. The play is definitely indebted to the one-act form in its structure. Although the drama is essentially naturalistic, O'Neill elevated both characterization and dialogue, and for the first time, by adding a poetic and articulate character, he gave himself the opportunity to reach high dramatic moments.

In 1918 O'Neill married Agnes Boulton. They had a son, Shane, and a daughter, Oona. Meanwhile, O'Neill met his son Eugene, Jr., for the first time in 1922, when the boy was 12 years old. O'Neill's family died in close succession: his father (1920), mother (1922), and brother (1923). Following this tumult, his marriage was troubled; O'Neill had fallen in love with Carlotta Monterey. In 1928 he left Agnes Boulton, divorced in 1929, and soon married Carlotta.

In spite of pressures in his personal life, O'Neill was incredibly productive. In the 15 years following the appearance of Beyond the Horizon, 21 plays were produced. Always daring in his conceptions, always willing to experiment, he brought forth both brilliant successes and atrocious failures.

The Successes

O'Neill's successful plays reveal interesting experimentation - apart from Anna Christie (1921), a rather standardly organized and realistic play with some romantic overtones which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and Ah, Wilderness! (1933), a surprisingly nostalgic comedy unique in the O'Neill canon (both were later adapted to the musical stage). The Emperor Jones (1920) is a superb theatrical piece in which Brutus Jones moves from reality, to conscious memories of his past, to subconscious roots of his ancient heritage, as he flees for his life. The play ends in the reality of his death. Another expressionistic piece, The Hairy Ape (1922), traces the path of a burly stoker shocked into self-awareness by a decadent society woman, as he tries to find out where he belongs in the world.

Two plays deal with the human propensity to hide behind masks. In The Great God Brown (1926), masks are actually used. On his death, Dion Anthony wills his mask to William Brown, who then lives under the impact of dual masks. In Strange Interlude (1928), a massive treatment of the many roles of women as seen in the life of Nina Leeds, O'Neill used spoken "asides" (interior monologues) to disclose his characters' hidden and normally unspoken thoughts. For this play he received his third Pulitzer Prize.

The final successes stem from O'Neill's desire to reach the essence of tragedy. In Desire under the Elms (1924), he probed the tumult of passions burning deep on a New England farm. The peace which Eben and Abby find in their love is decidedly convincing. Ephraim's obdurate persistence also carries the ring of universal truth. Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), also set in New England, is O'Neill's version of Aeschylus's Oresteia. The ancient guilt of the house of Atreus is converted into Freudian terms in the depiction of the Mannon family. O'Neill's "Electra," Lavinia, is powerfully characterized, and her final expiation is a moving end to a most worthy play.

Mixed Receptions and Disasters

A grim and repulsive drama, Diff'rent (1920), a rather psychopathic portrait of a sexually obsessed woman, garnered mixed reviews. The Straw (1921), a story of love and selfishness dating back to O'Neill's experiences in the sanitarium, was generally accepted. Though All God's Chillun Got Wings (1924) received tremendous publicity before its opening, O'Neill failed to deeply penetrate the realms of myth and bigotry. However, he did achieve a Job-like quality for the black husband. Babbitt and Marco Polo were aligned in a satiric and poetic expression in Marco Millions (1928). The play's best aspect is its pageantry; the poetry is somewhat disappointing.

Lazarus Laughed (1928) was not produced commercially in New York. Essentially a religious-philosophical epic, the play has some interesting scenes but a ponderous, turgid style.

Eight plays were disasters: Chris Christopherson (1920), Gold, (1921), The First Man (1922), Welded (1924), The Ancient Mariner (1924), a dramatization of Coleridge's poem, The Fountain (1925), Dynamo (1929), and Days without End (1934).

Later Life

Carlotta Monterey brought a sense of order to O'Neill's life. His health deteriorated rapidly from 1937 on, but her care helped him remain productive, though their marriage was not without furor.

In addition to the physical and psychological burdens of his poor health, O'Neill was also disturbed by his continued inability to establish relationships with his children. Eugene, Jr., died by suicide in 1950. Shane became addicted to drugs. Oona was ignored by her father after her marriage to actor Charlie Chaplin. The tragic lack of communication for which O'Neill had accused his father was a major flaw in his own relationships with his children. Indeed, he even excluded Shane and Oona from his will. When O'Neill knew that death was near, one of his final actions was to tear up six of his unfinished cycle plays rather than have them rewritten by someone else. These plays, tentatively entitled "A Tale of Possessors Self-dispossessed," were part of a great cycle of 9 to 11 plays which would follow the lives of one family in America. O'Neill's health prevented him from completing them. He died on Nov. 27, 1953.

Last Plays

With the exception of The Iceman Cometh (1946), all of O'Neill's late works received their New York production after his death. The Iceman Cometh, with its exhibition of pipe dreams in Harry Hope's saloon, fascinated audiences and overcame almost universal complaints about its length. Long Day's Journey into Night (1956), autobiographical in its totality, devoid of theatrical effects, utterly scathing in its insistence on truth, showed O'Neill at the height of his dramatic power. It received the Pulitzer Prize.

A Moon for the Misbegotten (1957) and A Touch of the Poet (1958), inevitably measured against the brilliance of Long Day's Journey into Night, were found to be of a lesser magnitude. In A Moon for the Misbegotten, O'Neill focuses on his brother Jamie. Among all his late plays with their searching realism, A Touch of the Poet has the strongest elements of romantic warmth. Hughie (1964) offers nothing new in its treatment of illusion. More Stately Mansions (1967), a sequel to A Touch of the Poet, is not outstanding.

Further Reading

Barbara and Arthur Gelb, O'Neill (1962), is the indispensable biography. Doris Alexander, The Tempering of Eugene O'Neill (1962), and Louis Sheaffer, O'Neill, Son and Playwright (1968), give effective biographical pictures of O'Neill's development period. Agnes Boulton, Part of a Long Story (1958), is an account by O'Neill's first wife, and Croswell Bowen, The Curse of the Misbegotten (1958), was written with the assistance of O'Neill's son Shane.

Of the numerous critical assessments of his work, particularly valuable are Sophus Keith Winther, Eugene O'Neill: A Critical Study (1934; 2d ed. 1961); Edwin A. Engel, The Haunted Heroes of Eugene O'Neill (1953); and Doris V. Falk, Eugene O'Neill and the Tragic Tension (1958). Interesting criticisms are in Oscar Cargill, N. Bryllion Fagin, and William J. Fisher, O'Neill and His Plays (1961), and John Gassner, O'Neill (1964). Also worth attention are Barrett H. Clark, Eugene O'Neill: The Man and His Plays (1926; rev. ed. 1947); Clifford Leech, Eugene O'Neill (1963); and Frederic Carpenter, Eugene O'Neill (1964). Jordan Y. Miller, Eugene O'Neill and the American Critic (1962), is a most helpful bibliographic work.

For background the following books are recommended: Montrose J. Moses, The American Dramatist (1911; rev. ed. 1925); Isaac Goldberg, The Theatre of George Jean Nathan (1926); and Joseph Wood Krutch, The American Drama since 1918 (1939; rev. ed. 1957).

(1888-1953), dramatist. In 1920, O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon was acclaimed as America's first native stage tragedy. Thirty-six years later audiences were stunned by the Greek-sized passions of his posthumously produced masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night. Almost literally autobiographical (unlike his earlier works, in which he disguised the members of his family), it was written, he said, "in tears and blood." It revealed his father to have been a miser, his mother a morphine addict, and his brother an alcoholic.

O'Neill's mother, Ella Quinlan--beautiful, shy, convent-educated--fell in love with James O'Neill, a popular touring actor, who was haunted by his impoverished youth. Eugene was born in a Broadway hotel room, and his difficult birth, coupled with the rigors of accompanying James on his cross-country theatrical one-night stands, drove Ella to morphine addiction. Eugene's brother, Jamie, older by ten years--clever, cynical, an unsuccessful actor--combined all the weaknesses and none of the strengths of his parents.

O'Neill's art was influenced by what he proudly called his "life experience." He briefly attended Princeton, failed as an actor, fathered a child out of wedlock, shipped out to sea, lived as a derelict on the New York waterfront--where he drank himself senseless and attempted suicide--worked as a reporter in New London, Connecticut, recovered from tuberculosis, and lived a bohemian life among aspiring artists and writers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Greenwich Village.

O'Neill turned these experiences into artistic triumphs. In his most prolific period (1920-1933) O'Neill saw thirteen of his plays produced, all of them tragedies except the sunny Ah, Wilderness! (1933). They were often experimental (masks, stage asides, densely novelistic technique) and turned on such themes as poisoning, incest, infanticide, suicide, terminal illness, insanity, betrayal, drunkenness, blasphemy, adultery, and lechery. His protagonists were sailors, pimps, whores, stevedores, petty crooks, gamblers, and--occasionally--men and women who were educated but soul-sick. Most were hailed by the critics: The Emperor Jones (1920), Anna Christie (1921), The Hairy Ape (1922), Desire under the Elms (1924), the double-length Strange Interlude (1928), and the triple-length Mourning Becomes Electra (1931).

His masterworks were written between 1935 and 1943, despite persistent illness, depression, and marital problems with his third wife, Carlotta Monterey. In addition to Long Day's Journey into Night, these plays were The Iceman Cometh (produced 1946), A Moon for the Misbegotten (which closed out of town in 1947 but was successfully revived on Broadway after his death), and A Touch of the Poet (part of an unfinished play cycle, produced posthumously in 1958).

O'Neill believed, with the Greeks, that tragedy always brings exultation. "To me, the tragic alone has that significant beauty which is truth," he said. "It is the meaning of life--and the hope."

O'Neill is the only American playwright to have won the Nobel Prize for literature (1936); he also won four Pulitzer Prizes. He paved the way for such contemporary playwrights as Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, who said of him, "The theater will forever need the towering rebuke of O'Neill's life and his work and his agony."

Bibliography:

Arthur and Barbara Gelb, O'Neill (1987); Eugene O'Neill, Complete Plays, ed. Travis Bogard, 3 vols. (1988).

Author:

Arthur and Barbara Gelb

See also Theater.

Quotes:

"The old -- like children -- talk to themselves, for they have reached that hopeless wisdom of experience which knows that though one were to cry it in the streets to multitudes, or whisper it in the kiss to one's beloved, the only ears that can ever hear one's secrets are one's own!"

"When men make gods, there is no God!"

"Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors."

"Man's loneliness is but his fear of life."

"One should either be sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers."

For the Irish sportsperson, see Eugene O'Neill (hurler).

For the similarly named author, see Gene O'Neill.

Eugene O'Neill
Portrait of O'Neill by Carl Van Vechten, 1933
Born	Eugene Gladstone O'Neill October 16, 1888(1888-10-16) New York City, New York, USA
Died	November 27, 1953 (aged 65) Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Occupation	Playwright
Nationality	United States
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature (1936)
Spouse(s)	Kathleen Jenkins (1909-1912) Agnes Boulton (1918-1929) Carlotta Monterey (1929-1953)

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (16 October 1888 – 27 November 1953) was an American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature. His plays are among the first to introduce into American drama the techniques of realism, associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. His plays were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society, engaging in depraved behavior, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote only one well-known comedy (Ah, Wilderness!).^[1][2] Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early years 1.2 Career 1.3 Family life 1.4 Illness and death 2 Museums and collections 3 Work 3.1 Full-length plays 3.2 One-act plays 3.3 Other works 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links

Biography

Early years

Statue of a young Eugene O'Neill on the waterfront in New London, Connecticut.

O'Neill was born in a Broadway hotel room in Times Square. 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."^[3]

He was the son of Irish actor James O'Neill and Ella Quinlan. Because of his father's profession, O'Neill was sent to a Catholic boarding school where he found his only solace in books.

O'Neill spent his summers in New London, Connecticut. After being suspended from Princeton University, he spent several years at sea, during which he suffered from depression and alcoholism. 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, and O'Neill turned to writing as a form of escape. Despite his depression he had a deep love for the sea, and it became a prominent theme in most of his plays, several of which are set onboard ships like the ones that he worked on.

O'Neill's first play, Bound East for Cardiff, premiered at this theatre on a wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

It wasn't until his experience in 1912–13 at a sanatorium where he was recovering from tuberculosis that he decided to devote himself full time to writing plays. O'Neill had previously been employed by the New London Telegraph, writing poetry as well as reporting.

During the 1910s O'Neill was a regular on the Greenwich Village literary scene, where he also befriended many radicals, most notably Communist Party USA 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.

Career

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 theatre. 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." ^[4] The Provincetown Players performed many of O'Neills early works in the their theaters both in Provincetown and on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. Some of these early plays began downtown and then moved to Broadway.

Family life

O'Neill was married to Kathleen Jenkins from October 2, 1909 to 1912, during which time they had one son, Eugene Jr. (1910-1950). In 1917, O'Neill met Agnes Boulton, a successful writer of commercial fiction, and they married on April 12, 1918. The years of their marriage—during which the couple had two children, Shane and Oona—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.^[5]

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.

O'Neill in the mid-1930s. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936

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 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!,^[2][6] 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 did not gain recognition as being among his best works until decades later.

He was also part of the modern movement to 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."^[7]

O'Neill was very interested in the Faust theme, especially in the 1920s.^[8] He is also known for the very poetic names of many of his plays.

In their first years together, Monterey organized O'Neill's life, enabling him to devote himself to writing. However, she later became addicted to potassium bromide, and the marriage deteriorated, resulting in a number of separations. She was dramatic and shallow, but O'Neill needed her, and she needed him. Although they separated several times, 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, Jr., a Yale classicist who suffered from alcoholism, and committed suicide in 1950 at the age of 40, and Shane O'Neill, a heroin addict who also committed suicide.

Child	Date of Birth	Date of Death	Notes
Eugene O'Neill, Jr	1910	1950
Shane O'Neil
Oona O'Neill	14/05/1925	27/09/1991

Illness and death

Grave of Eugene O'Neill

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 (he had tried using dictation but found himself unable to compose in that way) during the last 10 years of his life. 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, in a barely audible whisper, spoke his last words: "I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room, and God damn it, died in a hotel room."^[9] The building would later become 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. ^[10]

He is interred in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

Although his written instructions had stipulated that it not be made public until 25 years after his death, in 1956 Carlotta arranged for his autobiographical masterpiece Long Day's Journey Into Night to be published, and 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).

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.

Work

See also: Category:Plays by Eugene O'Neill

Full-length plays Bread and Butter, 1914 Servitude, 1914 The Personal Equation, 1915 Now I Ask You, 1916 Beyond the Horizon, 1918 - Pulitzer Prize, 1920 The Straw, 1919 Chris Christophersen, 1919 Anna Christie, 1920 - Pulitzer Prize, 1922 The Emperor Jones, 1920 Diff'rent, 1921 The First Man, 1922 The Hairy Ape, 1922 The Fountain, 1923 The Spook Sonata, 1923 Marco Millions, 1923-25 All God's Chillun Got Wings, 1924 Welded, 1924 Desire Under the Elms, 1925 Lazarus Laughed, 1925-26 The Great God Brown, 1926 Strange Interlude, 1928 - Pulitzer Prize Dynamo, 1929 Mourning Becomes Electra, 1931 Ah, Wilderness!, 1933 Days Without End, 1933 The Iceman Cometh, written 1939, published 1940, first performed 1946 Hughie, written 1941, first performed 1959 Long Day's Journey Into Night, written 1941, first performed 1956 - Pulitzer Prize 1957 A Moon for the Misbegotten, written 1941-1943, first performed 1947 A Touch of the Poet, completed in 1942, first performed 1958 More Stately Mansions, second draft found in O'Neill's papers, first performed 1967 The Calms of Capricorn, published in 1983

One-act plays The Glencairn Plays, which all feature characters on the fictional ship Glencairn -- filmed together as The Long Voyage Home: Bound East for Cardiff, 1914 In The Zone, 1917 The Long Voyage Home, 1917 Moon of the Caribbees, 1918 Other one-act plays include: A Wife for a Life, 1913 The Web, 1913 Thirst, 1913 Recklessness, 1913 Warnings, 1913 Fog, 1914 Abortion, 1914 The Movie Man: A Comedy, 1914 [2][11] The Sniper, 1915 Before Breakfast, 1916 Ile, 1917 The Rope, 1918 Shell Shock, 1918 The Dreamy Kid, 1918 Where the Cross Is Made, 1918

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.^[12]

See also

• The Eugene O'Neill Award

References

1. ^ The New York Times, August 25, 2003: 'Next year Playwrights Theater will present an unproduced O'Neill comedy, Now I Ask You, a comic spin on Ibsen's Hedda Gabler."
2. ^ ^{a b c} The Eugene O'Neill Foundation newsletter: "Now I Ask You, along with The Movie Man, ... is the only surviving comedy from O’Neill’s early years."
3. ^ Arthur Gelb (1957-10-17). "O'Neill's Birthplace Is Marked By Plaque at Times Square Site". The New York Times: pp. 35. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00910F73B5C127A93C5A8178BD95F438585F9. Retrieved 2008-11-13. 
4. ^ Susan Glaspell, (1927), The Road to the Temple, Frederick A. Stokes, New York, 2nd ed. 1941, p. 255
5. ^ "Eugene O'Neill Wed to Miss Monterey". The New York Times: pp. 9. 1929-07-24. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60D10F6345D14738DDDAD0A94DF405B898EF1D3. Retrieved 2008-11-13. 
6. ^ The New York Times, Aug. 25, 2003: 'Next year Playwrights Theater will present an unproduced O'Neill comedy, Now I Ask You, a comic spin on Ibsen's Hedda Gabler."
7. ^ Smith, Susan Harris (1984). Masks in Modern Drama. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 66–70, 106–08, 131–36, index S124. ISBN 0520050959. 
8. ^ Floyd, Virginia (1985). "Chapter 2". Eugene O'Neill: A New Assessment. New York: F. Ungar Publishing. p. 180. ISBN 0804422060. 
9. ^ Sheaffer, Louis. O'Neill: Son and Artist. Little, Brown & Co., 1973 ISBN 0316783374
10. ^ "Eugene O'Neill - What Went Wrong?". Neuroscience for Kids. April 22, 2000. http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/oneill.html. Retrieved 2009-02-12. 
11. ^ Title as in original typescript and title page of Modern Library edition
12. ^ O'Neill, Eugene; Adrienne Yorinks (1999). The Last Will and Testament of an Extremely Distinguished Dog (First ed.). New York: Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 0805061703. http://www.eoneill.com/texts/blemie/contents.htm. Retrieved 2008-11-16. 

Further reading

• O'Neill, Eugene; Bogard, Travis (1988). Complete Plays 1913-1920. The Library of America. 40. New York: Literary Classics. ISBN 9780940450486. 
• O'Neill, Eugene; Bogard, Travis (1988). Complete Plays 1920-1931. The Library of America. 41. New York: Literary Classics. ISBN 9780940450493. 
• O'Neill, Eugene; Bogard, Travis (1988). Complete Plays 1932-1943. The Library of America. 42. New York: Literary Classics. ISBN 9780940450509. 
• Black, Stephen A. (2002). Eugene O'Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy. Yale University press. ISBN 0300093993. 
• Clark, Barrett H. (November 1932). "Aeschylus and O'Neill". The English Journal XXI (9): 699–710. doi:10.2307/804473. 
• Floyd, Virginia (editor) (1979). Eugene O'Neill: A World View. Frederick Unger. ISBN 0804422044. 
• Floyd, Virginia (1985). The Plays of Eugene O'Neill: A New Assessment. Frederick Unger. ISBN 0804422060. 
• 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 0815412436. 
• Sheaffer, Louis (1999 [1973]). O'Neill Volume II: Son and Artist. Cooper Square Press. ISBN 0815412444. 
• 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

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Eugene O'Neill

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Eugene O'Neill

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Eugene O'Neill

• Eugene O'Neill official website
• Casa Genotta official website
• Eugene O'Neill at Find a Grave
• 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 at the Notable Names Database
• Eugene O'Neil Autobiography at the Nobel Foundation
• The Iceman Cometh: A Study Guide
• Works by Eugene O'Neill at Project Gutenberg
• 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

Awards and achievements
Preceded by Warren S. Stone	Cover of Time Magazine 17 March 1924	Succeeded by Raymond Poincaré

v • d • e Nobel Laureates in Literature Grazia Deledda (1926) · Henri Bergson (1927) · Sigrid Undset (1928) · Thomas Mann (1929) · Sinclair Lewis (1930) · Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1931) · John Galsworthy (1932) · Ivan Bunin (1933) · Luigi Pirandello (1934) · Eugene O'Neill (1936) · Roger Martin du Gard (1937) · Pearl S. Buck (1938) · Frans Eemil Sillanpää (1939) · Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (1944) · Gabriela Mistral (1945) · Hermann Hesse (1946) · André Gide (1947) · T. S. Eliot (1948) · William Faulkner (1949) · Bertrand Russell (1950) Complete roster · 1901–1925 · 1926–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present

v • d • e Pulitzer Prize for Drama Jesse Lynch Williams (1918) · Eugene O'Neill (1920) · Zona Gale (1921) · Eugene O'Neill (1922) · Owen Davis (1923) · Hatcher Hughes (1924) · Sidney Howard (1925) Complete list: (1918-1925) · (1926-1950) · (1951-1975) · (1976-2000) · (2001-present)

v • d • e Pulitzer Prize for Drama George Kelly (1926) · Paul Green (1927) · Eugene O'Neill (1928) · Elmer Rice (1929) · Marc Connelly (1930) · Susan Glaspell (1931) · George S. Kaufman / Morrie Ryskind / Ira Gershwin (1932) · Maxwell Anderson (1933) · Sidney Kingsley (1934) · Zoe Akins (1935) · Robert E. Sherwood (1936) · Moss Hart / George S. Kaufman (1937) · Thornton Wilder (1938) · Robert E. Sherwood (1939) · William Saroyan (1940) · Robert E. Sherwood (1941) · Thornton Wilder (1943) · Mary Coyle Chase (1945) · Russel Crouse / Howard Lindsay (1946) · Tennessee Williams (1948) · Arthur Miller (1949) · Richard Rodgers / Oscar Hammerstein II / Joshua Logan (1950) Complete list: (1918-1925) · (1926-1950) · (1951-1975) · (1976-2000) · (2001-present)

v • d • e Pulitzer Prize for Drama Joseph Kramm (1952) · William Inge (1953) · John Patrick (1954) · Tennessee Williams (1955) · Albert Hackett / Frances Goodrich (1956) · Eugene O'Neill (1957) · Ketti Frings (1958) · Archibald MacLeish (1959) · Jerome Weidman / George Abbott / Jerry Bock / Sheldon Harnick (1960) · Tad Mosel (1961) · Frank Loesser / Abe Burrows (1962) · Frank D. Gilroy (1965) · Edward Albee (1967) · Howard Sackler (1969) · Charles Gordone (1970) · Paul Zindel (1971) · Jason Miller (1973) · Edward Albee (1975) Complete list: (1918-1925) · (1926-1950) · (1951-1975) · (1976-2000) · (2001-present)

Persondata
NAME	O'Neill, Eugene
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	O'Neill, Eugene Gladstone
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature
DATE OF BIRTH	1888-10-16
PLACE OF BIRTH	New York City, New York, USA
DATE OF DEATH	27 November 1953
PLACE OF DEATH	Boston, Massachusetts, USA

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)