Eugene O'Neill(1888-1953)
- Writer
Eugene O'Neill, the winner of four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and the
1936 Nobel Prize for Literature, is widely considered the greatest
American playwright. No one, not
Maxwell Anderson,
Tennessee Williams,
Arthur Miller, nor
Edward Albee, approaches O'Neill in terms
of his artistic achievement or his impact on the American theater.
James O'Neill, one of the most
popular actors of the late 19th century, was his father, so one could
say that Eugene O'Neill was born to a life in the theater. His father,
who had been born into poverty in Ireland before emigrating to the
United States, developed his craft and became a star in the theaters of
the Midwest. He married Mary Ellen "Ella" Quinlan, the Irish-American daughter of a
wealthy Cleveland businessman, whose death when she was a teenager had
hurt her emotionally. She remained emotionally fragile throughout her
life, a condition exacerbated by a further tragedy, the loss of a
child. A further strain was placed on her when it was discovered that
James had lived in "concubinage" with a common-law wife who later sued
him for child support and alimony, claiming he had fathered her child.
Both were pious and believing Catholics.
They had three sons, including James Jr. (born 1878) and Edmund (1883),
who died at the age of two from measles, leaving Ella distraught. Their
last son, Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (his middle name a salute to the
British prime minister who was in favor of home rule for Ireland), was
born at the Barrett Hotel (home of many theatrical artistes) in New
York City, on October 16, 1888. Supposedly, it was a difficult
delivery, and in the spirit of the times, Ella was given morphine for
her pain. She became an addict.
James O'Neill made a fortune playing The Count of Monte Cristo, both on
Broadway in multiple productions and as a touring show. However, he
suffered an artistic death as a performing artiste through the sheer
repetition of the Monte Cristo role, which he turned to repeatedly as
it always proved a success. He reportedly played the role at least
4,000 times, perhaps nearly twice that number. He would provide the
prototype for the character of James Tyrone, the pater familias in his
son's "Long Day's Journey Into Night". James O'Neill Sr. knew that he
had suffered artistically from his commercial instincts, and Eugene
never forgot that. His son remained steadfast in his own fidelity to
his principles of artistic integrity.
The father also was a notorious skinflint, terrified that some
unforeseen calamity would throw him back into the hellish poverty of
his childhood in Ireland. Both young Gene and his older brother Jamie
tried their hands at acting, and though Jamie was more successful than
Gene, he never developed a significant, independent career as a
professional thespian due to instability caused by his alcoholism.
Jamie relied on his father for work, which further fueled his drinking.
Jamie was a full-blown alcoholic, just like his younger brother, Gene,
and he drank himself to death at a relatively young age, a fate Gene
managed to avoid, but not from lack of trying. The characters of Jamie
in "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and James Tyrone Jr. in "A Moon for
the Misbegotten" were based on him.
As a young man, Eugene suffered from tuberculosis, which likely
exacerbated his propensity for pessimism (the stuff of his life became
the guts of his last masterpiece, "Long Day's Journey Into Night"). His
pessimistic, tragic outlook on life likely was hereditary: O'Neill's two
sons, Eugene O'Neill Jr. and Shane O'Neill, became substance abusers as
adults: Eugene Jr. was an alcoholic and Shane was a heroin addict. Both
committed suicide. He disowned his daughter
Oona Chaplin, for marrying
Charles Chaplin, who was just six months
younger than O'Neill himself. He had never had much to do with her
anyway, nor any of his children. His life was devoted to writing.
After recovering from tuberculosis, O'Neill attended Princeton for the
1907-08 term, but was kicked out after his freshman year, allegedly for
being drunk and disorderly at a reception held by the university
president, future President of the United States
Woodrow Wilson. For the next
eight years he led a freebooting existence, fortune-hunting for gold in
South America and plying the seas as an able-bodied seaman, while
trying to drink himself to death (he even made an attempt at suicide).
Eventually he returned to New York City and tried his hand at
playwriting, and with the financial help of his father, studied
playwriting at Harvard in 1915. His father was unimpressed by the
results, and died the same year his son made his big breakthrough on
Broadway (he did live to see the production of Eugene's first
full-length play, "Beyond the Horizon", which opened on February 2,
1920 and ran for a then-impressive 111 performances, and its honoring
with the 1920 Pulitzer Prize for Drama that May. James O'Neill Sr. died
on August 10, 1920. His namesake, James O'Neill Jr., died three years
later, at the age of 45.)
Where Eugene truly learned his craft was in the writing of one-act
melodramas that dealt with the lives of sailors, that were performed by
the Provincetown Players, which had theaters in Provincetown on Cape
Cod and off of Washington Square in New York City
(John Ford made a 1940 movie out of
four of his sea plays, collected in
The Long Voyage Home (1940)).
The theater he created was a reaction against the theater of his
father, the old hoary melodramas that packed them in for a night of
crowd-pleasing entertainment.
Eugene started out as a dramatist at a time when there was an average
of 70 plays being performed on Broadway each week. The Great White Way
resembled a modern movie multiplex in that potential theatergoers would
peruse the various marquees in and around Times Square seeking an
entertainment for the night. At the time O'Neill began to establish
himself, in pre- and post-World War I era, entertainment was first and
foremost in most people's minds.
The movies and O'Neill would change that. The competition of the more
sophisticated movies of the late silent era, and then the talkies,
usurped the position of Broadway and the theater as the premier venue
for American entertainment. The light plays that were the equivalent of
television fare became extinct. Musicals continued to thrive, as did
comedies, but drama became more serious and developed a psychological
depth. O'Neill was the midwife of the phenomenon.
Eugene O'Neill helped foster the maturation of American drama, as he
incorporated the techniques of both European expressionism and realism
in his work. Influenced by Henrik Ibsen and
August Strindberg, brought to the
American stage a tragic vision that influenced scores of American
playwrights that followed.
Eugene O'Neill died in the Shelton Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, in
1953. Allegedly, his last words were, "Born in a hotel room, and
goddammit! Died in one!" His health had been hurt by his alcoholism and
he suffered from Parkinson's disease-like tremors of his hands that had
made it difficult, if not impossible, to write since the early 1940s.
It is believed that he suffered cerebellar cortical abiotrophy, a
neurological disease in which certain neurons in the cerebellum of the
brain die off, adversely affecting the balance and coordination of the
sufferer. As a dramatist, he had flourished on Broadway from 1920, when
his first full-length work, "Beyond the Horizon", debuted, winning him
his first Pulitzer, until 1934, when his first and only comedy, Ah,
Wilderness! (debut October 1933) came to an end that June and his play,
"Days Without End," was staged in repertory between January and
November). After 1934, he entered a cocoon, staying away from Broadway
until after World War II, when the 1946 production of "The Iceman
Cometh" debuted. The first production of "Iceman" failed, and O'Neill's
reputation suffered, but the 1956 production of "Iceman" starring
Jason Robards and directed by
José Quintero was a great success,
as was the posthumous production of "Long Day's Journey Into Night",
which brought O'Neill his fourth Pulitzer. The two plays solidified his
legend.
1936 Nobel Prize for Literature, is widely considered the greatest
American playwright. No one, not
Maxwell Anderson,
Tennessee Williams,
Arthur Miller, nor
Edward Albee, approaches O'Neill in terms
of his artistic achievement or his impact on the American theater.
James O'Neill, one of the most
popular actors of the late 19th century, was his father, so one could
say that Eugene O'Neill was born to a life in the theater. His father,
who had been born into poverty in Ireland before emigrating to the
United States, developed his craft and became a star in the theaters of
the Midwest. He married Mary Ellen "Ella" Quinlan, the Irish-American daughter of a
wealthy Cleveland businessman, whose death when she was a teenager had
hurt her emotionally. She remained emotionally fragile throughout her
life, a condition exacerbated by a further tragedy, the loss of a
child. A further strain was placed on her when it was discovered that
James had lived in "concubinage" with a common-law wife who later sued
him for child support and alimony, claiming he had fathered her child.
Both were pious and believing Catholics.
They had three sons, including James Jr. (born 1878) and Edmund (1883),
who died at the age of two from measles, leaving Ella distraught. Their
last son, Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (his middle name a salute to the
British prime minister who was in favor of home rule for Ireland), was
born at the Barrett Hotel (home of many theatrical artistes) in New
York City, on October 16, 1888. Supposedly, it was a difficult
delivery, and in the spirit of the times, Ella was given morphine for
her pain. She became an addict.
James O'Neill made a fortune playing The Count of Monte Cristo, both on
Broadway in multiple productions and as a touring show. However, he
suffered an artistic death as a performing artiste through the sheer
repetition of the Monte Cristo role, which he turned to repeatedly as
it always proved a success. He reportedly played the role at least
4,000 times, perhaps nearly twice that number. He would provide the
prototype for the character of James Tyrone, the pater familias in his
son's "Long Day's Journey Into Night". James O'Neill Sr. knew that he
had suffered artistically from his commercial instincts, and Eugene
never forgot that. His son remained steadfast in his own fidelity to
his principles of artistic integrity.
The father also was a notorious skinflint, terrified that some
unforeseen calamity would throw him back into the hellish poverty of
his childhood in Ireland. Both young Gene and his older brother Jamie
tried their hands at acting, and though Jamie was more successful than
Gene, he never developed a significant, independent career as a
professional thespian due to instability caused by his alcoholism.
Jamie relied on his father for work, which further fueled his drinking.
Jamie was a full-blown alcoholic, just like his younger brother, Gene,
and he drank himself to death at a relatively young age, a fate Gene
managed to avoid, but not from lack of trying. The characters of Jamie
in "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and James Tyrone Jr. in "A Moon for
the Misbegotten" were based on him.
As a young man, Eugene suffered from tuberculosis, which likely
exacerbated his propensity for pessimism (the stuff of his life became
the guts of his last masterpiece, "Long Day's Journey Into Night"). His
pessimistic, tragic outlook on life likely was hereditary: O'Neill's two
sons, Eugene O'Neill Jr. and Shane O'Neill, became substance abusers as
adults: Eugene Jr. was an alcoholic and Shane was a heroin addict. Both
committed suicide. He disowned his daughter
Oona Chaplin, for marrying
Charles Chaplin, who was just six months
younger than O'Neill himself. He had never had much to do with her
anyway, nor any of his children. His life was devoted to writing.
After recovering from tuberculosis, O'Neill attended Princeton for the
1907-08 term, but was kicked out after his freshman year, allegedly for
being drunk and disorderly at a reception held by the university
president, future President of the United States
Woodrow Wilson. For the next
eight years he led a freebooting existence, fortune-hunting for gold in
South America and plying the seas as an able-bodied seaman, while
trying to drink himself to death (he even made an attempt at suicide).
Eventually he returned to New York City and tried his hand at
playwriting, and with the financial help of his father, studied
playwriting at Harvard in 1915. His father was unimpressed by the
results, and died the same year his son made his big breakthrough on
Broadway (he did live to see the production of Eugene's first
full-length play, "Beyond the Horizon", which opened on February 2,
1920 and ran for a then-impressive 111 performances, and its honoring
with the 1920 Pulitzer Prize for Drama that May. James O'Neill Sr. died
on August 10, 1920. His namesake, James O'Neill Jr., died three years
later, at the age of 45.)
Where Eugene truly learned his craft was in the writing of one-act
melodramas that dealt with the lives of sailors, that were performed by
the Provincetown Players, which had theaters in Provincetown on Cape
Cod and off of Washington Square in New York City
(John Ford made a 1940 movie out of
four of his sea plays, collected in
The Long Voyage Home (1940)).
The theater he created was a reaction against the theater of his
father, the old hoary melodramas that packed them in for a night of
crowd-pleasing entertainment.
Eugene started out as a dramatist at a time when there was an average
of 70 plays being performed on Broadway each week. The Great White Way
resembled a modern movie multiplex in that potential theatergoers would
peruse the various marquees in and around Times Square seeking an
entertainment for the night. At the time O'Neill began to establish
himself, in pre- and post-World War I era, entertainment was first and
foremost in most people's minds.
The movies and O'Neill would change that. The competition of the more
sophisticated movies of the late silent era, and then the talkies,
usurped the position of Broadway and the theater as the premier venue
for American entertainment. The light plays that were the equivalent of
television fare became extinct. Musicals continued to thrive, as did
comedies, but drama became more serious and developed a psychological
depth. O'Neill was the midwife of the phenomenon.
Eugene O'Neill helped foster the maturation of American drama, as he
incorporated the techniques of both European expressionism and realism
in his work. Influenced by Henrik Ibsen and
August Strindberg, brought to the
American stage a tragic vision that influenced scores of American
playwrights that followed.
Eugene O'Neill died in the Shelton Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, in
1953. Allegedly, his last words were, "Born in a hotel room, and
goddammit! Died in one!" His health had been hurt by his alcoholism and
he suffered from Parkinson's disease-like tremors of his hands that had
made it difficult, if not impossible, to write since the early 1940s.
It is believed that he suffered cerebellar cortical abiotrophy, a
neurological disease in which certain neurons in the cerebellum of the
brain die off, adversely affecting the balance and coordination of the
sufferer. As a dramatist, he had flourished on Broadway from 1920, when
his first full-length work, "Beyond the Horizon", debuted, winning him
his first Pulitzer, until 1934, when his first and only comedy, Ah,
Wilderness! (debut October 1933) came to an end that June and his play,
"Days Without End," was staged in repertory between January and
November). After 1934, he entered a cocoon, staying away from Broadway
until after World War II, when the 1946 production of "The Iceman
Cometh" debuted. The first production of "Iceman" failed, and O'Neill's
reputation suffered, but the 1956 production of "Iceman" starring
Jason Robards and directed by
José Quintero was a great success,
as was the posthumous production of "Long Day's Journey Into Night",
which brought O'Neill his fourth Pulitzer. The two plays solidified his
legend.