Eugene (Gladstone) O'Neill
(1888-1953)
One of the greatest American playwrights, restless and bold experimenter,
winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936. Among O'Neill's best-known
plays are ANNA CHRISTINE (pub. 1922), DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS (pub.1924),
MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA (pub. 1931), LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (pub.
1956), and THE ICEMAN COMETH (prod. 1946). O'Neill's plays range in style from
satire to tragedy. They often depict people who have no hope of controlling
their destinies.
"... we all are more or less the slaves of conventions, or of discipline, or
of a rigid formula of some sort."
Eugene O'Neill was born in New York into an Irish-Catholic theatrical family.
His early life was restless: his father, who was an actor, spent most of his
career touring in the lead role of the popular melodrama The Count of Monte
Cristo. In 1895 O'Neill was enrolled in the St. Aloysius Academy for Boys, and
transferred in 1900 to the DeLa Salle Institute in Manhattan. During these
years his mother's addiction to morphine left profound emotional scars on the
growing O'Neill. He also found out that his own birth had precipitated his
mother's addiction. In 1902 Ella O'Neill tried to commit suicide. After
renouncing Catholicism, O'Neill entered in 1902 the Betts Academy in Stamford,
a non-sectarian preparatory school. Six years later he entered Princeton
University, but left it after a year. During this period he spent most of the
time in New York waterfront bars and brothels.
In 1909 he married Kathleen Jenkins. The marriage ended two years later. They
had one son, who as to commit suicide at the age of forty. O'Neill went to sea
in 1910, living the life of a tramp at docksides. Once he attempted suicide,
overdosing in a flophouse. He stayed with his family in Connecticut, but was
then forced by the onset of tuberculosis to spend six months in a sanatorium.
After recovering O'Neill began writing plays. He was enrolled in George Pierce
Baker's 47A Workshop at Harvard University (1914-1915), and then joined the
Provincetown Players.
"The Hairy Ape was propaganda in the sense that it was a symbol of a man, who
has lost his old harmony with nature, the harmony which he used to have as an
animal and has not yet acquired in a spiritual way. Thus, not being able to
find it on earth nor in heaven. he's in the middle, trying to make peace,
taking the "woist punches from bot' of 'em." ... The subject here is the same
ancient one that always was and always will be the one subject for drama, and
that is man and his struggle with his own fate. The struggle used to be with
the gods, but is now with himself, his own past, his attempt "to belong." (Eugene
O'Neill in Playwrights on Playwriting, ed. by Toby Cole, 1961)
In the late 1910s O'Neill dramas begun to gain recognition in New York.
Between the years 1918 and 1924 he wrote among others Anna Christie, THE FIRST
MAN, THE HAIRY APE, THE FOUNTAIN, and WELDED. In 1918 he married the writer
Agnes Boulton; they had two children. O'Neill's father died in 1921 from
cancer, next year he lost his mother, and twelve months after that his brother
Jamies died from a stroke.
During the early 1920s O'Neill formed with Robert Edmond Jones and Kenneth
Macgowan, a gifted producer, a "Triumvirate" that ran the Experimental Theater
at the Provincetown Playhouse. While still married to Agnes, O'Neill used the
help of his friend Macgowan to send roses to the beautiful actress Carlotta
Monterey. O'Neill's second marriage ended in 1929. In the same year he married
Carlotta Monterey, with whom he first settled in France, then in Sea Island,
Georgia, and finally in California. O'Neill saw his children infrequently. He
disinherited his son Shane because he did not approve of his son's life style,
and his daughter Oona, because at the age of eighteen she married Charles
Chaplin.
The Pulitzer winning BEYOND THE HORIZON (pub. 1920) was O'Neill's first
important play. The story depicts two brothers, Andrew, the elder a practical
realist, and the younger, Robert, a poetic idealist. Robert is incapable of
managing the family farm. When Andrew returns from a long voyage, successful
and wealthy, he finds Robert dying of tuberculosis. On his deathbed, Robert
still dreams of freedom beyond the horizon. After H.L. Mencken's criticism of
WELDED (1924) O'Neill wrote to the critic George Jean Nathan: "Damn that word,
'realism!' When I first spoke to you of the play as a 'last word in realism,'
I meant something 'really real,' in the sense of being spiritually true, not
meticulously life-like." (from Selected Letters of Eugene O'Neill, edited by
Travis Bogard and Jackson R. Bryer, 1988)
Mourning Becomes Electra, based on Aeschylus's Orestean trilogy, was O'Neill's
version of the tragedy of the house of Atreus, set in 19th-century New England.
The action centers around Lavinia (Electra). General Ezra Mannon, on his
return from the American Civil war, is murdered by his wife Christine. Lavinia
avenges her father's murder by persuading her brother, Orin (Orestes), to kill
her mother's lover. The murder is followed by the suicide of the mother. Orin
goes mad when he discovers that he has an incestuous passion for his sister.
Lavinia locks herself in the family mansion, surrounded by the ghosts of the
past.
In 1935 O'Neill began work on a cycle of eleven plays, with the theme of the
turmoils of American materialism. The cycle was never completed - only two
plays have survived. On his final productive period O'Neill wrote Long Day's
Journey into Night, an agonized portrait of his own family, the Tyrones in the
play. Again the action takes place in one room. Mary Tyrone returns to her
dope addiction: "None of us can help the things life has done to us" says
Mary. Edmund, based on the author himself, is stricken with tuberculosis. The
play was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1957. HUGHIE (pub. 1959) was a story
about a small time gambler, and A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN (pub. 1952)
continued O'Neill's family history of the Tyrones.
The Iceman Cometh is perhaps the finest of O'Neill's tragedies. The story is
set in a dockside bar on the lower west side of New York City. It concerns a
group of drunken derelicts who spend their time in the back room of Henry Hope's
saloon where they discuss their hopeless lives. One man wants to get back into
the police force, another to be re-elected as a politician. Their daily
routines are shattered when Hickey, a salesman and the son of a preacher,
appears as a messiah, and encourages them to start rehabilitation. They find
out that their new hero is himself a madman and murderer, who has killed his
wife, and lapse once more into their comfortable world of whiskey.
Poor health prevented O'Neill from attending the Nobel ceremonies in
Stockholm, Sweden. His remaining creative years were characterized by long
periods of illness. After a failed production of A Moon for the Misbegotten in
1943, he wrote no major new plays. O'Neill became gradually paralyzed and he
died on November 27, 1953 in Boston. He wrote 45 plays.
For further reading: Eugene O'Neill: The Man and His Plays by B.H. Clark
(1947); Eugene O'Neill and the Tragic Tension by D.V. Falk (1958, rev. ed.
1982); The Plays of Eugene O'Neill by J.H. Raleigh (1965); O'Neill's Scenic
Image by T. Tiusanen (1969); A Drama of Souls by E. Törnqvist (1968); Contour
in Time by T. Bogard (1972); Eugene O'Neill by F.I. Carpenter (1979); Tragedy,
Modern Temper, and O'Neill by C. Ahuja (1984); Final Acts by J.E. Berlin
(1985); Eugene O'Neill: An Annotated Bibliography by M. Smith and R. Eaton
(1988); Staging O'Neill by Ronald Harold Wainscott (1988); Conversations with
Eugene O'Neill, ed. by Mark W. Estrin (1990); Eugene O'Neill's Creative
Struggle by Doris Alexander (1992); Down the Nights and Down the Days by
Edward Lawrence (1996); Eugene O'Neill and His Eleven-Play Cycle by Donald
Clifford Gallup (1998); The Cambridge Companion to Eugene O'Neill, ed. by
Michael Manheim (1998);- See also: Eugenio Montale - Note: in his Nobel
acceptance speech O'Neill considered the plays of August Strindberg the source
of his own inspiration. On the other hand, he was the model for later American
playwrights, such as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Edward Albee - For
further information: Little Blue Light
Selected bibliography:
* BREAD AND BUTTER, 1914
* CHILDREN OF THE SEA, 1914
* BOUND EAST FOR CARDIFF, 1916
* THE LONG VOYAGE HOME, 1917 - film The Long Voyage Home 1940, dir. John Ford,
starring John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell, Ian Hunter, Ward Bond, based on four
plays
* IN THE ZONE, 1919
* WHERE THE CROSS IS MADE, 1919
* THE ROPE, 1919
* MOON OF THE CARIBEES, 1919
* GOLD, 1920
* THE DREAMY KID, 1920
* EMPEROR JONES, 1920
* BEYOND THE HORIZON, 1920
* THE STRAW, 1921
* HAIRY APE, 1922 - film 1944, dir. by Alfred Santell, screenplay by Jules
Levy, starring William Bendix, Susan Hayard
* ANNA CHRISTIE, 1922 - suom. Anna Christie - Pulizer Prize - film 1931, dir.
by Clarence Brown, starring Greta Garbo
* WELDED, 1924
* ALL GOD'S CHILLUN GOT WINGS, 1924
* THE FOUNTAIN, 1925
* DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, 1925 - suom. Intohimot jalavan varjossa - film 1958,
dir. by Delbert Mann, script Irwin Shaw
* THE GREAT GOD BROWN, 1926
* STRANGE INTERLUDE, 1928 - Pulizer Prize
* LAZARUS LAUGHED, 1928
* MARCO MILLIONS, 1928
* DYNAMO, 1929
* MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA, 1931 - suom. Murheesta nousee Elektra eli Suru
pukee Elektraa - film 1948, dir. by Dudley Nichols, starring Michael Redgrave,
Rosalind Russell, Katina Paxinou
* NINE PLAYS, 1932
* AH, WILDERNESS, 1933 - film 1935, dir. by Clarence Brown; starring Wallace
Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Mickey Rooney - a musical version Summer Holiday
(1948), dir. by Rouben Mamoulian , starring Mickey Rooney, Walter Huston
* DAYS WITHOUT END, 1933
* THE ICEMAN COMETH, 1946 (written in 1939) - Jäämies tulee - film 1973, dir.
by John Frankenheimer, starring Lee Marvin, Fredric March, Robert Ryan, Jeff
Bridges
* LOST PLAYS 1913-15, 1950
* LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, 1956 (written in 1941) - suom. Pitkän päivän
matka yöhön - Pulizer Prize - film 1966, dir. by Sidney Lumet, starring Ralph
Richardson, Katherine Hepburn. "At the start of the picture, everything was
peachy-pie normal. Both the lenses and the light could have been used for an
Andy Hardy movie... As the scenes progress and the truth comes more and more
agonizing, the lenses get wider and wider, the camera gets lower and lower,
and the light harsher but darker, as the whole story of these people gets
wrapped in night and the final, terrible truths are articulated." (Lumet in
Making Movies, 1995)
* A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, 1957 (written 1943)
* A TOUCH OF THE POET, 1958 (written 1935-1942)
* HUGHIE, 1958 (written 1942)
* INSCRIPTIONS, 1960
* TEN LOST PLAYS, 1964
* MORE STATELY MANSIONS, 1967 (prod.)
* POEMS, 1912-1944, 1979
* EUGENE O'NEILL AT WORK, 1981
* "THE THEATRE WE WORKED FOR": THE LETTERS OF EUGENE O'NEILL TO KENNETH
MACGOWAN, 1982 (edited by Jackson R. Bryer, with the assistance of Ruth M.
Alvarez)
* A TALE OF POSSESSORS DISPOSSESSED, 1982 (unfinished)
* COMPLETE PLAYS, 1984 (3 vols.)
* "LOVE AND ADMIRATION AND RESPECT", 1986 (ed. by D. Commins)
* AS EVER, GENE: THE LETTERS OF EUGENE O'NEILL TO GEORGE JEAN NATHAN, 1987
* SELECTED LETTERS, 1988 (edited by Travis Bogard and Jackson R. Bryer)