Eugene O’Neill (16 October, 1888 – 27 November 1953) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American playwright.
Books by or about Eugene O’Neill*
Fun Facts about Eugene O’Neill:
1. Eugene Gladstone O’Neill was born in the Barrett House, a hotel located in Longacre Square, NYC. Not long after Longacre Square was renamed Times Square, and the hotel is now ABC Studios at 1500 Broadway.
2. He was the third child of James O’Neill, a famous touring actor that immigrated from Ireland., and Mary Ellen Quinlan , was an Irish American actress. Both of them were addicts, he to alcohol, and she to morphine. Their young son grew up in boarding schools and only saw his parents during the summers in New London, CT.
3. Mr. O’Neill attended Princeton from 1906-1907, one year. He was kicked out for throwing a beer bottle through the windows of the university’s president, future US President Woodrow Wilson.
That’s the best story, other reasons are not as interesting, one is that he didn’t attend classes, or conduct code violations, or broke a window.
4. The future playwright spent several years as a merchant mariner. His experience, which was a difficult one, inspired some of his works such as The Moon of the Caribbees and Bound East for Cardiff. He abandoned the nomadic life while recovering from tuberculosis at Gaylord Farm Sanatorium in Connecticut and decided to dedicate his life to writing.
6. Before Mr. O’Neill started writing, American theatre was focused on melodramas and vaudeville shows. The shift towards serious realism on the American stage is attributed almost single-handedly to him.
7. Mr. O’Neill was married three times, to Kathleen Jenkins from 1909 – 1912, a marriage which produces one son, Eugene O’Neill Jr., a professor of Greek Literature. In 1917 he met and married Agnes Boulton, a successful writer from New Jersey, and married her a year later. The couple had two children, Shane and Oona, an actress. He abandoned his family to marry actress Carlotta Monterey, they got married about a month after his divorce was final.
Oona married actor Charlie Chaplin when she was 18 and he was 54. Her father was so outraged he disowned her and never talked to Lady Chaplin again. Later he disowned his sons as well. Eugene O’Neill Jr. committed suicide in 1950. Shane O’Neill struggled with addiction and also took his own life a few years later.
8. Some of his plays were known for other things than brilliant writing. He wanted Long Day’s Journey into Night to remain unpublished until 25 years after his, his third wife, Carlotta Monterey published it three years after his death. Strange Interlude takes five hours to perform; early productions actually had a dinner break for the audience. His 1933 play, Ah, Wilderness! Is the only comedy out of over 50 plays with serious themes. Last but not least, 1924’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings tells of an African American lawyer married to a white woman which promoted a national dialog and threats from the KKK to the author.
9. To this day, Eugene O’Neill is the only dramatist to win four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. He won for Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), Strange Interlude (1928), and the posthumous Long Day’s Journey into Night (1957).
10. A perfect bookending to a remarkable life, Eugene O’Neill was born and died in a hotel room, this time at the Boston Sheraton Hotel. His last words were “I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room and goddammit, died in a hotel room”.
Books by or about Eugene O’Neill*
Zohar — Man of la Book
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Sources:
Eugene O’Neill | Wikipedia
Modern Literature Collection Authors: Eugene O’Neill | Washington University in St. Louis
