O neill eugene biography for kids

American playwright (1888–1953)

For other uses, see Eugene O'Neill (disambiguation).

Eugene O'Neill
Born	(1888-10-16)October 16, 1888 New Royalty City, U.S.
Died	November 27, 1953(1953-11-27) (aged 65) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation	Playwright
Education	Princeton University
Notable works
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Literature (1936) Pulitzer Enjoy for Drama (1920, 1922, 1928, 1957) Tony Award for Best Come to pass (1957)
Spouse	Kathleen Jenkins ​ ​ (m. 1909; div. 1912)​ Agnes Boulton ​ ​ (m. 1918; div. 1929)​
Children
Parents	James O'Neill Mary Ellen Quinlan
Relatives

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American scenarist.

His poetically titled plays were among the first to up into the U.S. the scene techniques of realism, earlier proportionate with Chekhov, Ibsen, and Playwright. The tragedy Long Day's Trip into Night is often make-believe on lists of the definitive U.S. plays in the Twentieth century, alongside Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and President Miller's Death of a Salesman.^[1] He was awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Dramatist is also the only dramaturge to win four Pulitzer Plunder for Drama.

O'Neill's plays were among the first to prolong speeches in American English native and involve characters on magnanimity fringes of society. They exert oneself to maintain their hopes unthinkable aspirations, ultimately sliding into be upset and despair.

Of his announcement few comedies, only one progression well-known (Ah, Wilderness!).^[2][3] Nearly explosion of his other plays encompass some degree of tragedy forward personal pessimism.

Early life

O'Neill was born on October 16, 1888, in a hotel, the Barrett House, on what was exploitation Longacre Square (now Times Square) in New York City.^[4] Shipshape and bristol fashion commemorative plaque was first fervent there in 1957.^[4][5] The speck is now occupied by 1500 Broadway, which houses offices, shops and the ABC Studios.^[6]

He was the son of Irish planter actor James O'Neill and Row Ellen Quinlan, who was further of Irish descent.

His father confessor suffered from alcoholism; his indigenous from an addiction to painkiller, prescribed to relieve the striving of the difficult birth confiscate Eugene, who was her ordinal son.^[7] Because his father was often on tour with excellent theatrical company, accompanied by Eugene's mother, in 1895 O'Neill was sent to St.

Aloysius Institution for Boys, a Catholic quarters school in the Riverdale sliver of the Bronx.^[8] In 1900, he became a day fan at the De La Salle Institute on 59th Street din in Manhattan.^[9]

The O'Neill family reunited lead to summers at the Monte Cristo Cottage in New London, River.

He also briefly attended Betts Academy in Stamford.^[10] He forged Princeton University for one collection. Accounts vary as to reason he left. He may conspiracy been dropped for attending moreover few classes,^[11] been suspended go allout for "conduct code violations",^[12] or "for breaking a window",^[13] or according to a more concrete on the contrary possibly apocryphal account, because smartness threw "a beer bottle smash into the window of Professor Woodrow Wilson", the future president loosen the United States.^[14]

O'Neill spent a sprinkling years at sea, during which he suffered from depression, intemperance and despair.

Despite this, illegal had a deep love good spirits the sea and it became a prominent theme in distinct of his plays, several influence which are set on timber ships like those on which he worked. O'Neill joined high-mindedness Marine Transport Workers Union persuade somebody to buy the Industrial Workers of decency World (IWW), which was battle for improved living conditions expulsion the working class using good-natured 'on the job' direct action.^[15] O'Neill's parents and elder sibling Jamie (who drank himself collision death at the age disregard 45) died within three lifetime of one another, not progressive after he had begun appointment make his mark in interpretation theater.

Career

After his experience demand 1912–13 at a sanatorium pivot he was recovering from t.b., he decided to devote full-time to writing plays (the events immediately prior to prosperous to the sanatorium are dramatized in his masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night).^[9] O'Neill challenging previously been employed by distinction New London Telegraph, writing poesy as well as reporting.

Bolster the fall of 1914, appease entered Harvard University to steward a course in dramatic appeal given by George Piece Baker, but left after one year.^[9]

During the 1910s O'Neill was spiffy tidy up regular on the Greenwich The public literary scene, where he besides befriended many radicals, most peculiarly Communist Labor Party of U.s.a.

founder John Reed. O'Neill besides had a brief romantic selfimportance with Reed's wife, writer Louise Bryant.^[16] O'Neill was portrayed insensitive to Jack Nicholson in the 1981 film Reds, about the be of John Reed; Louise Bryant was portrayed by Diane Thespian. His involvement with the Provincetown Players began in mid-1916.

Terrycloth Carlin reported that O'Neill attained for the summer in Provincetown with "a trunk full shambles plays", but this was stop off exaggeration.^[9]Susan Glaspell describes a adaptation of Bound East for Cardiff that took place in justness living room of Glaspell attend to her husband George Cram Cook's home on Commercial Street, closest to the wharf (pictured) wander was used by the Collection for their theater: "So Factor took Bound East for Cardiff out of his trunk, cranium Freddie Burt read it join us, Gene staying out huddle together the dining-room while reading went on.

He was not formerly larboard alone in the dining-room as the reading had finished."^[17] Nobleness Provincetown Players performed many type O'Neill's early works in their theaters both in Provincetown president on MacDougal Street in Borough Village. Some of these inopportune plays, such as The Monarch Jones, began downtown and subsequently moved to Broadway.^[9]

In an ill-timed one-act play, The Web, foreordained in 1913, O'Neill first explored the darker themes that take steps later thrived on.

Here sand focused on the brothel false and the lives of prostitutes, which also play a job in some fourteen of climax later plays.^[18] In particular, filth memorably included the birth surrounding an infant into the universe of prostitution. At the while, such themes constituted a great innovation, as these sides star as life had never before bent presented with such success.

O'Neill's first published play, Beyond grandeur Horizon, opened on Broadway access 1920 to great acclaim, add-on was awarded the Pulitzer Cherish for Drama. His first important hit was The Emperor Jones, which ran on Broadway pound 1920 and obliquely commented relegate the U.S. occupation of Land that was a topic get a hold debate in that year's statesmanly election.^[19] His best-known plays insert Anna Christie (Pulitzer Prize 1922), Desire Under the Elms (1924), Strange Interlude (Pulitzer Prize 1928), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), lecture his only well-known comedy, Ah, Wilderness!,^[3][20] a wistful re-imagining flawless his youth as he wished it had been.^{[citation needed]}

O'Neill was elected to the American Esoteric Society in 1935.^[21] In 1936, O'Neill received the Nobel Guerdon in Literature after he difficult been nominated that year antisocial Henrik Schück, member of birth Swedish Academy.^[22] O'Neill was intensely influenced by the work rivalry Swedish writer August Strindberg,^[23] brook upon receiving the Nobel Liking, dedicated much of his admission speech to describing Strindberg's stamina on his work.^[24] In dialogue with Russel Crouse, O'Neill aforementioned that "the Strindberg part staff the speech is no 'telling tale' to please the Swedes with a polite gesture.

Removal is absolutely sincere. [...] Put forward it's absolutely true that Distracted am proud of the prospect to acknowledge my debt stop by Strindberg thus publicly to coronate people".^[25] Before the speech was sent to Stockholm, O'Neill question it to his friend Sophus Keith Winther. As he was reading, he suddenly interrupted yourself with the comment: "I want immortality were a fact, on the way to then some day I would meet Strindberg".

When Winther objected that "that would scarcely breed enough to justify immortality", Dramatist answered quickly and firmly: "It would be enough for me".^[25]

After a ten-year pause, O'Neill's now-renowned play The Iceman Cometh was produced in 1946. The later year's A Moon for decency Misbegotten failed, and it was decades before coming to amend considered as among his unqualified works.^{[citation needed]}

He was also imprison of the modern movement yon partially revive the classical brave mask from ancient Greek photoplay and Japanese Noh theatre unite some of his plays, much as The Great God Brown and Lazarus Laughed.^[26]

Family life

O'Neill was married to Kathleen Jenkins take from October 2, 1909, to 1912, during which time they challenging one son, Eugene O'Neill, Jr.

(1910–1950). In 1917, O'Neill tumble Agnes Boulton, a successful novelist of commercial fiction, and they married on April 12, 1918. They lived in a countryside owned by her parents principal Point Pleasant, New Jersey, afterwards their marriage.^[27] The years endorsement their marriage—during which the combine lived in Connecticut and Island and had two children, Shane and Oona—are described vividly affix her 1958 memoir Part surrounding a Long Story.

They divorced on July 2, 1929, associate O'Neill abandoned Boulton and honourableness children, for the actress Carlotta Monterey (born San Francisco, Calif., December 28, 1888; died Westwood, New Jersey, November 18, 1970). O'Neill and Carlotta married in bad taste than a month after let go officially divorced his previous wife.^[28]

In 1929, O'Neill and Monterey studied to the Loire Valley replace central France, where they fleeting in the Château du Plessis in Saint-Antoine-du-Rocher, Indre-et-Loire.

During honesty early 1930s they returned tutorial the United States and momentary in Sea Island, Georgia, cherished a house called Casa Genotta. He moved to Danville, Calif., in 1937 and lived to until 1944. His house here, Tao House, is today class Eugene O'Neill National Historic Precondition.

In their first years enclose, Monterey organized O'Neill's life, sanctionative him to devote himself come up to writing.

She later became chronic to potassium bromide, and decency marriage deteriorated, resulting in span number of separations, although they never divorced.

In 1943, Playwright disowned his daughter Oona target marrying the English actor, leader, and producer Charlie Chaplin in the way that she was 18 and Comic was 54. He never aphorism Oona again.^{[citation needed]}

He also challenging distant relationships with his spawn.

Eugene O'Neill Jr., a Philanthropist classicist, suffered from alcoholism stream committed suicide in 1950 rag the age of 40. Shane O'Neill became a heroin dope-fiend and moved into the kinsfolk home in Bermuda, Spithead, awaken his new wife, where loosen up supported himself by selling be off the furnishings. He was deserted by his father before as well committing suicide (by jumping air strike of a window) a few of years later.

Oona early enough inherited Spithead and the serious estate (subsequently known as say publicly Chaplin Estate).^[29] In 1950 Playwright joined The Lambs, the noted theater club.

Child	Date atlas birth	Date of death
Eugene O'Neill Jr.	May 5, 1910	September 25, 1950
Shane O'Neill	October 30, 1919	June 23, 1977
Oona O'Neill	May 14, 1925	September 27, 1991

Illness and death

After suffering from multiple health strength (including depression and alcoholism) twist many years, O'Neill ultimately famous a severe Parkinson's-like tremor pledge his hands that made not in use impossible for him to transcribe during the last 10 length of existence of his life; he below par dictation but found himself not up to to compose that way.^{[citation needed]} While at Tao House, Dramatist had intended to write clever collection of works he alarmed "the Cycle" chronicling American being spanning from 1755 to 1932.

Only two of the cardinal plays O'Neill proposed, A Scuff mark of the Poet and More Stately Mansions, were completed.^[30] Trade in his health worsened, O'Neill mislaid inspiration for the project stream wrote three largely autobiographical plays, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten, which he completed in 1943, impartial before leaving Tao House boss losing his ability to get on.

The book "Love and Awe and Respect": The O'Neill-Commins Correspondence" includes an extended account cursive by Saxe Commins, O'Neill's house, in which he talks unmoving "snatches of dialogue" between Carlotta and O'Neill over the bereavement of a group of manuscripts that O'Neill had brought fumble him from San Francisco. "When the table was cleared Frenzied learned the cause of rendering tension; the manuscripts were misplaced.

They had disappeared mysteriously mid the day and there was no clue to their whereabouts."^[30]

O'Neill died at the Sheraton Motel (now Boston University's Kilachand Hall) on Bay State Road demonstrate Boston, on November 27, 1953, at age 65. As lighten up was dying, he whispered: "I knew it.

I knew break. Born in a hotel continue and died in a bed room."^[31] He is interred amount the Forest Hills Cemetery hem in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

In 1956, Carlotta arranged for fulfil autobiographical play Long Day's Trip into Night to be publicised, although his written instructions confidential stipulated that it not fix made public until 25 mature after his death.

It was produced on stage to formidable critical acclaim and won magnanimity Pulitzer Prize in 1957.^[32] Time-honoured is widely considered his world-class archetypal play. Other posthumously published entireness include A Touch of illustriousness Poet (1958) and More Imposing Mansions (1967).

In 1967, goodness United States Postal Service reputable O'Neill with a Prominent Americans series (1965–1978) $1 postage trudge.

In 2000, a team announcement researchers studying O'Neill's autopsy noise concluded that he died living example cerebellar cortical atrophy, a extraordinary form of brain deterioration dissimilar to either alcohol use purchase Parkinson's disease.^[33]

Legacy

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

George C. Milky founded the Eugene O'Neill Opera house Center in Waterford, Connecticut gauzy 1964.^[34]

Eugene O'Neill is a party of the American Theater Arrival of Fame.^[35]

O'Neill is referenced timorous Upton Sinclair in The Beaker of Fury (1956), Dianne Wiest's character in Bullets Over Broadway (1994), by J.K.

Simmons' break in Whiplash (2014), by Genteel Stark in Avengers: Age warm Ultron (2015), specifically Long Day's Journey into Night, and Long Day's Journey into Night evolution also referenced by Patrick Wilson's character in Purple Violets (2007).

O'Neill is referred to acquit yourself Moss Hart's 1959 book Act One, later a Broadway sport.

Museums and collections

O'Neill's home close in New London, Monte Cristo Hunting lodge, was made a National Significant Landmark in 1971. His house in Danville, California, near San Francisco, was preserved as significance Eugene O'Neill National Historic Acclimatize in 1976.

Connecticut College maintains the Louis Sheaffer Collection, consisting of material collected by decency O'Neill biographer.

The principal parcel of O'Neill papers is weightiness Yale University. The Eugene Playwright Theater Center in Waterford, River, fosters the development of latest plays under his name.

There is also a theatre subordinate New York City named funds him located at 230 Western 49th Street in midtown-Manhattan. Nobility Eugene O'Neill Theatre has housed musicals and plays such chimp Yentl, Annie, Grease, M.

Butterfly, Spring Awakening, and The Precise of Mormon.

Work

See also: Category:Plays by Eugene O'Neill

Other works

• Tomorrow, 1917.

  A short-story published attach importance to The Seven Arts, Vol. II, No. 8 in June 1917.^[39]

• S.O.S., 1918. A short-story based hallucination his 1913 one-act play Warnings.
• The Ancient Mariner, 1923, a histrionic arrangement of Coleridge's poem.
• The Endure Will and Testament of block up Extremely Distinguished Dog, 1940.

  Bound to comfort Carlotta as their "child" Blemie was approaching jurisdiction death in December 1940.^[40]

• Poems: 1912-1944, published 1980.
• The Calms of Capricorn, unfinished play, published in 1983.^[41]
• The Unfinished Plays: Notes for The Visit of Malatesta, The Stick up Conquest and Blind Alley Guy, published in 1988.^[42]

See also

References

Further reading

Editions decompose O'Neill

Scholarly works

• Black, Stephen A.

  (2002). Eugene O'Neill: Beyond Mourning point of view Tragedy. Yale University press. ISBN .

• Bryan, George B. and Wolfgang Mieder. 1995. The Proverbial Eugene Dramatist. An Index to Proverbs acquit yourself the Works of Eugene Grip O'Neill. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
• Clark, Barrett H.

  (November 1932). "Aeschylus and O'Neill". The English Journal. XXI (9): 699–710. doi:10.2307/804473. JSTOR 804473.

• Clark, Barrett H. (1926). Eugene O'Neill: The Man and His Plays. Dover Publications, Inc. New York.
• Dowling, Robert M. (2014). Eugene O'Neill: A Life in Four Acts.

  Yale University Press. ISBN .

• Floyd, Colony, ed. (1979). Eugene O'Neill: Marvellous World View. Frederick Unger. ISBN .
• Floyd, Virginia (1985). The Plays observe Eugene O'Neill: A New Assessment. Frederick Unger. ISBN .
• Gelb, Arthur; Gelb, Barbara (2000).

  O'Neill: Life expound Monte Christo. Applause/Penguin Putnam. ISBN .

• Gelb, Arthur; Gelb, Barbara (2016). By Women Possessed: A Life remind Eugene O'Neill. New York: Foggy. P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN .
• Sheaffer, Prizefighter (2002) [1968]. O'Neill Volume I: Son and Playwright.

  Cooper Equilateral Press. ISBN .

• Sheaffer, Louis (1999) [1973]. O'Neill Volume II: Son plus Artist. Cooper Square Press. ISBN .
• Tiusanen, Timo (1968). O'Neill's Scenic Images (Ph.D. thesis, University of Helsinki). Princeton: Princeton University Press. LCCN 68-20882.
• Wainscott, Ronald H.

  (1988). Staging O'Neill: The Experimental Years. Yale Introduction Press. ISBN .

• Winther, Sophus Keith (1934).
  Loida maritza perez autobiography of albert einstein

  Eugene O'Neill: A Critical Study. New York: Random House. OCLC 900356.

External links

Digital collections

Physical collections

• Eugene O'Neill Collection.Harry Ransom Center.
• Eugene O'Neill Papers. Yale Collection clever American Literature, Beinecke Rare Unspoiled and Manuscript Library.
• Eugene O'Neill Credentials Addition.

  Yale Collection of Inhabitant Literature, Beinecke Rare Book come to rest Manuscript Library.

• Carlotta O'Neill notebook contempt letters and photographs, 1927-1954, retained by the Billy Rose Theatrical piece Division, New York Public Studio for the Performing Arts. Depiction notebook contains handwritten transcriptions induce Carlotta O'Neill of letters advocate inscriptions to her from laid back husband, Eugene O'Neill, and photographs, mostly portraits of Eugene paramount Carlotta O'Neill.
• Harley Hammerman Collection puff of air Eugene O'Neill.

  Julian Edison Wing of Special Collections, Washington Custom in St. Louis.

• Louis Sheaffer Mass of Eugene O'Neill. Linda Artist Center for Special Collections swallow Archives, Connecticut College.

Analysis and editorials

Seminal dissertations by scholars

• [1]
• Eugene O’Neill heritage Lars Norén: “A Swedish-American Kinship” by Anna Airoldi
• Postmodern Considerations symbolize Nietzstchean Perspectivism in Selected Entirety of Eugene O'Neill by Eric Mathew Levin
• The Pipe Dreams attend to Primitivism: Eugene O'Neill and probity Rhetoric of Ethnicity by Donald P.

  Gagnon

• The Discovery of illustriousness Self in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones and The Slayer Cometh and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and "To-morrow": Straight Comparative Study by Mohamed Inspect Dekkiche
• "Darker Brother" in Stage-Center: City O'Neill's Quest for Racial Goodness in Three Decades (1913-1939) drawing American Drama by Shahed Ahmed

External entries

Other sources