Historical Figure
Eugene O'Neill
1888–1953
American playwright (1888–1953)
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Biography
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill Sr. was an American playwright. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier associated with Chekhov, Ibsen, and Strindberg. The tragedy Long Day's Journey into Night is often included on lists of the finest American plays in the 20th century, alongside Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. He was awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature. O'Neill is also the only playwright to win four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama.
Timeline
The story of Eugene O'Neill, told in moments.
Attempted suicide. Then contracted tuberculosis. Spent six months in a sanatorium. Started reading Strindberg and Ibsen. Decided to become a playwright.
Won his first Pulitzer Prize for Beyond the Horizon. Three more Pulitzers followed. He remains the only American playwright to win four.
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His acceptance speech from his hospital bed. Too sick to travel to Stockholm. He was only the second American to receive the prize.
Finished Long Day's Journey into Night, his most autobiographical work. A brutal portrait of his own family. He sealed it with instructions not to publish it until 25 years after his death. His wife released it in 1956.
Died in a Boston hotel room at 65. A tremor in his hands had made writing impossible for years. His last words, reportedly: "Born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room."
In Their Own Words (20)
If a person is to get the meaning of life he must learn to like the facts about himself — ugly as they may seem to his sentimental vanity — before he can learn the truth behind the facts. And the truth is never ugly.
New York Herald Tribune (9 September 1956), 1956
I hate doctors! They'll do anything — anything to keep you coming to them. They'll sell their souls! What's worse, they'll sell yours, and you never know it till one day you find yourself in hell!
Act 2, Scene 1, p. 76, 1955
How thick the fog is. I can't see the road. All the people in the world could pass by and I would never know. I wish it was always that way. It's getting dark already. It will soon be night, thank goodness.
Act 3, p. 104, 1955
Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time
p. 179, 1955
It wasn't the fog I minded, Cathleen. I really love fog. It hides you from the world and the world from you. You feel that everything has changed, and nothing is what it seemed to be. No one can find or touch you any more. Its the foghorn I hate. It won't let you alone. It keeps reminding you, and warning you, and calling you back.
Act 3, p. 100, 1955
Artifacts (15)
$1 Eugene O'Neill plate proof
Bureau of Engraving and Printing
happy to take my foot off the gas for a bit
d far fewer copies than his previous albums, which Cook credited to its more obscure musical style. Cook said he was "happy to take my foot off the gas for a bit" and receive less tabloid attention....
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