Meet...playwright Eugene O'Neill

What should you know about Eugene O'Neill?

Probably the greatest American playwright of all time, Eugene O'Neill won four Pulitzer Prizes, something no other playwright has done, and was the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature. Born in 1888 in New York City hotel, O'Neill grew up in a theater family. His father, James O'Neill, was a Shakespearean actor who spent much of his life touring the country in a melodrama called The Count of Monte Cristo so hotels and theaters were home to the younger O'Neill.

As an adult, O'Neill attended Princeton University but was suspended at the end of his freshman year. He then began to travel, taking what jobs he could find…stage manager, mule tender on a cattle steamer, sailor and others. These jobs and the people he met would become fodder for his work. O'Neill began writing as he recovered from tuberculosis in 1912-1913. He wrote over a dozen one-acts and full-length plays and some poetry during his convalescence. In 1916 his first play was produced in Provincetown, MA. His work was viewed as something the American theater had never seen before.

How many honors did he receive?



Too many to recount here, but in 1920, his first full-length play about two vastly different brothers, Beyond the Horizon, was produced on Broadway, winning his first Pulitzer Prize. Anna Christie, his first box office success about a young woman looking for love, received the prize two years later. In 1928, the nine-act drama Strange Interlude won the prize. The final Pulitzer Prize came posthumously in 1957 for Long Day's Journey into Night, a thinly veiled autobiography about a troubled family.

In 1936, O'Neill was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." In 1964 the Eugene O' Neill Theater Center was founded in Waterford, CT. It hosts a number of programs for playwrights and performers. And in 1967, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative $1 stamp of O'Neill, making him one of only six playwrights to be so honored.

How many plays did O'Neill write?


While nearly three dozen of his plays had been produced, it is believed he wrote close to 60, including an ambitious series of a planned 11 plays about one family in America. Over his career he wrote a wide scope of plays from historical (Marco Millions) to romantic comedy (Ah, Wilderness!) to autobiographical (Long Day's Journey into Night) and what some may call experimental (Strange Interlude and The Great God Brown).

His health eventually robbed him of his ability to put the words on the paper, and before his death, O'Neill destroyed notes and drafts of his unfinished plays. In 1953, his life ended as it had begun: in a hotel, although this time in Boston. He was survived by his third wife Carlotta and three children from his earlier marriages.

Many of his plays are available as either stand-alone books or as collections. Several had been made into movies, which are now available on VHS or DVD. I found copies of the books and movies online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Alibris. In addition, theater companies around the world still produce his plays, which is probably the truest way to experience his work.


Sources: Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site, TheatreHistory.com, Moonstruck Drama Bookstore, The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center