About Me
I was among the leading dramatists of the America theater. Four of my plays were honored with the Pulitzer Prize. My main concern was with the anguish and pain experienced by sensitive (easily hurt or damaged) people.I was the youngest of the three children of James O'Neill, an outstanding romantic actor, and Ella Quinlan O'Neill. Eugene had two brothers, James, Jr. (born 1878), and Edmund (born 1883). Edmund's death at a young age brought deep feelings of guilt into the family. I spent my first seven years on tour with my parents. Although I received a lot of exposure to the theater, I hated living in hotel rooms, and the constant traveling drove my mother to become addicted to drugs.From the age of seven to fourteen, I was educated at Catholic schools. When I rebelled against any further Catholic education, my parents sent him to Betts Academy in Connecticut. I also began to spend time with my brother, James, a heavy drinker, who "made sin easy for me." My formal education ended in 1907 with an unfinished year at Princeton University in New Jersey. By this time my three main interests were books, alcohol, and women.In 1909 I married Kathleen Jenkins before leaving for Honduras to mine for gold. A month after my return in April 1910, my son Eugene O'Neill, Jr., was born. I left later that year to work at sea. I also did odd jobs in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Back in New York in 1911, I spent several weeks drinking in bars before shipping out again to England. Almost half of my published plays show my interest in the sea. In 1912 my marriage broke up, I tried to kill myself, and I developed tuberculosis. By the time I was released from the hospital in June 1913, I had decided to become a dramatist.I began to write constantly. With my father's aid, five of my one-act plays were published in 1914. I then joined George Pierce Baker's playwriting class at Harvard University in Massachusetts. I planned to return to Harvard in the fall of 1915 but ended up instead at the "Hell Hole," a hotel and bar in New York City, where I drank heavily and produced nothing. I next joined the Provincetown Players in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, whose productions of my plays about the sea, including Bound East for Cardiff, which made me well known by 1918. Also in 1918 I married Agnes Boulton. We had a son, Shane, and a daughter, Oona.In my early writing I concentrated heavily on the one-act form. My hard work led to great success with the production of his full-length Beyond the Horizon (1920), for which I won his first Pulitzer Prize. The play is similar to the one-act form in its structure, but by adding a poetic and well-spoken character, I was able to reach high dramatic moments.My parents and brother all died within a four-year span during the 1920s. My marriage was also troubled, as I had fallen in love with Carlotta Monterey. I divorced Agnes Boulton in 1929 and soon married Carlotta. Even with these pressures, I remained incredibly productive. In the fifteen years following the appearance of Beyond the Horizon, I wrote twenty-one plays, some brilliant successes (including Anna Christie and Strange Interlude, both Pulitzer Prize winners, as well as Desire Under the Elms, and Mourning Becomes Electra) and others total failures.Carlotta Monterey brought a sense of order to my life. My health worsened rapidly from 1937 on, but her care helped me to remain productive. I had poor relationships with my children: Eugene Jr., who killed himself in 1950; Shane, who became addicted to drugs; and Oona, who was ignored by me after her marriage to actor Charlie Chaplin (1889 to 1977). I even left Shane and Oona out of my will. When I knew that death was near, I tore up six of my unfinished plays rather than have someone else rewrite them. I died on November 27, 1953.With the exception of The Iceman Cometh (1946), all of my later works were produced after my death.If you're interested in any of my works, do try "The Iceman Cometh" and "Long Day's Journey into Night", among others
