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Eugene O'Neill

Eugene O'Neill
ONeill-Eugene-LOC.jpg
Portrait of O'Neill by Alice Boughton
Born Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
(1888-10-16)October 16, 1888
New York City, New York, U.S.
Died November 27, 1953(1953-11-27) (aged 65)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation Playwright
Nationality American
Notable awards Nobel Prize in Literature (1936)
Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1920, 1922, 1928, 1957)
Spouse Kathleen Jenkins
(m. 1909–12)

Agnes Boulton
(m. 1918; div. 1929)

Carlotta Monterey
(m. 1929)
Children 3, including Eugene O'Neill, Jr. and Oona O'Neill

Signature

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. The drama Long Day's Journey into Night is often numbered on the short list 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.

O'Neill's plays were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society. They struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. Of his very few comedies, only one is well-known (Ah, Wilderness!). Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.

O'Neill was born in a hotel, the Barrett House, at Broadway and 43rd Street, on what was then Longacre Square (now Times Square). A commemorative plaque was first dedicated there in 1957. The site is now occupied by 1500 Broadway, which houses offices, retail, and ABC Studios.

He was the son of Irish immigrant actor James O'Neill and Mary Ellen Quinlan, who was also of Irish descent. Because his father was often on tour with a theatrical company, accompanied by Eugene's mother, O'Neill was sent to St. Aloysius Academy for Boys, a Catholic boarding school in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where he found his only solace in books. His father suffered from alcoholism; his mother from an addiction to morphine, prescribed to relieve the pains of the difficult birth of her third son, Eugene.


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