The Iceman Cometh: 'Give the poor feller a drink and keep him quiet''

Eugene Gladstone O’Neill was born on the 16th October, 1888, in the Barrett hotel which would later become part of Times Square. During the painful childbirth his mother was administered morphine and subsequently became addicted to it for several years.

In his youth O’Neill was sent away to the Catholic boarding school St. Aloysius Academy for Boys in the Riverdale area of the Bronx. Here he found solace in books from the realities of both the tough schooling and distant parents.

Although an unexceptional student he went on to study at Princeton University, though only for a year. Leaving without qualifications, O’Neill went to sea for several years. Here he found himself turning frequently to alcohol to cope with the conditions at sea which led to alcoholism, and, in turn, depression. He did though develop a deep love for the sea and its people despite everything and it became a major theme throughout his writing career.

O’Neill married for the first time in 1909. However, it only lasted 3 years and in 1912-13 he spent time recovering from tuberculosis at a sanatorium. After a long period of recuperation, he decided to enrol at Harvard University, but again left after only a year.

In 1914 O’Neill’s first play, the one-act ‘Bound East For Cardiff’, was performed at a small theatre in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was obvious to everyone that O’Neill was prodigiously talented and several of his plays would now progress from small theatres to the fabled Broadway.

By 1920, and on his second marriage, ‘Beyond The Horizon’ reached Broadway and won him a coveted Pulitzer Prize. His other play that year? ‘The Emperor Jones’ was a huge commercial success.

In 1922 his Mother passed and naturally somewhat dulled the sensation of a second Pulitzer Prize, this time for his play ‘Anna Christie’.

Incredibly his ideas and pen continued to generate hit plays and in 1928 he received his third Pulitzer Prize, for the play ‘Strange Interlude’.

O’Neill abandoned his second wife and family in 1929 in favor of an actress from San Francisco. Shortly after they married and moved to the Loire Valley in France that same year.

On the 26th October 1931, ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’ debuted at the Guild Theatre on Broadway. It retold the ‘Oresteia’ by Aeschylus. Shortly thereafter he began a lengthy period of literary inactivity.

In 1936 O’Neill was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature and he now moved to California. By the 1940’s his own health was being undermined with a Parkinson’s-like trembling in his hands which rendered writing very difficult. Disenchanted he rushed to complete three more, largely autobiographical, plays, ‘The Iceman Cometh’ (1939), ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ (1941) and ‘A Moon for the Misbegotten’ (1943). It was a momentous period for his writing as he pushed himself to complete these great works before his hands would fail.

On the 27th November 1953 O’Neill, now 65, was lying in bed in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel in Boston. He knew he was dying, “I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room.”

Three years after his death in defiance of Eugene’s instructions that it be allowed to wait 25 years ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ was staged. The play won O’Neill a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1957, it was his fourth.

© 2024 Stage Door (Ebook): 9781836823711

Release date

Ebook: 1 October 2024