Here is another DVD I like, also from PBS (in their American Experience series): the documentary about Nobel-Prize winner and Pulitzer-Prize winner American playwright Eugene O'Neill, who died 62 years ago today in Boston. What is most remarkable about O'Neill is that he won three of his four Pulitzer Prizes (the fourth one was posthumous) and his Nobel Prize before writing the plays that have ensured his legacy and continued presence today in the Pantheon of best twentieth-century playwrights, up there with Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.
O'Neill had a complicated family that he depicts with harrowing precision in his best play A Long Day's Journey Into Night, which he didn't even want produced after his death and which led to his fourth Pulitzer Prize after his third wife and executrix Carlotta disobeyed him. One can argue that most creative types who successfully contribute to the world feel like outsiders in some way but O'Neill brings it up a notch. While his family wasn't abusive, it was clearly dysfunctional: one elder brother died as a baby when the oldest boy went into his room when he was sick with the measles, to the mother's never-ending grief (and her overt belief the oldest boy had done it on purpose, pushing the boy into alcoholism and a failed life), his father's regret that he could have been a great Shakespearean actor if he hadn't stumbled upon the "cash cow" of The Count of Monte-Cristo, a perennial audience favorite that kept him stuck in a money-making acting job that he came to despise, his mother's addiction to morphine after Eugene's birth and the family's inability to deal with it, including her own inability at taking responsibility for it.
In the play, the mother (Mary Tyrone) clearly loves her youngest child, now a young man she refuses to admit has been stricken with tuberculosis while the father, a cheapskates, plans to send him to a cheap sanatorium, to the older brother's outrage. In terms of dysfunction this reminds me very much of my own family although the story line isn't quite the same and the fact that I feel right at home with the Tyrones is probably the main reason why I am so looking forward to seeing the revival of the play with Jessica Lange in the role of the mother this spring at the American Airlines Theater thanks to Roundabout. You can also watch a taped performance of a remarkable, award-winning production at the Apollo Theater in London in 2012 thanks to Digital Theatre (see my post here).
Back to O'Neill. He clearly had his own demons (who wouldn't after being raised in a family like that - he even attempted suicide in 1912 at the boarding house and saloon that would later provide the backdrop for The Iceman Cometh) and at times displayed less-than-honorable behavior, for instance when he abandoned his wife and children and ran off with Carlotta to Europe. (For another example of less-than-savory genius, check out my post on Jerome Robbins, although O'Neill strikes a more sympathetic figure than Robbins, perhaps because of what he endured as a child and also because he could - and did - lose himself in the depths of writing thanks to Carlotta busy creating a home for him. Robbins could be very mean with dancers. But his job as a choreographer was very different from O'Neill's in the amount of interactions it involved with people charged with bringing his vision to reality. O'Neill lived in the realm of words instead.
In the end one can only be glad that he found someone like Carlotta to allow him to create his masterpieces and give him a bit of peace. It is a pity he didn't get to see what amazing impact his best-known play had on theatergoers at the premiere. You can read Brooks Atkinson's review at that 1956 premiere in the New York Times here.
I wish there was a 2-min trailer I could embed but it seems that YouTube mostly has pirated versions of the documentary posted by people who think it is ok to deprive a public institution from much-needed revenue. If you are interested in the movie, please buy the DVD, for instance on Amazon.com. The glimpse into O'Neill's pains, trials and ultimate professional triumph brings an important behind-the-scenes look into what it took for him to become a master.
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