1888-1953
Playwright

The Greatest American Dramatist.

American drama is divisible into two periods: before and after Eugene O'Neill. The son of James O'Neill, a popular actor, Eugene O'Neill was born in a hotel at the corner of Broadway and 43rd Street and grew up in the theater. Rejecting the crowdpleasing melodrama form, O'Neill enlarged the scope, material, and technique of American drama while setting high aspirations for himself and writing masterpieces that included The Emperor Jones (1920), Anna Christie (1921), Desire Under the Elms (1924), Strange Interlude (1928), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), The Iceman Cometh (1946), A Moon for the Misbegotten (1947), and Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956).

Apprenticeship.

O'Neill was dismissed from Princeton during his freshman year and spent his young manhood as a sailor, alcoholic, and beachcomber. The destructive love and guilt of his family inspired O'Neill's later family dramas: the father believed he had wasted his talent in moneymaking roles...