by Arthur Gelb
“If we were in the Tropics I would think it a poisonous snake!” she wrote in her diary. 5/30/30.
with other cast members, for a festive supper. WD, 5/31/30.
“New men get a chance and new ideas are tried out, and the box office does not play the leading part.” “O’Neill Plots a New Course for the Drama,” by S. J. Woolf, NYT Magazine, 10/4/31.
once declared, “become parts of my life.” “Playwright Finds His Inspiration . . .” by Olin Downes, Boston Sunday Post, 8/29/20.
calling him, in a letter to Sinclair Lewis, “the top of all living writers.” 11/25/36, Yale, SL.
no such praise was forthcoming. A/BG interviews with CM & LG.
“faith—loyalty—love—God!” CM diary, 6/7/30.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
had been swept into the sea. cable from Susan Glaspell in Provincetown.
diagnosed with “anemia, very low blood pressure, kidney and gall bladder upset.” WD, 1/9/31.
ordered a three-week hospital stay. CM diary, 1/13/31.
offerings of flowers and other gifts. CM miscellaneous diary entries.
her income nor O’Neill’s was seriously threatened. CM diary.
was, after all, “a well known international banker.” 9/15/30, Theater Scrapbooks of Carlotta Monterey.
the Canary Islands to recuperate. WD, 1/22/31.
“a desolate, ugly place.” CM diary, 2/28/31.
“sun child” as she called him, letter to LG, 3/23/31, Theater Scrapbooks of Carlotta Monterey.
going over it with him scene by scene. CM diary, 3/22/31.
“Gene discusses ‘baby’!!!?”—in her diary a year earlier. 2/7/30.
asking about “the baby.” CM diary.
“Between us we have four children already and find they are expensive and we are not such gluttons for punishment that we want to take on any more of these responsibilities—in bringing into the world fresh victims for the new poison gases which the lads are preparing for our children.” 2/4/31, “TTWWF.”
foundation of their new home in America. CM diary.
copy of the completed Electra script to the Theatre Guild. WD.
“To get enough of Clytemnestra into Christine, of Electra in Lavinia, of Orestes in Orin, etc. and yet keep them American primarily; to conjure a Greek fate out of the Mannons themselves (without calling in the aid of even a Puritan Old Testament God) that would convince a modern audience without religion or moral ethics; to prevent the surface melodrama of the play from overwhelming the real drama; to contrive murders that escape cops and courtroom scenes.” 4/7/31, As Ever, Gene.
“I must always be there to help, to understand, to comfort,—no matter what!” CM diary, 4/11/31.
Komroff wrote a reminiscence (never published) about that visit. article by Richard Eaton and Madeline Smith in The Eugene O’Neill Review, Vol. 26, 2004.
without social polish or pretense, and something of a Marxist. A/BG interviews with Komroff.
“I don’t feel comfortable with this type of man.” CM diary, 4/19/31.
“she knew how to write a graceful ‘thank you note,’ and how to keep sightseers and boring acquaintances away from Gene so that he had free mornings for his work.” article, Richard Eaton and Madeline Smith.
making him uncomfortable to be drinking alone. Ibid.
give the public “a chance to see how the other fellow lives . . . his sufferings, his handicaps . . . to see the sort of life which their brothers far down the social scale must face each day.” A/BG interview with Komroff, and “Eugene O’Neill—The Inner Man” by Carol Bird, Theater magazine, June 1924 (quote also referred to in Chapter 1).
“Collaborator, I love you!” Inscriptions, 4/23/31.
accepting Mourning Becomes Electra for production. WD, 4/24/31.
only Blemie with them to New York. CM, 4/28/31.
“(That is, never disappointed in it as a work of art, aspects of its teaching I no longer concede.)” letter to BDC, 6/22/27.
not in the heart, but through the right temple. facts gathered 5/20/31 by the Associated Press and a team of NYT reporters from police, hotel employees, and friends and relatives of RB, and published NYT, 5/21/31.
called Carlotta at once, hoping to cushion the shock. CM diary.
“She said she couldn’t understand this horrible thing—that Barton wasn’t in love with her.” A/BG interview with CVV.
the only reference made to the subject. A/BG interview with Bio De Casseres.
“After dinner I almost pass out—Gene is gentle and sweet.” CM diary, 5/20/31.
“I love you, my dear lost angel.” The Last Dandy Ralph Barton, by Bruce Kellner (University of Missouri Press, Columbia and London, 1991).
“They all promised,” Heidt recalled. A/BG interviews with Heidt.
would be “like walking into hell,” Carlotta predicted. CM diary, 5/20/31.
Chapman was selected by his peers to be that one. A/BG interviews with John Chapman, NY Daily News, and Sam Zolotow, NYT.
O’Neill thankfully agreed. A/BG interview with Joe Heidt.
no use waiting, because O’Neill had left. Ibid.
“They never did find out where O’Neill was staying.” Ibid.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“I wonder if he will live in it!” 6/25/31.
“It’s the place for ideas!” The Intimate Notebooks of George Jean Nathan.
“disappointed” in the choice he’d made. CM diary, 6/1/31.
O’Neill told Lillian Gish with a wistful smile after one of his son’s visits. A/BG interview with LG.
they could have the whole day to become reacquainted. CM diary.
she was evidently content to wait until Christmas for her mother to bring Cynthia from California for a visit. CM diary, 8/12/31.
a nonchalant “Au revoir to Shane.” 8/18/31.
unsuited to the role of his hard-bitten, ruthless Lavinia. WD, 8/20/31.
“But it was a tough job for me!” letter, 8/20/31, Yale, SL.
“Lavinia was not the ‘little flower’—the ‘tender virgin!’” CM diary, 8/20/31.
“It has a tremendous sort of abstract excitement for me.” unsourced clipping, NYT morgue.
needed no urging from O’Neill to wire Brooks Atkinson an invitation to Beacon Farm. CM diary, 8/21/31.
recognized O’Neill as a giant of the American theater. A/BG interviews with BA.
read the trilogy and was somewhat disappointed. Ibid.
would find the third better than the second. Ibid.
meeting in New York during which they could “argue a bit.” letter, 6/19/31, Lincoln Center, SL.
“The more of the inner workings and background of the writing of the trilogy I can set before you . . . the better for me in the sense of my getting more value out of your criticism, for or against.” 8/16/31, Lincoln Center, SL.
“That’s one of many reasons,” he explained, “why I’m always glad to have any critic (whose opinion I respect, and whose right to criticize the drama I admit) read my scripts before the openings.” Ibid.
“We were both enchanted,” he said, “when a Boston steamer, headed for New York, passed by.” A/BG interviews with BA.
sit beside her husband and take notes. CM diary, 8/30/31.
“It was wonderful.” A/BG interviews with CM.
even the faint pouches under his eyes to be visible. A/BG interviews with Ann and Ben Pinchot.
“Sammy should know better.” AG/BG interviews with CM.
“A.N. has ‘Odessa Vapours,’ (as Gene puts it!),” Carlotta once observed. CM diary, 10/21/31.
“I saw a different play from the one I thought I had written.” interview with S. J. Woolf, NYT Magazine, 9/15/46.
she “wouldn’t go through it again for anything in the world.” unsourced cl
ipping, NYT morgue.
“Farewell (for me), to the Mannons!” WD, 10/25/321.
“Sunk—worn out—depressed,” he wrote in his Work Diary. 10/28/31.
the play from which he had derived “the most personal satisfaction.” Ibid.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Three skins for the Trilogy.” CM diary, 11/6/31.
“always got me the classiest rowboat to be had, and we sported the first Packard car in our section of Connecticut.” letter to BA, 8/16/31, Lincoln Center, SL.
“Of course I do!” CM diary, 11/26/31.
to be their “home until the end!” CM diary, 4/25/32.
protagonist-self as tethered to “the rational world of fact—but always fighting against his deeply religious pull.” O’Neill’s notes, Beinecke.
as represented by two separately acted selves. letter to KM, 6/14/29, “TTWWF.”
who, in his search for truth, “is forced back to his old God and thereby regains his lost soul.” letter, EO to KM, 10/16/33, Yale, SL, & letter, EO to Leon Mirlas, 12/19/34, private, SL.
O’Neill himself ultimately acknowledged “it wasn’t any good.” as quoted in Total Recall (Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1960).
“It is an awful job—but worth it, if you know what you want & get it!” CM diary, 11/28/31.
O’Neill ordered a $2,500 motorboat. WD, 1/11 & 1/12/32.
she “must keep Cyn here for at least six months no matter what!” CM diary, 1/5/32.
a family luncheon, to which O’Neill lent his presence. WD, 1/6, 1/7, & 1/8/32, & CM diary, 1/7/32.
Cynthia’s new boarding school in Washington, Connecticut. WD.
“Clean her up—give her tea and send them home.” CM diary, 2/6/32.
he was proud to be her stepfather. letter, 5/16/32, Yale, SL.
holding him through the night, she succeeded in calming him. CM diary, 3/15/32.
“I am trying to make it a perfect house.” CM diary, 4/25/32.
read his first draft of Without Endings of Days to Carlotta. WD, 5/12/32.
“I miss her like hell!” 5/22/32, “Love and Admiration and Respect.”
“When the lease is over,” she complained, “it will mean about $10,000 down the drain!” CM diary, 9/2/32.
“Mother, you are my lost way refound, my end and my beginning, the hand I reach out for in my lonely night, from my ghost-haunted inner dark, and on your soft breasts there is a peace for me that is beyond death!” 5/25/32, Yale, SL.
went to her husband’s bedroom and “slept in Gene’s arms.” CM diary, 5/29 & 5/30/32.
on the walls hung old icons and the masks from The Great God Brown. A/BG interview with Ann Pinchot, & CM diary, 10/5/32.
he had “gone stale on work—thrown off stride by moving and so many distractions.” WD, 6/29/32.
found the house “quiet and exquisitely clean, with special boxes and bags to keep the mildew out of things and with little colored maids polishing like Dutchmen.” IC, Past Imperfect.
so damp “that special bronze had to be used for all the window hardware, for ordinary metal would rust away.” A/BG interview with LL, & The Magic Curtain.
adding that Fania, “who hated snakes even more than I did, trod very gingerly around the countryside after this, and I was never quite at ease either.” Ibid.
told O’Neill he had forgotten to duck. A/BG interview with Dempsey.
he “secretly cherished the thought that Eugene O’Neill is greater than even Shakespeare.” NYT, 4/30/28.
“Give it to her!” recorded interview with Herbert Freeman, Tao House Library, Danville, California.
“But she’s just a titless wonder.” Ibid.
“She was a good cook . . . but [after that] she didn’t like me no more.” Ibid.
“We went!” CM diary, 8/13/32.
he gave in: “no flow—sunk!” WD.
surely “the last play they would ever suspect me of writing.” 1/14/33, Yale, SL.
That past, he said, “possessed a lot which we badly need today to steady us.” letter, 5/13/33, Yale, SL.
he noted, “revisit Pequot Ave. old time haunts.” WD.
“I don’t want to look at it.” CM interview with SP, BA, & A/BG at NYT, 10/2/56.
anything from a new pet canary to a brilliant sunrise, or a love letter. CM diary.
had known in the 1920s, she added, “could not have written this!” CM diary, 9/29/32.
“Great affection for this one,” he had noted. WD, 9/29/32.
worried that the play was causing “torment and battle with himself.” CM diary.
Poor darling, he must always be tormented!” CM diary.
“I hope he does not change it.” CM diary, 11/6/32.
“He sounds more honest than Roosevelt—not so much the slick politician,” she remarked to her diary. 10/22/32.
“I doubt if the substitution of Democratic crooks and windbags for the Republican brand will put any chicken in anyone’s pot.” 11/11/32, Yale, SL.
“Roosevelt, whatever mistakes he may make, is a man with guts who is honestly facing the facts and acting upon them—no flabby, spineless Hoover!” he wrote to his son. 5/13/33, Yale, SL.
“Anything with Yeats, Shaw, A.E. [George William Russell], O’Casey, Flaherty, Robinson in it is good enough for me.” Ibid.
“but once in a hundred years it comes damn near it—unless one is blind.” CM diary, 11/12/32.
seemed to him “a horrid mess.” 11/28/32, As Ever, Gene.
what he described as a “lovely Christmas with Carlotta.” WD.
O’Neill was fretting over “something fundamentally wrong” Ibid.
decided to abandon it “until, if ever, the right solution of problem dawns—no good thinking any more—pass buck to unconscious—a little inspiration called for here.” Ibid.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
(in early April 1933, he had renamed it An End of Days.”) WD 4/4/33.
feared another crack-up. CM diary, 4/6/33.
but also as the secular meaning of “without goal.” Travis Bogard, an O’Neill scholar, expounds on this wordplay in his Contour in Time (Oxford University Press, New York, 1972).
“I mean the mystic faith of Catholicism whose symbols seem to me to approach closer than any other symbols to the apprehension of a hidden spiritual significance in human life.” 5/1/34, Tao House Collection.
all of O’Neill’s plays combined had thus far sold 700,000 copies. NY Daily News series, 1/24 to 1/30/32.
any play following his popular Electra was “in a bad spot, no matter how good” it was. letter, 8/8/33, Yale, SL.
seriously considering “the advisability of not producing either of the plays.” CM diary.
before confronting audiences with his dark (and often baffling) religious meditation. 8/7/33, Yale, SL.
and strongly influenced by New York. 8/19/33, Texas, SL.
any resemblance between his adolescent protagonist and himself, for they were “exact” opposites. letter, Mr. Maxwell, 5/8/45/ Yale, SL.
O’Neill substituted “Ah” for “Oh” because the former sounded more nostalgic. letter, 12/15/33 to AMcG, who gave copy to A/BG.
All his characters were, he said, “general types true for any large-small town.” Ibid.
The play, he later said, “was a sort of wishing out loud.” PM, Croswell Bowen, 11/3/46.
“The truth,” he insisted on more than one occasion, “is that I had no youth.” Hamilton Basso, Profiles, Part II, The New Yorker.
“With deep gratitude and appreciation for all your grand portrayal of Nat Miller has meant to this play—and with the real friendship of one (I hope) regular guy for another!” Notes given to A/BG by RC.
“Perhaps it is because I am growing old,” he said, “that I begin to look back fondly on my youthful days
in a part of the country that was my one real home in those times.” New York Herald Tribune, 9/9/33.
no need for him to “watch a sticky audience react!” A/BG interview with RC.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought the film rights for $75,000. In the film version released by MGM in 1935, Lionel Barrymore was cast as Nat Miller and Essie Miller’s wayward bachelor brother Sid was played by Wallace Beery.
the most agreeable interview he’d ever conducted. A/BG interview with BA.
taken O’Neill to see it a few days after the opening of Ah, Wilderness! Ibid.
“There sure must have been an artist soul lost to the world in the New Orleans honkey-tonk—or bordello—she came from.” 10/18/37, Yale, SL.
O’Neill danced her “gaily up and down the long hall of Casa Genotta with a ‘bunny hug’—& enjoys himself no end!” CM diary, 10/17/33.
“I could have photographed Gene all day if I’d wanted to,” said Van Vechten. A/BG interview with CVV.
“He’d drop a nickel in the slot and listen blissfully to the damn thing tinkle.” A/BG interview with Robert Sisk.
“They were no Ezio Pinzas,” she said, “but it was amusing to listen to them.” A/BG interview with LG.
“He couldn’t make up his mind whether or not to have the man go back to the Church.” A/BG interviews with CM.
“He will either reach a big ‘Yes’—or go to a much firmer ‘NO’!” CM diary, 10/25/33.
“It was the Jesuits,” said Carlotta, “who finally persuaded him to end the play with the protagonist going back to the Church.” A/BG interview with CM.
But he must not be forced. notes dated Boston, 1/1/34 copied by A/BG with PM’s permission.
“He wanted to go that way and find a happiness which apparently he hadn’t got and which obviously this perfect marriage doesn’t seem to bring him.” Ibid.
“Gene wrote Days Without End because he’d swallowed this guff about love after death.” A/BG interview with LL.
“And ours has, hasn’t it, Darling One!” Inscriptions.
“I don’t say she’s divorced, in so many words—and I won’t say the husband died; let them draw their own conclusions.” A/BG interview with RC, reading from his diary notes.