by Arthur Gelb
asked if he could forward it to him in Marblehead. A/BG interview with FM.
asking that it be sent to him. 11/20/50, Yale, SL.
had “caused more than normal distress in the father, whose own mother had been addicted to drugs and whose tragedy had inspired what many believe to be O’Neill’s greatest drama, Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” NYT, 12/7/77.
CHAPTER FIFTY
would instinctively try to save himself. A/BG interview with LL.
listening to the pounding surf, especially during stormy weather. A/BG interview with Snow.
violently allergic and—although she doesn’t realize it—it is having a toxic effect. copy of CM’s medical history at McLean, where she was confined from 2/7 to 3/29/51, in FM files.
unable to write a check legibly. Ibid.
a woman “lacking insight and judgment.” Ibid.
legendary and often-retold events of O’Neill’s life. first described in O’Neill.
dressed only in slacks and a wool shirt. A/BG interview with FM.
he lies in the snow. Ibid.
“I thought it was very strange he should arrive, when neither of us had telephoned for him to come.” interview with CM, tape-recorded by AG, 11/26/61.
about 10:00 p.m. when he turns his car into their driveway. A/BG interview with FM.
“The doctor took O’Neill’s arms and shoulders, and I took his legs very carefully, and we carried him inside.” interview with CM, tape-recorded by AG, 11/26/61.
“I helped the doctor put him into the ambulance, and off he went to the hospital.” Ibid.
look of despair that distorted O’Neill’s ashen face. A/BG interview with FM.
an eye on the forlorn figure standing in the street. A/BG interview with Snow.
Snow telephones Dr. Mayo. Ibid.
“Then I went out like a light.” interview with CM, tape-recorded by AG, 11/26/61.
staff psychiatrist to examine her early the following morning. Police and Salem Hospital records indicate it was 9:45 p.m. Tuesday, February 6, when CM was admitted to the hospital.
barely coherent and “sounded drunk.” A/BG interview with Armina Marshall Langner.
makes plans to visit Carlotta. Ibid.
to be “in need of immediate care and treatment.” Salem Hospital records.
Carlotta is taken away. A/BG interview with FM.
as she was wheeled into McLean. interview with CM, tape-recorded by AG, 11/26/61.
“You shouldn’t be here, you should never have been sent here.” Ibid.
“With all my love, [signed in a hand indisputably his own] Gene.” letter dated 2/6/51.
when he has occasional drug-induced hallucinations. A/BG interviews with Bird.
“He never mentioned his daughter directly,” says Bird, “but he gave the impression, in his ramblings, that his entire family had gone wrong.” Ibid.
thirty-five dollars with which to “buy an Easter bonnet.” Ibid.
“He just let anyone do what they wanted with him.” Ibid.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, you’re putting on an act.” A/BG interview with FM.
confined to a mental hospital or be placed under the care of a legal guardian. letter, 3/19/51, in FM’s files.
one of them remained in the room while Moore interviewed her. interview with CM, tape-recorded by AG, 11/26/61.
“I couldn’t imagine how a stranger dare tell me I must give up my husband.” CM diary, 3/22/51.
“I walked the floor all night,” she says. Ibid.
appears “perfectly aware of what he is doing.” A/BG interview with Farley.
prognosis, as described in the “Discharge Summary,” signed by William H. Horwitz, MD, is “good.” copy of Discharge Summary, dated 3/29/51, in FM files.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
“The clearing of my name begins.” CM diary, 3/29/51.
April 23—is the same as that of O’Neill’s lawsuit. records, Probate Court of County Essex Probate Court, in Salem.
he might have a hard time eliciting sympathy. A/BG interview with LL.
“I felt the transfer would be in his best interests.” Ibid.
“But, even on the day he was supposed to leave, I thought he might change his mind.” A/BG interview with Clare Bird.
O’Neill sinks into fretful sleep. Ibid.
he weighs only ninety pounds. A/BG interview with Fisk.
early in his hospital stay. A/BG interview with RC.
“I stayed a long time.” KA interviewed on film for Tao House archives.
O’Neill “could no longer arouse her romantic interest in him, so he had to do something else to get some sort of a passionate response.” Time magazine archives.
“Thank God, McLean’s is of the honest brand—(there are few these days).” letter, Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Tao House Library.
been warned “since ’45” (during the production of The Iceman Cometh) to be on her guard. Ibid.
come to Marblehead and to bring some cash. A/BG interview with Sze.
“She talked about how Gene always had to dramatize everything; she said, ‘He’ll be back, he’ll come crawling to me on his knees.’” Ibid.
withdrawn his petition for guardianship over her. document filed in Essex County Probate Court, 4/23/51.
withdraws her countersuit for separate maintenance. Ibid.
“Wicked, wicked man—always choosing unscrupulous persons as your friends and advisers!” CM diary.
“‘Back’ to what?” Ibid.
“I know that I’m going to die.” A/BG interview with Winfield Aronberg.
the O’Neills will patch up their differences. A/BG interviews with Charles O’Brien Kennedy & GJN.
of course, Carlotta must take him back. A/BG interview with Armina Marshall.
“I felt very strongly that he was not going back to her.” A/BG interview with KM.
overwrought (and sometimes egregiously misinformed) in his later published narrative of their reunion. “Love and Admiration and Respect.”
“all too manifest” that Carlotta is “regaining control.” Ibid.
“Together they might help each other; apart there could only be even greater torture and then dissolution.” Ibid.
she improvises answers as best she can. A/BG interview with SW.
the return to Carlotta “was never weighed against any other possibility.” Ibid.
last days alone in an apartment with a male nurse. Ibid.
his imminent visit with O’Neill in New York. CM diary.
propels her on a fresh rant of fury and resentment. Ibid.
reported this to O’Neill, who (Kozol tells Carlotta) believed it. A/BG interview with Dr. Harry L. Kozol.
she notes that she feels better. CM diary.
“Gene very gay and reports he and Carlotta will live in a hotel opposite Dr. Kozol’s office which is good.” A/BG interview with Crouse.
dresses altered to accommodate her newer, thirty-pounds-lighter figure. CM diary, 5/15/51.
asks God for “the strength to nurse Gene & make him feel secure.” Ibid.
he pronounces, “she is trapped by her own nature and from that there is no escape.” Ibid.
“He only seems interested in being with her again.” Ibid.
“was only waiting to get a little stronger.” A/BG interview with Joe Heidt.
“The next day, he left for Carlotta, instead.” A/BG interview with BC.
“He said he always made the wrong decision when it came to money.” A/BG interview with BA.
now Lady Chaplin, set about drinking herself to death.A/BG interviews with Carol Marcus, Phyllis Newman, & others.
Dorothy left the room, weeping. A/BG interview with Dorothy Commins.
rather than live wit
h him and Dorothy. Commins was wounded to such a degree that, sometime later, he confided his distress to Albert Einstein, a fellow resident at Princeton and a close friend. Einstein was very much interested in O’Neill’s relationship with Carlotta. He tried to comfort Commins, but the paradoxes and complexities of the black Irishman’s temperament were out of Einstein’s sphere and he couldn’t give Commins a satisfactory answer.
doesn’t want a dramatic farewell scene; he has already played too many. A/BG interview with SWL.
Patterson leaves the cramped roomette with a cheery wave. A/BG interview with Patterson.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
“I can’t believe Gene has finally come home.” CM diary.
“And that was that.” A/BG interview with CM.
“To Carlotta, my beloved wife, whose love I could not possibly live without, in a spirit of the humblest gratitude for her love which has forgiven my recent shameful conduct toward her.” Inscriptions, 6/3/51.
nor any data “as formerly,” about his income for tax returns. 5/26/51, Columbia University Library.
“Farewell to crooks!” CM diary, 6/26/51.
he and O’Neill discuss the play. CM diary, 8/21/51.
is not, as they first feared, cancerous. CM diary, 6/26/51.
“Find Gene taking Elixir—again—it is hopeless!” CM diary.
again sneaking Elixir (and childishly watering down the medicine bottle’s contents). CM diary, 7/29/51.
“He had one or two falls getting out of bed, and joked about them to me.” A/BG interview with Dr. W. Richard Ohler.
“He was reading it for the second time—when he died.” Letter, CM to Donald Gallup, 7/24/54, What Mad Pursuits!
all of which aggravate his tremor. A/BG interviews with Dr. Ohler, & CM diary.
“I have loved you for 23 years now, Darling, and now that I am old and can work no more, I love you more than ever!” Inscriptions.
promise never again to have him hospitalized. CM diary.
“My income was getting low, Gene’s was getting low, and I was very worried.” A/BG interviews with Francis Wylie & CM.
“If things get worse, we will publish it.” A/BG interview with CM.
“I am old and would be sick of life, were it not that you, Sweetheart, are here, as deep and understanding in your love as ever—and I as deep in my love for you as when we stood in Paris, Premier Arrondissement on July 22, 1929, and both said faintly ‘Oui!’” Inscriptions.
“It isn’t that I don’t trust you, Carlotta,” he says, “but you might get run over and I don’t want anybody else working on these plays.” A/BG interview with CM.
“I thought I would die—& he looked as if he had!” letter to Dale Fern, 3/4/54.
“It was like tearing up children.” A/BG interview with CM. Carlotta, in that interview, claimed she burned the torn pages in the living room fireplace of her suite at the Shelton, a detail described in the authors’ 1962 biography, O’Neill, but it turned out there was no such fireplace. The Shelton, by then, had been sold to Boston University and had been converted into a women’s dormitory, a fact noted by Nicholas Gage, then a student at Boston U, who was the editor of his college paper and a theater fan, when he read the book. With a reporter’s curiosity, he visited the reconstructed suite and was surprised to find no fireplace; he confirmed his discovery by checking the architect’s blueprints at City Hall. Then he wrote about the error in our book for the Boston University News; the story was picked up by the AP, where it came to Arthur Gelb’s attention. Gage, responding to a phone call from Gelb asking him to pursue the story, found an employee at the women’s dorm who had worked as a maid when it was the Shelton Hotel; she recalled helping Mrs. O’Neill take the bundle of torn papers to the hotel engineer to incinerate in the hotel basement. Carlotta admitted to the authors that she had misspoken, and the error was corrected in a subsequent printing of O’Neill. Gage was later hired by Gelb, then the Times Metropolitan editor. Gage had a distinguished career as an investigative reporter in New York and later as chief of the Times Athens bureau.
“No one could get very far trying to persuade him to do anything.” SP interview.
despair that death would not come. Ibid.
recited a poem by the mid-nineteenth-century English poet Austin Dobson, “In After Days”: letter to Dale Fern, 4/19/53; researched by Virginia Floyd.
“If there is a God and I meet Him, we’ll talk things over personally, man to man.” A/BG interview with CM.
“The Church is a fraud.” SW, Tao House Library.
“He wanted no one but us to see him when he was dead.” CM diary, 12/27/52.
last recorded words are a letter to Bennett Cerf, signed by him (as dictated to Carlotta) on June 13, 1951. Columbia University, SL.
They carry O’Neill to his bed. CM diary.
“He had great trouble moving, and even talking,” she recalled. A/BG interview with CM.
He was given antibiotics, but the heart was too weak to rally, and there seemed to be no will to live.” CM letter to BA, 12/?/53.
“Gene wanted no religious service,” noted Carlotta, and “a private burial with only Dr. Kozol, Mrs. Welton & I [sic] at his grave.” CM diary, 12/27/52.
“But, thank God, he is at rest, no one can harm him now.” CM diary ?
EPILOGUE
“He never had Parkinson’s disease. Never.” A/BG interview with CM(?).
performed on November 28 “at 9 a.m., 16 hours post mortem.” see earlier ref. to autopsy report.
“perhaps familial, although the family history was never clear as to details.” a photostat of “Necropsy No. 16,697” was given to A/BG by CM.
Gierow points out, “from top to toe the body loses all control; a helpless wreck, a foundering ship, a hull without a helm.” A/BG interview with Gierow.
“The being without him is at times almost more than I can bear.” letter dated 12/12/53; NY Public Library, Locke Collection, Carlotta Monterey Papers.
(In his will, O’Neill had written: “I desire to be buried in a burial lot with my wife and I authorize my Executrix to purchase such a lot and erect a simple stone thereon.”) interview by SP recorded by A/BG.
“I planted laurel around the headstone, like the laurel wreaths of the Greek heroes.” Ibid.
she destroys the diaries she kept for 1946 and 1947. CM diary.
“Will I ever be able to free myself from this man—and the love I felt for him!” 11/27/55.
“I hope you understand.” copy of letter given to A/BG by Cohen.
gazing into their future, idyllic life. Carlotta signed a copy of the photo to Arthur Gelb during a period in the Gelbs’ research when Barbara—who has indiscreetly inquired about an episode involving O’Neill’s second wife, Agnes—is temporarily out of favor.
“I saw to it that he was able to work.” A/BG interview with Capalbo.
and Betty Field as Deborah Harford. A Moon for the Misbegotten, unlike the still-underrated A Touch of the Poet, was finally recognized for its tragic grandeur years after O’Neill’s death, when, on Dec. 29, 1973, it was resurrected on Broadway by Jose Quintero. He had the glittering assistance not only of Jason Robards as the dying Jamie Tyrone, but also of Colleen Dewhurst, who made the role of the oversized Josie Hogan her own and whose Tony Award–winning performance has thus far never been topped.
Regent Hospital, a small private facility on East Sixty-first Street. A/BG interview with Dr. Cherrick.
“She had a tongue that could cut.” A/BG interview with JQ.
peering through the magnifying glass she’d used to decipher O’Neill’s handwriting. A/BG interview with RC.
a buffer between Carlotta and her dwindling social and business obligations. A/BG interviews with JR & Dr. Cherrick.
collating the material in the vast O’Neill collection. A/BG interviews with DG.
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privately printing five hundred copies of the volume she has entitled Inscriptions: Eugene O’Neill to Carlotta Monterey O’Neill. In a handwritten letter accompanying a copy of Inscriptions, sent by Carlotta to the authors of this biography on May 5, 1960, she wrote, “Now that you have Inscriptions, there can be no question as to who wrote them!”
“Not that Gene, in spite of all his dedications and little notes swearing love and begging for forgiveness, didn’t also hate me.” “Carlotta and the Master” by JQ, NYT Magazine, 5/1/88.
she is in the early stages of senile dementia. A/BG interview with JR.
“It was very plain that she needed care,” he explained. A/BG interview with DG.
realizes it is “clearly hopeless” for Carlotta to return to the Carlton House. A/BG interviews with JR.
“She would wander in the halls, and go down to the desk and complain that people were spying on her.” A/BG interviews with JR & GRC.
“we wanted to avoid publicity, we wanted Carlotta somewhere she would not be known.” A/BG interview with JR.
“At St. Luke’s,” concluded Cherrick, “Mrs. O’Neill was very attentively looked after by the staff, and she could not have had better treatment in any other hospital.” A/BG interview with GRC.
given custodial care and treated with Thorazine, a strong tranquilizer. Ibid.
“‘Pay no attention, she’s a loony.’” A/BG interviews with DG.
“She said she didn’t need much.” A/BG interview with JQ.
He never sees Carlotta again. A/BG interviews with JQ.
he professes his concern. Ibid., & interview with GRC.
“she got back to the state she had been in before coming to St. Luke’s.” A/BG interview with GRC.
Carlotta would “ruminate about O’Neill, and often about her own early life.” Ibid.
“There was really nothing I could do for her anymore.” A/BG interview with JR.
“She visited Carlotta twice a week.” A/BG interview with Crockett.
she is transferred there in July. A/BG interview with RC.
“It was not a place you’d choose to give a party,” said Crockett, somewhat defensively, “but for a nursing home, it was pleasant.” Ibid.