Eugene O’Neill - Boston, MA - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

Eugene O’Neill is often described as ‘America’s greatest playwright’ and as the ‘Father of American Theater.’ Four of his plays have won Pulitzer Prizes for drama: “Beyond the Horizon,” “Anna Christie,” “Strange Interlude” and “Long Day’s Journey into Night.” He also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. You could say he was destined for a stage career having been born on Broadway in a New York City hotel room.

O’Neill’s father, James O’Neill, was a prominent actor who traveled around a bit, which explains Eugene’s unusual birthplace. His father was also an alcoholic and a penny pincher. His mother, Mary, was a morphine addict and his older brother, James Jr., was an alcoholic and a womanizer. They spent their summers in a cottage in New London, CT. O’Neill’s most famous play, “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” is also about an aging, miserly actor named James, whose wife Mary is a morphine addict. It takes place on a single day at a summer cottage in Connecticut with the couple’s two sons, Jamie and Edmund, who is diagnosed with tuberculosis (Eugene O’Neill was diagnosed with TB in 1912). Wow, most of the names weren’t even changed - I guess that’s why they call the play autobiographical.

“Long Day’s Journey into Night” was published posthumously in 1956. Eugene O’Neill didn’t want the play produced until 25 years after he had died, but his wife authorized its production after just three years since all the ‘characters’ had already died. It was an immediate success, winning a Tony Award as well as the aforementioned Pulitzer. Besides those already mentioned, O’Neill’s other notable plays were “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” “Mourning Becomes Electra,” and “The Iceman Cometh.”

Eugene O’Neill died in 1953, ironically in a hotel room, in Boston. He is laid to rest in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. His third wife, the former actress Carlotta Monterey, is buried at this site also. Eugene was her fifth husband.
(Sources: wikipedia.org, biography.com.)

Description: See Long Description above. Date of birth: 10/16/1888 Date of death: 11/27/1953 Area of notoriety: Literature Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: 8:00 am - 4:30 pm Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link]

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