Playwrights Parade
Of tragic lives and loves
RANDOR GUY
| American dramatist Eugene O’Neill’s plays, mostly autobiographical, are dark worlds full of agony and despair. |
Inspired Hollywood: Eugene O’Neill and (right) his play, Long Day’s Journey into Night.
Eugene O’Neill (1886-1953) was a celebrated American playwright of Irish origin. Most of his inimitable works have been made into films by Hollywood, which gave his plays an international exposure.
Some of these films have become classics and are studied as lessons in converting stage plays into the celluloid medium.
His body of work was mainly autobiographical, dealing with the tragic lives and loves of his family.
His father, a famous stage star of his day, was more interested in perfecting his art and so neglected the family.
Readers can feel the despair, frustration, impotent anger and agony in his writings. . He sought relief in alcohol, which only pushed him deeper into problems, which were reflected in his plays.
His most famous work, ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night,’ also autobiographical, was brought on to the screen by noted filmmaker Sidney Lumet, and became a classic.
In it, Katherine Hepburn played the mother, whose tragic life was laced with drugs and alcohol. Lumet, a brilliant technician, used an excellent metaphor to convey her slow descent into despair and mental degeneration.
Nobel prize
In 1936, O’Neill received the Nobel prize for Literature. His plays were among the first to introduce to American drama the techniques of realism, associated with great playwrights such as Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and August Strindberg. His plays were also among the first to have used the American style of speech.
His plays revolve around characters on the fringes of society, engaged in depravity, while trying to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately sinking into disillusionment and despair.
O’Neill wrote only one comedy ‘Ah, Wilderness!’ O’Neill spent several years at sea, during which he suffered from depression and alcoholism.
His parents and elder brother Jamie (an alcoholic, who drank himself to death at age 45) died within three years of one another, and he took to writing as an escape. His deep love for the sea became a major theme in most of his plays.
O’Neill was married three times. His daughter Oona married Charlie Chaplin against his wishes. (Oona was 18 and Chaplin, 54). He promptly disowned her and never saw her again.
The films based on his plays include, ‘Anna Christie’ (1930 with Greta Garbo, a classic), ‘Strange Interlude’ (1932), ‘Emperor Jones’ (1933, with Paul Robeson) and ‘Summer Holiday’ (1948, a musical version of his play ‘Ah Wilderness’ directed by Rouben Mamoulian with Mickey Rooney in the cast.)
Then there was ‘The Long Voyage Home’ (1940, a classic Western made by John Ford, it was an amalgam of four short plays of the dramatist. It had John Wayne in the lead and won several Oscars, including Best Picture).
After that came ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’ (1948, it was the modern version of the immortal Sophocles play and had, Rosalind Russell, Michael Redgrave and Kirk Douglas in the cast.) Next came ‘Desire Under The Elms’(1958, Sophia Loren and Tony Perkins were in the cast).
O’Neill died in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65.
His final words, reportedly, were “Born in a hotel room, and God damn it, died in one!”
No comments:
Post a Comment