Evening star., 1962-01-14

flle-cutter in Cincinnati, he
That he was suited to the
career in a worldly way is in
dicated by his building a
$4,000 house, only fifteen
years later in 1888, in New
London, Conn; that he was
a respected actor can be
seen by the fact that he
played Iago to Booths Othel-
10, and Othello to Salvini's
Iago.
But although he tried
throughout his more than
SO years on the stage to
divorce himself from the role
OF Dantes in Dumas 1.-The
Count of Monte Cristo" it
was that romantic character,
and that one alone, which
made O'Neill a very wealthy
man. He played in Monte
CriSto" nearly 5000 times in
New York and every hick
town in the United States,
and grieved at every unsuc-
cessful attempt to cut him
self loose from it. The show
was an ostensible cause, of
the many causes more COM
pleX and deep-seated, that
alienated him for many years
from his two sons, James
and Eugene. His dependency
upon Monte Cristo" was a
source of Illustration and al
most despair, for his sons it
was a source of filial hatred
and contempt. At least, they
thought so.
The two boys were closely
attached to their voted
mother, who was in turn the
idol Of her husband, a genial,
religious, conventional, low
ing pater familias. Ellen
O'Neill had contracted an
addiction to drugs as the aft
ermath of the soaring pain of
cancer, for which she under
went a successful operation.
The two brothers grew up al
ternately pampered and
pressed into emulation of
their fathers phenomenally
reWarding career, and they
broke under the strain. In
their teens they slipped by
degrees into a life of drink
and debauchery. James broke
his fathers heart, not be-
cause he was a mediocre
actor, but because he despised
the calling; Eugene, because
instead of becoming an edu-
Gated man and a lawyer, to
crafty his fathers vicarious
ambition, he stayed in
Princeton only a year,
graveled by mathematics and
contemptuous of all aca-
demic discipline.
4 -
After leaving Princeton,
Eugene went to work for a
mail-order firm in New York,
but soon, in 1909, as an after
math Of a marriage made
necessary by the pregnancy
Of a casual girl friend, he
left the country alone to seek
his fortune in Honduras. He
found hardship and disease,
but no gold, and wound up
with a burning fever in Tegu-
cigalpa, where the American
consul put him to bed and
called a doctor. The weather
was freezing and blankets
were few, so Eugene was
wrapped in some available
American flags. II looked for
all the world like George M.
Cohan," he recalled later.
There followed years of
wandering as a sailor, and of
the raw life in seaport towns
experience that was to be
material for his later plays.
Back in New York in 1912, he
reached his nadir of disgust,
diSilluSionment and despair,
and swallowed poison in an
attempt at suicide. He did
not find death, but did dis
cover that he had tubercu-
loSis. His family sent him to
Gaylord Farm Sanitarium,
and it was in this institution
that he not only recovered
his health but, during an
extended but not perma-
nent divorce from alcohol,
discovered in himself his vo-
cation-writing. At Princeton,
he had read Nietzsche for
whom he had a passionate
devotion that lasted all his
life; he admired Strindberg,