When and where was Eugene O'Neill born?
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was born on the 16th of October 1888 inside the Barrett House hotel located at Longacre Square in New York City. This location is now known as Times Square.
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was born on the 16th of October 1888 inside the Barrett House hotel located at Longacre Square in New York City. This location is now known as Times Square.
Eugene O'Neill died on the 27th of November 1953 inside a room at the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston. He whispered to those around him that he knew it all along because being born in a hotel meant he would also die in one.
Eugene O'Neill received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936 after being nominated by Henrik Schück. He is the only playwright to win four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama with wins occurring in 1920, 1922, 1928, and 1957.
O'Neill faced a severe Parkinson-like tremor in his hands during the last ten years of his life that made writing impossible despite his attempts to dictate his work. Only two plays from the proposed eleven were completed before his health worsened significantly.
His father James O'Neill was an Irish immigrant actor who suffered from alcoholism while his mother Mary Ellen Quinlan struggled with morphine addiction. His elder brother Jamie drank himself to death at the age of forty-five and his son Shane committed suicide by jumping out of a window several years later.