America's Foremost Playwright


I'll leave this one completely open for response. I'm just curious. What does everybody else think of Eugene O'Neil?

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He wrote the most brilliant play ever written!

"Love's not about what you expect to get, only what you expect to give- which is everything."

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which was ?

Mrs Bogart

agree with you about love BTW

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Long Day's Journey Into Night. I love that play.

"Love's not about what you expect to get, only what you expect to give- which is everything."

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I can't believe how much that film touched my heart, Josie and Jim they are just so vunerable, and her father bless him.

Is long days similar

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I haven't seen Moon For The Misbegotten...but I'm sure anything O'Neill is genius. It's so powerful (LDJIN). I cried for basically the entire movie.

"Love's not about what you expect to get, only what you expect to give- which is everything."

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I just watched Tuesdays with Morrie and was in floods, have you seen that, MOTM, is about Jim's later life, and this girl and her father that are a tenant of his on a neighbouring farm

Jim/ James from Long Days, was EO's brother it was based on I read, but I haven't a clue really, I was a member of an online rental thing, and I just typed in the name of a play Kevin Spacey ( I love his work) was doing, to see if it was worth going up to London to see ( now I can't wait to see it live and I want to see more, read more of EO's work, I love Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy, (have you seen the Claim),

are you from the USA, I'm from England

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I'm actually from Canada. Where do you live in England? (I've been to Canterbury, London and Guilford- is that how it's spelt? Ah well.) What's this play of Kevin Spacey's you mention? (I'm not much of a fan of him, just curious.)
I'm beginning to get into Shakespeare. The old Bard is wonderful, eh? Have you seen Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance? I'm trying to track it down, as it has Hepburn (the reason I saw Long Day's Journey, incidentally).

"Love's not about what you expect to get, only what you expect to give- which is everything."

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[deleted]

Yes! Tony Kushner, author of 'Angels in America,' calls him America's Shakespeare. Completely agree. Check out 'Mourning Becomes Electra', 'The Iceman Cometh' and LDJIN, if you have not done so already. Global themes with a uniquely American perspective.

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I think he's America's best playwright, and Long Day's Journey Into Night is my favorite American play. I also love his Iceman Cometh, and (maybe just because I love stories about sailing and the sea) I also particulary like his Long Voyage Home.

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I love O'Neill!

My favorite plays of his are the more autobiographical ones: Long Days' Journey into Night, The Iceman Cometh (somewhat autobiographical--one can see the ghost of O'Neill's brother--and, indeed, himself--in the character of Hickey), and A Moon for the Misbegotten.

A Moon for the Misbegotten is such a moving play. O'Neill's brother, as written by O'Neill, is a fascinating, tragic figure, much the same as he was in Long Day's Journey into Night (he's my favorite character in that play), but in A Moon for the Misbegotten, he is older, sadder, even more dissolute.

I love that O'Neill does not shrink from deep sadness and raw emotion in his plays. And the language, the dialogue, is always incredible.

To those who love O'Neill, also check out the plays of William Inge; he was a playwright who also dealt very honestly and unflinchingly with human emotion.

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thornton wilder is good too.



"Hipness is not a state of mind, it's a fact of life!" - Cannonball Adderley

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Tennessee Williams (the only other "great" American playwright other than O'Neill, IMO) would have been impossible without O'Neill's influence. I think that Williams consciously or unconsciously copied O'Neill's style and themes (dysfunctional families, lost souls, drunks, etc.) throughout his work.

One can also see O'Neill's influence on Albee, particularly "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

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I LOVE HIM!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm doing a style analysis paper on him and seriously reading like 10 of his plays.
He is so amazing.

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America has not been rich in literary figures, other than poets, a few novels, and Faulkner's output. O'Neil wrote some good plays, more than most people are aware of (or care about). The Iceman Cometh and Moon for the Misbegotten, along with Long Day's Journey, are at the apex of American drama. There is no foremost playwright in America. Tennesee Williams would be my pick at the point of a gun (The Glass Menagerie and Streetcar both are great plays, certainly as good as anything by O'Neil. But what both he and O'Neil wrote were a few very good/great plays, some okay/good plays and a bunch of stinkers. There is no foremost playwright in America: only foremost plays. By the way Arthur Miller's sentimental and/or political plays are average. His politics and people's innate love of the sentimental have bestowed on him honors not earned or merited.

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I recently taught a graduate symposium on the "Great Plays of the American Theater." Of the five I chose, four have been touched upon here: "Long Day's Journey into Night," "Death of a Salesman," "A Streetcar Named Desire," and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" The fifth was Thornton Wilder's "Our Town." And there you are. O'Neill was certainly the first, if not the greatest, of the great American playwrights. Tennessee Williams was heir to his throne, and his work needs to be thoroughly reexamined and reevaluated, as many of his fine plays have been unjustly overlooked (whereas O'Neill's lesser plays are somewhat deserving of their descent into obscurity--stilted and unsucessful experiments in a "new" theater). Miller and Wilder wrote only a handful of plays. Albee is still writing, and writing well, and may very well emerge as our greatest playwright in the last analysis. For now, my money is on Williams.

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...Right after Arthur Miller.

Touch me, take me to that other place
Reach me, I know I'm not a hopeless case

-U2

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[deleted]

I haven't seen any of his plays performed on the stage. I did enjoy the film versions of THE HAIRY APE and MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA...

Life, every now and then, behaves as though it had seen too many bad movies

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