The Gelbs On O'Neill

Arthur Gelb is the former managing editor of The New York Times. In the 1950's, he was assistant drama critic under Brooks Atkinson, then served as the newspaper's chief cultural correspondent, cultural editor and later as metropolitan editor. Together with his wife Barbara, he authored the seminal biography, O'Neill (1962), an updated first volume of that biography, O'Neill: Life with Monte Cristo (2000), and Eugene O’Neill – A Documentary Film (2006, with Ric Burns).

Barbara Gelb is the author of So Short a Time, a biography of John Reed and Louise Bryant, and the one-character play, My Gene, based on O'Neill's widow, Carlotta Monterey. Together with her husband Arthur, she authored the seminal biography O'Neill (1962), an updated first volume of that biography, O'Neill: Life with Monte Cristo (2000), and Eugene O’Neill – A Documentary Film (2006, with Ric Burns).

Some of the articles collected below were written over 50 years ago, during Carlotta Monterey O'Neill's ban on most of the material in the O'Neill collection at Yale University. There are inevitably gaps and incomplete facts in some of those early articles – when there were no major O'Neill experts to be consulted on the hard facts the Gelbs were gathering, one treasured fact at a time. The anomaly then was that O'Neill, America's only Nobel Prize playwright, had never been the subject of a complete unauthorized biography. As Arthur Gelb (by that time already a seasoned Times journalist) and Barbara Gelb began researching O'Neill's life in 1956, they became – in a bizarre way – the first probing O'Neill authorities regularly appearing in print.

Sweden to Stage Two O'Neill Plays - from The New York Times, March 15, 1956

Long Journey Into Light - from The New York Times, November 25, 1956

New O’Neill Drama Is Found by Swede - from The New York Times, March 18, 1957

O’Neill’s Birthplace Is Marked By Plaque at Times Square Site - from The New York Times, October 17, 1957

At the Roots of O'Neill's 'Elms' - from The New York Times, March 2, 1958

O'Neill's Hopeless Hope for a Giant Cycle - from The New York Times, September 28, 1958

Dream and Live - from The New York Times, April 19, 1959

Drama by O'Neill Slated in Sweden - from The New York Times, April 27, 1959

Coronet Theatre to Be Renamed in Honor Of Eugene O’Neill - from The New York Times, September 27, 1959

An Epitaph for the O'Neills - from The New York Times, October 4, 1959

O'Neill's 'Lost Work' - from The New York Times, October 28, 1959

Name of O’Neill Adorns Theatre - from The New York Times, November 19, 1959

O’Neill’s ‘Hughie’ to Make U.S. Bow - from The New York Times, January 25, 1960

January Revival for ‘Hairy Ape’ - from The New York Times, May 9, 1960

As O’Neill Saw the Theatre - from The New York Times, November 12, 1961

Early O'Neill: 'Long Voyage Home' Given at Mermaid - from The New York Times, December 5, 1961

Swede Aglow Over Last Unpublished O'Neill Play - from The New York Times, May 14, 1962

O'Neill Tragedy: Swedish Actors Give Play Its Full Value - from The New York Times, May 16, 1962

Native Tragedy: 'Beyond the Horizon' Given in Milwaukee - from The New York Times, October 26, 1962

Wharf-Theater Era Takes a Curtain Call - from The New York Times, July 24, 1963

Quintero in the Square - from The New York Times, February 16, 1964

Onstage He Played the Novelist - from The New York Times, August 30, 1964

The 'Child' O'Neill Tore Up - from The New York Times, October 29, 1967

'Written in Tears And Blood...' - from The New York Times, March 4, 1973

To O'Neill, She Was Wife, Mistress, Mother, Nurse - from The New York Times, October 21, 1973

Jason Jamie Robards Tyrone - from The New York Times, January 20, 1974

A Mint From the 'Misbegotten' - from The New York Times, May 5, 1974

A Touch of the Tragic - from The New York Times, December 11, 1977

A Touch of the Poet - from The New York Times, May 25, 1980

O'Neill's Seething 'Interlude' Returns to Broadway - from The New York Times, February 17, 1985

O'Neill's 'Iceman' Sprang From the Ashes of His Youth - from The New York Times, September 29, 1985

O'Neill's Father Shaped His Son's Vision - from The New York Times, April 27, 1986

Theater for Readers - from The New York Times, November 6, 1988

Interviewing Ghosts - from The Eugene O'Neill Review, Suffolk University, 1994

Concealing While Revealing: O'Neill's Way With Truth - from The New York Times, April 4, 1999

A Second Look, and a Second Chance to Forgive - from The New York Times, March 10, 2000

Second Thoughts - from The New York Times, May 7, 2000

Behind the Scenes of O'Neill's Elephant Opus - from The Eugene O'Neill Review, Suffolk University, 2006