Certainly, realism was the keynote of the reviews for Lord’s performance. Louis V. de Foe wrote under the heading, “Another Grim O’Neill Drama” that some people “might find the characters brutal and repellent” but that the acting made them tolerable. “Miss Lord gave a really remarkable impersonation of this girl in her struggle from the depths. She played the role with unyielding realism. She softened none of its ignoble traits.” Percy Hammond assured readers that when they left the theatre they would ask themselves if there were any better acting that that of Miss Pauline Lord as “the weary ex-prostitute. She does not utter one sound or make one gesture that you do not believe.” Another critic wrote that the actress “does vividly realistic work as Anna, world-weary, men-weary, and happy in the cloak of the fog.” Yet another said that no performance except Minnie Maddern Fiske’s in Salvation Nell approached Lord’s in truthfulness and that Lord was better. “Skill is too slight a word. This is the spirit lived spontaneously before our very eyes....The strange inner bloom of life is on the lips of this woman of the streets and the broken suffering of life is in her voice.” Another comment on the realism was offered by J. Ranken Towse, who said, “Pauline Lord furnished a realistic sketch of the soiled and hardened Anna and delivered her passionate outburst in the third act with the proper hysterical intensity.” Percy Hammond with so many others praised this scene, giving some details of what she did in it. Indicating that she had told her father and Matt that she had “sold herself many times in the St. Paul flesh market,” he said, “It is a fine speech with a wallop in every syllable, spoken in the racy lingo and the flat monotonous tones of the Minnesota underworld, by a desperate, forthright, forlorn, and reluctant practitioner of sin.”

Arthur Hornblow put his finger on one of the aspects of the performance that was deliberately devised by Lord: “Noteworthy was the frugality of her gestures, the gestures of a woman who has lost hope.” Kenneth Macgowan noted that in the role she “commands comedy as well as badgered and inarticulate desperation.” He went on to signal a view held by many critics that Pauline Lord was the finest actress of her time and that this play had revealed it. “She plays this particular role as no other American actress of a generation has played anything remotely approaching it.” Burns Mantle, who published the ten best plays each year, wrote that the ugliness of the subject matter was turned into art by the writing and the performances and that people would long boast of having seen the play. “There have been several fine characterizations achieved in the theatre this season, but none of them has been more vivid, more vibrantly human, more impressively real than that of Pauline Lord. Discounting the aid she had from Mr. O’Neill and the sympathy the role naturally carries, she was still entitled to the cheers her audience gave her.”

What a thrill the opening night must have been for Hopkins and Lord! O’Neill was far away in Provincetown. Like many other playwrights, including Moss Hart and S. N. Behrman, he was unable to bear the torture of opening nights, but eager to hear about the response and the reviews. It must have been particularly sweet to him, as an Ibsen admirer, to read that “Between Mr.  O’Neill and Miss Lord, Anna Christie is as living and absorbing as Hedda Gabler.” For Hopkins, there was the satisfaction in the “multitudinous cheers” of the audience, knowing he had been right in predicting stardom for Lord and in reading that his choice of the actress for the part was an inspiration. The critics noted again and again how ecstatic the response to her acting was. One critic wrote that she played the role with fire and “it brought her the noisiest acclaim that any actress has received this year.” Another said, “Not even famous stars often receive such an ovation as the cheers Miss Lord heard.”

For the trio, the best was yet to come. The cast was to perform in England, where Lord had to overcome three obstacles to be accepted there: first, she was an American actress; second, she was in a play by an American playwright; and third, she was (as one reviewer put it) “handicapped by a Swedish accent-cum-Yankee Slang.” English critics noted that she played with naturalism, moving from an “almost inadequate first entrance,” playing with a sort of repressive quality as if fearing to let anything become emotional, and then releasing the repression “into a tremendous tirade of a speech in which she shows a very considerable emotional power.” American papers proudly reprinted the notices saying, for example, that Lord’s Anna was a triumph and as poignant a picture that one could see as “the pitiful husk of a woman warmed into womanhood by love and in danger of slipping back.” The greatest source of pride was the tremendous ovation she received: the ovation lasted half an hour, and the audience sang “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” She had received, according to one critic, “an ovation rarely equaled in recent London stage history” and her dressing room after the performance was a mob scene.

This response is particularly impressive when compared to the reception of One Night in Rome in April 1920. Laurette Taylor starred and Lynn Fontanne played a small role. Her biographer, Jared Brown, describes the opening night as a riot, with booing and with shouts to Taylor, “Go back to America! We don’t want you here!” It appeared that the unsatisfactory scenery had ignited latent anti-American feeling.27 Lord’s welcome less than a year later was completely different in the theatre and in the press. One review in particular must have pleased Hopkins and Lord after their years of working together for this success: “The play and the performance prove that out of the ranks there steps ever and anon something of flesh and blood and brains, and patiently acquired technique, and passionate heart appeal; an actress who epitomizes the art and charm of the most alluring of all arts.” The rest of Lord’s career proved that this was no flash in the pan. The next year she was successful in another Pulitzer Prize winner, Sidney Howard’s They Knew What They Wanted, sharing the stage with Richard Bennett. Later she played as a replacement for vacationing Lynn Fontanne in Strange Interlude, commenting to the press that after acting in this long play, the equivalent of a matinee and evening performance every day, the earlier cast needed a rest. Lord was later praised for her role in the stage adaptation of Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome with Raymond Massey and Ruth Gordon. In 1944 she again played Anna, this time on the radio for “Arthur Hopkins Presents.” Her haunting voice is very moving on the existing tape of this performance. O’Neill wrote to Hopkins, “Polly in Anna Christie again certainly brings back a host of pleasant memories. I wish I could have heard her in it. I don’t think it is just a man of fifty-five looking back on the good old days. There were uncompromising idealists with a real love for what the American theatre might become.”28 Lord also played Amanda in The Glass Menagerie on tour. When she died at the age of sixty, the obituaries stated that she would probably be best remembered as the star of Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie.

Unlike Pauline Lord, Louis Wolheim came to the stage late and after a life filled with many other types of activities. His appearance in O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape was not his first stage appearance, but it was the first time most people were aware of him as an actor. He seemed so very much the part of the rough, physically frightening stoker that one theatregoer said, “He must have been caught and tamed in the wilds of Pago-Pago, Samoa and imported especially to play his part.” In later years he was known as the ugliest man in films, but also as one of the screen’s best actors.  O’Neill chose him for the role and felt very much at home with him during the rehearsals and performance.

Wolheim was in fact a peculiar combination of the rough character O’Neill had created and an educated gentleman. He was described as a gentle, soft-spoken, scholarly man with a good education. He was born in 1880 to a Jewish family in Brooklyn. He was only a few years older than O’Neill and shared with him a love of adventure. He attended City College of New York and then went to Cornell to get a degree in math, but at the age of thirty he decided to go to Mexico, where he was a mechanical engineer for three years.  He spoke French, German, Spanish, and Yiddish, and had translated several plays. His family was very proud of him, but his mother wanted him to have plastic surgery on his nose after it was smashed playing football. Naturally, the unusual background of this strange-looking actor fascinated columnists. Alexander Woolcott wrote, “Louis Wolheim, who plays the stoker, makes a genuine contribution to The Hairy Ape. Once he was a football player at Cornell, on whose gridiron he came honorably by the broken nose that is so useful a part of his present make-up. Later he taught at Cascadilla and engineered in Mexico and finally sidled into the theatre under the guidance of Lionel Barrymore. He is doing himself proud in his first important role.”

Whereas most actors struggle to make a career in the theatre and have some sort of training, Wolheim just fell into a theatrical career. While he was at Cornell getting a Ph.D. and teaching math, he met Lionel Barrymore by chance. According to legend, Barrymore said, “With that mug of yours you could make a fortune in the theatre.” (There are numerous versions of this conversation, which probably took place while Barrymore and Wolheim were knocking back drinks.) The upshot was that Wolheim finished his Ph.D. but (probably to his mother’s dismay) followed Barrymore to Hollywood where he played in films. Talking to an interviewer in Toledo while touring The Hairy Ape, he said, “It sounded like an adventure and I went and damme if I didn’t seem to click.” He acted in Sherlock Holmes with John Barrymore and helped translate and adapt the play The Claw for the Barrymores. Lionel Barrymore asked him to play the role of his brother in The Jest, which Arthur Hopkins was producing. Attracted to the idea, the modest Wolheim nevertheless found the role too daunting and was glad when a picture commitment kept him from it. When he finished his film, he went to New York and hung around rehearsals observing Lionel Barrymore’s approach to acting. Ultimately, he played a small role and became for O’Neill and others a “Hopkins actor”— high praise.

O’Neill’s interest in Wolheim predated his completion of The Hairy Ape. He thought the actor might be fine for the role, but was worried on two counts. First, he felt Wolheim hadn’t had enough stage experience, and, second, the shy O’Neill was embarrassed to ask him to play such an ugly, unattractive character for fear of insulting him. Later Wolheim said that he met O’Neill and his wife Agnes by chance at a supper given by the Barrymores to celebrate the opening of The Claw. Given the fact that O’Neill hated such occasions and was embarrassed to eat in public because of his shaky hands, it is more likely that O’Neill asked one of the brothers to invite him with the purpose of meeting Wolheim. The double connection of the actor to Hopkins, whom O’Neill admired so much, and to John and Lionel, whom he always hoped to attract to one of his plays, was a strong recommendation. When O’Neill met him, they talked about a number of things, but not his next play, as Wolheim told interviewer Ashton Stevens. Apparently O’Neill took to Wolheim immediately and soon Wolheim was offered the role by the Provincetown Players.

So, it would seem everything was set. However, Wolheim was overwhelmed by reading the play and in the interview with Stevens he described his reaction: “I didn’t want to take the part at first. It was too damn important. Hell, why give it to me and take a chance on wrecking the whole damn production?” He told another interviewer that he said to Hopkins, “Why in God’s name a dub like me? I’ve had no experience but four or five bum parts; I’ll be a holy stench. Whynhell should I be picked. . . . Here was great stuff, here was something that needed telling. It called for trumpets. I told Hopkins why give it to a pennywhistle like me?” Apparently, Hopkins was very persuasive, because Wolheim concluded, “That’s the way I talked,” smiling, “and then I surrendered to better judgment.”

During rehearsals O’Neill and Wolheim became friends, enjoying exchanging stories of their adventures. Although he rarely laughed, O’Neill loved funny stories and Wolheim was famous for his witty Yiddish dialect anecdotes. He was very proud of his Jewish heritage and had great contempt for people in the theatre who changed their Jewish names. Both were men who enjoyed a fight (once, when Wolheim was fighting, it took four policemen to stop him). O’Neill liked a brawl and on the opening night of All God’s Chillun Got Wings he was careful not to drink so he would be in shape if there were a fight. (He was disappointed when everything went so tamely!) In restaurants and bars after rehearsals and performances, Wolheim would outdrink O’Neill and entertain him with discussions of the work on the play.

Although Wolheim had not acted extensively or had much training and although he was very modest about his ability, he was quite certain about the appropriate approach to acting. He was a great admirer of Lionel Barrymore and said everything he knew about acting he had learned from him. Wolheim was always ready to discuss his acting approach with interviewers. In an interview in Toledo, he told Grace Wilson that he had come upon Barrymore looking old and exhausted and chastised him for not taking better care of himself. Barrymore pulled himself up and said he had just thought himself into that physical state for his role. Wilson asked Wolheim if he had studied types like Yank to prepare for the role and he promptly answered, “No, I studied it as every actor must do—subconsciously.” He then discussed his theory that every man has all of the different human characteristics within himself, that he is a cross section of the human race. An actor must draw from within himself the characteristics he needs and think himself into exhibiting them. “Lionel Barrymore considers this a form of self-hypnosis and I agree. That’s why an actor can forget his most intense pain while he is acting. He is, for the time being, someone else.”In the same interview Wolheim exhibited his own sensitivity about his looks. He was asked if he had always been cast in roles like Yank and answered with a dreamy look, “The Prince Regent of England in ‘The Fair Circassian’? I guess that’s about as different a type from Yank as you can imagine.”

Rehearsals progressed well, although it is unclear who actually did all the directing. O’Neill originally wanted a “Hopkins man” to direct, but he was on tour, so James Light, a member of the Provincetown Players, took over. However, some critics credited O’Neill with the direction. In his second review, Alexander Woolcott gave credit for it to Arthur Hopkins, although it was produced by the Provincetown Players. He said that Hopkins was “lurking around its rehearsals, with perhaps a proprietary interest.” Following its success downtown, Hopkins took most of the cast and produced the play uptown. He replaced Mary Blair with Carlotta Monterey in the role of Mildred.

The play opened to terrific reviews for Wolheim, but many critics were baffled or irritated by the Expressionistic play.  Lawrence Reamer wrote that Wolheim was “physically and artistically striking.” One critic wrote, “What Gilpin was to The Emperor Jones, Louis Wolheim is to The Hairy Ape. As Yank Smith he bears the burden of the play. Physically suited for the part, he carries it through with a somber naturalism and the tragic force of one who is midway between man and beast and is rejected by both.” Kenneth Macgowan wrote that “the theatrical success of The Hairy Ape is considerably strengthened by the illusion of brute force created by Louis Wolheim under the excellent direction of O’Neill himself.” Not only the critics and audiences were awed by Wolheim’s brute force. Mary Blair played the society girl who comes upon the stoker and faints from fear. She told an unidentified interviewer after Wolheim’s death that “I was always a bit alarmed that he would let me have the shovel full in the face. I stood only about two feet from him in the boiler room. He seemed fierce, as if he were expressing a vast social resentment.”

So popular and well known was the play that satires were written on it, including one performed by, of all people, Mae West.  According to her biographer, she burlesqued the character, noting that “Yank was the very sort of brutish caveman type Mae West favored as a foil to play against, onstage and off: in O’Neill’s hands a somber and powerful archetype, and in hers a comic cartoon rendered with broad strokes.” Backed by a chorus line and a black orchestra, she sang, “Eugene O’Neill, You’ve Put a Curse on Broadway” and bellowed “Yank-style”lines including, “She don me doit! Lemme up! I’ll show her who’s an ape.” 29 Some combination: Mae West, Louis Wolheim, and Eugene O’Neill.

Following the success in New York, Wolheim toured the country in the play, and his file at Lincoln Center is filled with interviews given in many cities. Despite his success, he remained strangely modest about his performance. Tracy Hammond Lews quoted him as saying, “I don’t measure up to the part and I know it as well as anyone else.” He was described by Grace Wilson as “the most natural, unpretentious, untheatrical actor I ever met.” Naturally, he was asked what he would play after The Hairy Ape because he seemed a hard type to cast. He told Wilson, “I am quite aware that plays like The Hairy Ape aren’t written every day; and I’m going to take any old part that comes my way. By golly, you won’t find me hanging around till I’m an old white-headed man saying ‘You ought to have seen me, thirty years ago in The Hairy Ape.’” He was in a position strangely similar to Gilpin’s: a great O’Neill role had brought him success, but he saw no great future as an actor. He told an unidentified writer, “I bet after The Ape is over I’ll recede into the ranks of among those present.” Still, he took everything philosophically, saying, “What the hell—anyone who is foolish enough to want to be an artist can damn well paint miniatures.”

He was not condemned to miniature roles or to fading into the crowd. In 1924 he scored a huge success as a rough-talking soldier in Arthur Hopkins’ production of What Price Glory? He and O’Neill remained on friendly terms but their paths were parted. In 1926 O’Neill wrote to Macgowan that he hoped for a revival of The Hairy Ape “with a chance of getting Wolly that late in the season.”30 Instead Wolheim returned to films where he was known as one of the best-liked players in Hollywood. He had an appealing personality, but was also liked for his generosity. While filming in Truckee, California, he once provided food for more than 200 men. This and other stories about him were widely reported and he was the delight of the cartoonists.

Fun for the cartoonists, however, was not so much fun for him. His appearance continued to bother him and he felt it limited his career. In Lew’s article “Louis Wolheim’s Nose Caused Much Trouble,” it was reported that early in his career, at his mother’s insistence, he had his nose fixed. Wishing to celebrate the success of the operation, he went to a saloon, got into a fight, and had his nose again flattened by a longshoreman. After his return to Hollywood he decided he would try another operation so that he could play a wider range of roles. All of the newspapers printed pictures or caricatures with the story. An article called “Kept Ugly by Contract” revealed that in 1927 United Artists brought an injunction to keep him from this “beautification”because his appearance was what they wanted when he signed the contract. So “he surrendered to his fate.”

He didn’t have long to enjoy the success that began with a role he didn’t feel qualified to play in 1923. In 1931 he was cast as the wily newspaper editor in a film version of The Front Page. He went on an intense diet, collapsed, and was taken to the hospital. There he was found to have stomach cancer and died quite suddenly. His death saddened the country and the obituary notices praised him personally and noted his fame as Yank. As Grace Wilson had written years before, “He was a simple-hearted, modest-minded star who has been an actor only a few years, but who impresses you as having been very much of a man, always.” O’Neill would probably have said the same thing. He refused to go see the film of The Hairy Ape with William Bendix in the lead. Writing to Theresa Helburn in 1944, he described the production as one of his most satisfying times in the theatre. “I remember Wolheim was practically perfect as Yank and was also a pal of mine. I don’t want to have that memory spoiled.”31 Similarly, he wrote Hopkins that he would give the picture “a wide miss” because “my memories of Wolly in the original production are too close, and the play remains one of my favorites.” 32

Like Wolheim, Walter Huston found that success in an O’Neill role was the turning point in his career and, like Wolheim, he achieved it rather late. When he was in Desire Under the Elms at the age of forty, he had, as his biographer John Weld put it, “his first honest-to-God hit.”33 Huston was born in Toronto. He decided to try acting, but had little success at first. He was cast in a play with the great Richard Mansfield in 1902. In later years he told interviewers that he was fired after the first night for fluffing his three lines. He returned to school, worked as an engineer, and then turned to vaudeville for fifteen years. According to a clipping in the Huston file, he played drums, danced, sang, “and spent a lot of time thinking up mechanical effects. He patented a face painted on a piece of rubber, with strings attached behind to use in a trick sketch called ‘Spooks.’ ” His chance to move to Broadway came when his sister, Margaret Carrington, backed Zona Gale’s Mr. Pitt. (She was a wealthy widow who later married Robert Edmond Jones and was a voice coach to John Barrymore among others). In it he faced a great challenge: he had to interest the audience in a traveling pickle salesman so boring and dense that he causes his wife to run away with a saxophone player. The play only ran six weeks, but Huston was highly praised and his career on Broadway was launched. His next play, however, did not take him forward. As Weld stated, “It looked as if Walter would go on for the balance of his professional life playing good-natured simpletons.”34

But fate had something else in store. Kenneth Macgowan, Robert Edmond Jones, and O’Neill were impressed by his work in Mr. Pitt and he was asked if he would be interested in playing the lead in Desire Under the Elms. In a letter to Huston years later, O’Neill remembered their first meeting at the Greenwich Village Theatre. He remembered Huston and his son John appearing in fancy attire, with fawn-colored hats and wearing spats. Ephraim Cabot was a hard, penny-pinching, sweaty farmer, but, O’Neill said, “It flashed across my mind that you were born to play Cabot, the leading role. I said, ‘I believe you’d be fine.’ ” 35 Huston read the script, then passed it on to his eighteen-year-old son. As John Huston remembered in his autobiography An Open Book, he told his father, “I think it is one of the greatest things I ever read.” 36 His father said he thought so, too, and signed at $300 a week, a big salary to the producers, but a small salary compared to Huston’s previous earnings.

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