The rehearsals are charmingly described by John Huston, who remembered O’Neill as a quiet man with a delicate appearance who sat with the actors and the director, Jones, around a table. He spoke in such a low voice when the actors asked him questions that it was hard to hear the answer. As the rehearsals progressed he sat in the orchestra and occasionally passed notes up to the stage.37 With this close involvement in the rehearsals, naturally O’Neill came to know Walter Huston and liked him.  Their friendship lasted through the years.

It is strange to consider the initial response to the play, which has become a classic and has often been revived with success on the professional and the amateur stage in America and abroad. An unidentified clipping headed “Huston Good in Bad Drama” summed up the response of many of the critics. This reviewer said that the play “leaves the spectator with no desire to again witness such a performance.” Another wrote, “Even the most hardened of Mr. O’Neill’s disciples last night shuddered at its honest terrors and were subdued.” Yet another unidentified critic wrote that leaving an O’Neill play was a fine experience: “I leave his plays with a song on my lips, congratulating myself that my glooms are comparatively insignificant.” Robert Benchley called the play a “terrific catastrophe.” Other critics felt the play was salacious. The play was banned in England and was not allowed a production for sixteen years, at which time one critic wrote, “It is strong with the strength of over-ripe cheese (but) need everyone be quite so loutish?”

However, some of the critics praised the play and almost all praised Huston. A major critic, Stark Young, wrote that he was “everywhere trenchant, gaunt, fervid, harsh as he should be in the part. In his ability to cover his gradations, to express the natural and convincing emotion, and to convey the harsh, inarticulate life embodied in this extraordinary portrait that Eugene O’Neill has drawn, Mr. Huston showed his talent and proved to be the best possible choice for the role.” Heyword Broun called Huston excellent, Percy Hammond said he was perfect, and another unidentified critic wrote that he played the old skinflint father to perfection but that it was impossible for anyone who cared about the theatre at all to approve of the play.

Huston had based his characterization on his grandfather, a hard Canadian farmer. He had not liked him, but the grandfather’s character served him well for this role. A critic who, in the minority, described the play as a literary masterpiece, described Huston as “a heroic old monument.” He gave a detailed description of the scene for which the actor received much praise, in which he sits in the bedroom and talks to his young wife. “He sits on the edge of the bed and recites in his cruel, Jehovan monotone the tale of his work and his wives.” When he makes love to his new wife, he “lets fly with all the sensual similes of the ‘Song of Songs’ and they roll on his tongue on a thick mush of obscenity.” Continuing his analysis of Huston’s interpretation, he wrote, “He is cruel, greedy, sly, bullying, decent at nothing except building stone fences—and yet, in spite of everything that Mr. O’Neill has to hurl at him, (he is) the man of the play, the giant apologia.”

In the Walter Huston file is a long piece by John Corbin written for the New York Times in which he analyzed the aspects of the forty-year-old Huston’s portrayal of the seventy-five-year-old Cabot. In “Acting in O’Neill,” he wrote that Huston could have played the role with “quirky, familiar touches” or with “clever mimicry” but that he “plays the underlying poetry and focuses less on the externals.” He felt that Huston was the most successful actor so far to do all that was needed for an O’Neill character. He put his finger on some of the aspects of playwriting that presented a challenge to actors. Noting that Eugene O’Neill doesn’t write realism in the usual sense and that the actor has a hard job, he defined the challenge: “The actor has so much actualistic matter on his hands that he must be convincing as realism, but at the same time he must evolve a creation that transcends realism or resemblance.” In his opinion Huston was almost the quality “of the writing itself that he interprets. He has the same relation to actuality that Eugene O’Neill’s treatment of the material has, the same state of mind and feeling.” He, too, praised the bedroom scene with the young wife and noted details of Huston’s dance at the party (“wildly, ragingly awry”), and of the “final frustrated moments of the play.”

The production was a critical and financial triumph for Huston. The play was sold out every night, the production was moved to a bigger theatre uptown, Huston’s salary was increased, and he was paid a percentage of the extra income. He was also given a contract for two films in Hollywood. Because of the content of the play and in response to complaints from the citizenry, New York Mayor James J. Walker appointed a committee to see the play and judge whether or not it was contributing to the delinquency of the public. The mayor himself, a great womanizer, was probably contributing more than any play ever could! (He was famous for having said that no woman was ever ruined by a book.) The committee decided the play was a work of art and should not be closed. The result of all this was an enormous amount of publicity and a greater demand for tickets in New York and on the road.  However, O’Neill was angry over the fuss because it drew in audiences looking for risquématerial who snickered at anything vaguely suggestive. But he was pleased with the production and grateful to Huston for his performance. He gave him a copy of the play inscribed with his thanks for “collaborating with him.” Huston said he was flattered, but couldn’t accept the compliment.38  

Walter Huston was to work with O’Neill one more time, but not very successfully. When O’Neill was casting The Fountain, he wished he had a great romantic actor with his father’s style and ability. He was hoping (as he so often was) to get John Barrymore for the swashbuckling hero. Then there was an effort to get the English actor Lionel Atwill, but O’Neill wrote to Agnes in July 1925 that he had been acting like a true ham (O’Neill’s usual term for condemning actors). He said that he had had lunch with Huston, whom he liked better every time he saw him.39 He ultimately decided to use him in the new play, but it was not a good decision.  Neither Huston’s manner nor voice were right for the role. Huston himself said that his performance did not help the play to be successful. He remembered how painful it was for him when Stark Young, so full of praise after Desire, came back after the play and sat and sadly watched Huston take off his make-up. When Huston questioned him, he gave the details of the negative review he would write for his column.40

While disappointed in the play’s reception, O’Neill continued as an admirer of Huston. As the years went by they kept in touch. O’Neill normally felt that making films in Hollywood ruined a stage actor’s technique and attitudes. Apparently, Huston and the Barrymores were exceptions. Writing to his agent in 1932, he said he hoped for a revival of Desire Under the Elms with Huston, “and that’s worth waiting for!”41 Writing to Theresa Helburn in 1938 he discussed the possibility of using Huston in one of the cycle plays in the future, saying that he and his wife had visited him in the summer and discussed the plays. “He’s a fine actor in the right parts, a fine guy, and he has the right spirit.”42 Instead of acting in any other O’Neill play, Huston was in films, made a big stage success with Sinclair Lewis’ Dodsworth in 1934 and another in the musical Knickerbocker Holiday. In this he sang “September Song,”which was so popular that later he always sang it in curtain calls regardless of the play. Many theatregoers today know him from the role of the wonderful old codger hunting for gold with Humphrey Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. In 1948 both he and his son, the director, received Academy Awards for the film, the first time a father and son had won together. At his memorial service in 1950, Spencer Tracy fondly remembered Huston’s work in O’Neill’s plays.

The Huston connection with O’Neill did not end with Walter’s death. In his autobiography, John described the importance to him of sitting in all the rehearsals for Desire Under the Elms. He was excited by watching the characters come to life, striking sparks, and seeing the play taking on “heroic proportions.” He learned all the lines and felt the play had got into his bloodstream. “What I learned there during those weeks of rehearsal would serve me for the rest of my life. Not that I was aware of it at the time. I only knew that I was fascinated.” 43 His fascination continued; after the premiere of The Iceman Cometh, O’Neill’s first production for many years, he got into a shouting match with E. E. Cummings, who did not like the play. Writing in 1980, Huston said, “My feeling then and now is that if any play by any American will endure, it will be The Iceman Cometh. To this I might add Long Day’s Journey into Night.” 44

Because of John Huston’s continuing admiration for O’Neill, he was very excited about the possibility of directing one of his plays. He had just directed No Exit in 1946 when Theresa Helburn called from the Theatre Guild to say she wanted to send him a copy of A Moon for the Misbegotten to see if he would be interested in directing it. He responded that he didn’t have to read it, he wanted to do it. Later he had to call her back to say that Jack Warner wouldn’t give him more time off and he had to return to Hollywood. He asked her to tell O’Neill how sorry he was but she said he was sitting there and Huston could tell him himself. So he summoned up his courage and told O’Neill what sitting in on the rehearsals of Desire Under the Elms and The Fountain had meant to him. O’Neill thanked him and said it meant a great deal to him to hear it.45 This tribute came at a welcome time for O’Neill: the critics and the public, unlike Huston, had largely rejected The Iceman Cometh. It took many more years before John Huston’s belief in the play was proved correct.

Strange Interlude is a play filled with ironies, and the production history and the relationship between O’Neill and Lynn Fontanne, the star, is equally ironic. The play became the most talked about theatrical event of its time and gave rise to many jokes about its length and subject matter. The fact that it was so long that it began at five-fifteen, breaking for dinner at seven-thirty and starting again at nine o’clock and ending shortly after eleven o’clock gave opportunity for many widely quoted witticisms. Robert Benchley quipped, “After all it’s only an ordinary nine-act play.” One of the reviews was headed “Take Before and After Eating.” Restaurants in the area of the theatre did a big business: one offered a “Strange Interlude Sandwich” with six layers. Alexander Woolcott was credited as describing the play as “nine scenes and an epicene.” Alfred Lunt, the actor husband of Fontanne, had a sense of humor that could be barbed. He said of the play, the last in which he and his wife did not perform together, “If Strange Interlude had had two more acts, I could have sued Lynn for desertion.” He generally referred to the play as a “six day bisexual race,” mocking both the subject matter of the play and O’Neill’s penchant for watching six-day bicycle races in Madison Square Garden. Naturally, news of this got back to O’Neill, who did not find Lunt’s quips amusing.46

Lynn Fontanne was a highly successful, highly praised actress when she was cast in the role of Nina. Unlike many of the performers described above, she had moved very easily into theatre and into leading roles. At the age of twelve she was taken to audition for the great English actress Ellen Terry, who decided to give her lessons for two years. She was brought from England to America by Laurette Taylor, who served as her mentor for several years. She appeared in leading roles in The Guardsman by Ferenc Molnar, Franz Werfel’s Goat Song, and George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Arms and the Man, and The Doctor’s Dilemma. Her first encounter with O’Neill was not pleasing. George Tyler had brought Lunt from vaudeville to Broadway stardom with the play Clarence and he hoped to do the same for Fontanne. He cast her in Chris Christopherson but soon realized the role of the woman was not as strong as that of the father and that the play needed a great deal of work.  Fontanne, according to her biographer Jared Brown, wrote to Lunt complaining that the play was weak.47 She must also have known that O’Neill had not been satisfied when she was cast, in part because he believed an American woman was needed for the role.  Although the play, not the acting, was blamed for its failure, there were negative criticisms of her Anna, so Fontanne was very displeased with the entire event. Even more annoying must have been the fact that when Tyler did find the right vehicle to bring her to stardom, Dulcy, it was somewhat overshadowed by the great success of Pauline Lord in the role of Anna in O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize winning rewrite in the same year.

Fontanne was appearing with Lunt in Shaw’s comedy The Doctor’s Dilemma. It was a tremendous success for the Theatre Guild both in the United States and London. Together they dined with Shaw, whom they found charming. Brown reports that Fontanne said, “Icould have fallen in love with him at once.”48 She was offered the role of Nina written by a playwright she did not find charming.  Not only that, she was far from first choice for O’Neill or the Theatre Guild. Their first choice was Katharine Cornell, who said no. O’Neill first suggested Ann Harding, who had been so successful with the Provincetown Players in Glaspell’s Inheritors. He then agreed that Alice Brady would be good, but she turned down the role of such an unattractive woman, to her unending regret. One by one, other actresses turned down the role and finally the Theatre Guild, feeling a little desperate, tried to get Fontanne to play it. According to Brown, she and Lunt were unimpressed by the script, but Lunt urged her to take it because it would be a big event even if it was a failure.  For that reason, apparently, she accepted and he agreed to play in O’Neill’s Marco Millions at the same time.49 They were both still appearing in the Shaw play when rehearsals began. O’Neill agreed to the casting but wrote to Agnes that although Fontanne would be adequate, she would be far from the Nina he had created.50

When rehearsals began, trouble began. Because of the length of the play Actors’ Equity allowed seven weeks of rehearsal. Brown writes that Fontanne found the rehearsals long and tedious and that her dislike of the play increased. She said she respected authors, but that she knew what would “go”and this wouldn’t. She asked O’Neill to cut more lines and he felt he had cut enough. So, she said later, without telling anyone, she “cut, cut, cut, and nobody ever realized it.” It’s doubtful that nobody realized it. Years later she and Lunt still expressed the opinion that the play was no good, even though it was a great hit for her. Lunt said it was “utterly dated, quite unreadable.”51 Nevertheless, the rehearsals, under Philip Moeller’s direction, moved well, and O’Neill, possibly in an attempt to patch things up with Fontanne, told her, “You are so exactly right for the part that it might have been written for you.”52

At this point something very unpleasant occurred: someone in the cast gave the theatre critic for the World, Alexander Woolcott, a copy of the play before the opening and he, unethically, wrote a fiercely negative review for Vanity Fair, expressing his view that it was the Abie’s Irish Rose of the psuedo-intelligensia. Brown says it was probably Fontanne who gave the script to the critic. The Theatre Guild and O’Neill were outraged (possibly at Fontanne as well as Woolcott) and insisted that he be replaced as reviewer for the opening. Ironically, his replacement gave it one of the biggest raves.53

Despite her dislike for the play, Fontanne wanted to do her best, being a true professional and a perfectionist. She based her approach on something, as she said many times in interviews, told to her by Ellen Terry. She did not simply think of the words, but of the meaning behind the words. Fontanne was unlike Method actors.  She always began by learning all of the text, then rehearsing, and then moving deeper into the role. In her article “Thoughts on Acting” she said that she always rehearsed twelve hours a day, going over the material again at night that had been done in the day. As she did she began to know the character; “I sink deeper and deeper into her, discovering things and traits about her I did not know existed when I began to rehearse. This is a process that continues all during the run of the play, even after it has opened.” 54 S. N.  Behrman often worked with the Lunts and described with amusement their passion for perfecting scenes through rehearsal. On one occasion they stopped on a busy street to rehearse a scene, forgetting where they were and drawing a crowd of baffled onlookers. 55 During the run of Strange Interlude, Noel Coward, the lifelong friend of the Lunts, came to a performance and slightly criticized something in the seventh act. Fontanne close-questioned him and then made him come again to see if she had got it right. Brown says that Coward then told everyone, “I had to sit through the whole boring thing from the beginning. And of course she had the seventh act down perfectly.”56

The views of the Lunts and their friends about the play were not shared by the public or the critics. The play was an overwhelming hit, running through the hot summer in an unairconditioned theatre. Critic Dudley Nichols, the replacement for Woolcott, used the phrase “The most important event in the present era of the American theatre.” Like most critics, he gave the focus of attention to Fontanne and the play. He said that she was required to give the most an actress can give, “and she gave to the brim at every demand. She was possessed of an inward power which broke through every restraint as radium shoots its glimmering particles through everything that would contain it.” The critic for the Wall Street News gave details of her acting, indicating that she passed through moods of “beauty, despair, love, hate, arid and rich tragedy.” He said she poured forth a profusion of gifts as “she passes from young womanhood to gray hairs before your eyes. Though the phrase is worn stale with misuse, here is one time when it is possible to say that an actress literally lives the part.” Percy Hammond wrote of the difficulty of the part: “Nina’s neurotic soul and person (is) madly tossed in a nervous whirlpool of faithfulness and unfidelity.” He said that O’Neill explored every corner of her character and that “if he had searched the stage over from Bernhardt to Elsie Fergusson, he could not have found an actress so competent to play Nina Leeds as Miss Fontanne is.” He concluded by saying that watching her act, you forget the accomplishments of “all the other First Actresses from Duse to Miss Madge Kennedy.” Another critic said the role placed Fontanne among those “whose names are at the top of the rosters of great living players.” He, too, noted the difficulty of the role in which she is present in each of the nine long acts. “Her emotional range, her subtlety, her vitality and her lovely presence must have realized the author’s character to his entire satisfaction.” Several reviewers noted that the characters were the first to be fully developed in a Freudian sense and that the modern theatre had been longing for such a play.

The great success of the play, the fact of its winning the Pulitzer Prize, and the great praise Fontanne received could not overcome her dislike of the play or, seemingly, of O’Neill himself.  The longer it ran, the longer she was separated from Alfred Lunt, who was in O’Neill’s less successful play Marco Millions. Here was another irony: the Theatre Guild initially supposed that Lunt’s play would be the big success and that Fontanne’s would only bring the organization prestige.

The reverse was true. One of the great disappointments in the history of O’Neill plays is Marco Millions. It is a curious mixture of comedy and poignancy, but it would seem possible that a good director with a good cast could create a delightful evening in the theatre. The production directed by Rouben Mamoulian (who had recently been so successful with Porgy) is remembered as a major disaster. In fact, it was a modest success. Gilbert Gabriel mentioned it in passing while reviewing Strange Interlude and said that while it was not as big a success, it was drawing steadier and larger audiences than anything the Guild had ever done before and that there was talk of adding matinees. For the critics, however, the play was a disappointment. Perhaps expectations were too great: there was a highly successful director, designs by the creative Lee Simonson, and a cast in which the wonderful Alfred Lunt was supported by excellent actors including Morris Carnovsky.

The play opened eleven days before Strange Interlude. Before rehearsals began O’Neill had agreed to cuts and alterations in the text, which were made for economic reasons. Although he accepted the changes, he was sorry that he couldn’t get a full production of the play as he envisioned it. Brown writes that economic considerations held Mamoulian back, too. The play is a satire on an uninspired and uninspiring businessman, Marco Polo, who thinks only of profit. The director thought it would be fun to have Lunt walk off the stage at the end of the play, up the aisle, and step into a waiting limousine outside. “The effect was intended to suggest that Marco Polo was just another ‘tired businessman.’” 57 Although some critics praised the production and Lunt’s performance, many felt the whole evening was tiresome or even foolish. Brown writes that even Alexander Woolcott, a great admirer of both Lunt and Fontanne, felt that his performance in the O’Neill play was less effective than his performances in the past. Woolcott wrote that Lunt seemed very tired, and seemed to pause between each speech in his performance: “it was marked by an almost hypnotic weariness, each line of the long role parting from him as if, although he was quite certain what the next might be, he had not quite decided whether to buck up and say it or just to curl up there on the Guild stage and take a good, long nap.”58 Lunt’s voice was worn out and Fontanne was so concerned that she objected to him performing in Volpone, telling the Theatre Guild she had a letter from a doctor saying his health was in danger.59

© Copyright 1999-2007 eOneill.com