LOCATION OF ASSOCIATED MATERIAL
Two sound recordings are located in Historical Sound Recordings: Mourning
Becomes Electra (Preston Recording Company: New York); and first
test dictations, experiments with distance of microphone, and readings
from The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey Into Night,
all in the voice of Eugene O'Neill.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PAPERS
The Eugene O'Neill Papers document the life of the dramatist Eugene
O'Neill, especially his life with Carlotta Monterey O'Neill after 1928.
The collection consists of professional and family correspondence,
manuscripts of O'Neill's writings and materials associated with his
writings, photographs, artworks, recordings, legal and financial
records, medical records, and personal and professional memorabilia. The
papers span the years 1872 to 1970, but the bulk of the material is from
1930s to 1950s. The collection is organized into eight series: Eugene
O'Neill Correspondence, Carlotta Monterey O'Neill Correspondence,
Writings, Personal Papers, Photographs, Memorabilia, Artwork, and
Recordings. The collection is housed in 185 boxes.
Series I, Eugene O'Neill Correspondence,
is organized into three subseries: General Correspondence, Family
Correspondence, and Third Party Correspondence. Each subseries is
arranged alphabetically. Because Carlotta Monterey O'Neill often wrote
on O'Neill's behalf, her letters from his lifetime have been interfiled
in this series; her letters written after his death are filed in Series
II, Carlotta Monterey O'Neill Correspondence.
The first subseries, General Correspondence, mainly contains
holograph drafts of O'Neill's outgoing correspondence, but also includes
some original letters to O'Neill and Carlotta. The subseries contains a
significant number of original letters from O'Neill to his lawyers,
Winfield E. Aronberg and Harry Weinberger, and to his literary agent,
the Richard J. Madden Play Company, Inc., as well as carbons of their
letters to him. These files appear to have been turned over to the
O'Neills at some point by each firm. The files also contain the firms'
original correspondence with third parties regarding O'Neill and his
work. (Correspondence with known parties is located in third party
correspondence.) The correspondence with O'Neill's lawyers concerns
literary matters, taxes, and his divorce from Agnes Boulton. The
correspondence with his literary agent mainly concerns production and
publication of his plays. Other notable correspondents represented in
this subseries include Barrett Harper Clark, Saxe Commins, Russel
Crouse, Theresa Helburn, Lawrence Langner, Kenneth Macgowan, Leon Mirlas,
George Jean Nathan, Carl Van Vechten, and Fania Marinoff Van Vechten.
There are also three notebooks containing O'Neill's drafts of letters;
these have been cross-referenced under the name of each correspondent.
Letters from correspondents not listed individually may be found in
"letter" general files. Unidentified correspondence is
arranged at the end of the subseries.
The second subseries, Family Correspondence, contains original
holograph and typescript letters between family members, as well as
O'Neill's holograph drafts of letters. The subseries includes
correspondence between O'Neill and his cousins, Agnes and Lillian
Brennan; his daughter, Oona Chaplin; his third wife, Carlotta Monterey
O'Neill; his sons, Eugene O'Neill, Jr. and Shane Rudraighe O'Neill;
Carlotta's daughter, Cynthia Chapman Stram; and Carlotta's mother,
Nellie Gotchett Tharsing. There is also correspondence between Carlotta
and her third husband, Ralph Barton; Eugene O'Neill; and Eugene O'Neill,
Jr.
The third subseries, Third Party Correspondence, contains
correspondence between third parties and O'Neill's literary agent, the
Richard J. Madden Play Company, Inc., and his lawyers, Harry Weinberger
and Winfield E. Aronberg (the latter correspondence includes Eugene
O'Neill, Jr.; James O'Neill, Jr.; and Kathleen Pitt-Smith). There are
also three exchanges between O'Neill's father, James, and third parties
regarding his acting.
Series II, Carlotta Monterey O'Neill
Correspondence, is organized into two subseries: General
Correspondence, and Family Correspondence. Each subseries is arranged
alphabetically. The correspondence in this series occurred after
O'Neill's death. (For any correspondence to or from Carlotta that took
place during O'Neill's lifetime, see Series I.)
The first subseries, General Correspondence, mainly contains letters
to Carlotta, although there are a few holograph drafts and carbons of
letters from her. The correspondence mostly concerns her work regarding
the publication and production of O'Neill's plays after his death.
Correspondents include Karl Ragnar Gierow, Dudley Nichols, Jose
Quintero, Lars Schmidt, Robert Sisk, and Yale University Press. There is
also correspondence with O'Neill's biographers, including Arthur and
Barbara Gelb, and Louis Sheaffer. There is a significant amount of
correspondence with her lawyers at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft,
and at Nutter, McClennen & Fish; with the literary agency, Richard
J. Madden Play Company, Inc.; and with the Yale University library
system (the latter regarding Carlotta's gift to Yale of O'Neill's
papers). There is some correspondence with friends, including Mai-Mai
Sze, Carl Van Vechten, and Fania Marinoff Van Vechten. There are also
three notebooks containing Carlotta's drafts of letters (in shorthand);
these have been cross-referenced under the name of each correspondent.
Letters from correspondents not listed individually may be found in
"letter" general files. There is a small amount of
unidentified correspondence at the end of the subseries.
The second subseries, Family Correspondence, contains letters from
O'Neill's cousins, Agnes C. Brennan and Lillian Brennan; Carlotta's
first husband, John Moffat; her daughter, Cynthia Chapman Stram; and her
grandson, Gerald Eugene Stram (and his family). The subseries contains a
few holograph drafts and carbons of letters from Carlotta.
Series III, Writings, is organized
into six subseries: Plays, Poems, Other Writings, Notes, Work Diaries,
and Writings of Others. Each subseries is arranged alphabetically. The
first subseries, Plays, contains notes, outlines and plot summaries,
holograph and typescript drafts, proofs, production and publication
contracts, advertisements, programs, brochures, and clippings of
reviews. Annotated proofs are located in this series; unannotated proofs
and dummies are cataloged separately as printed material. Contracts for
single plays are filed in this series; contracts that pertain to more
than one play are located in Series IV, in the subseries, Financial and
Legal Material. Photographs of productions are filed in Series V, in the
subseries, Play Productions. Artwork relating to O'Neill's plays is
filed in Series VII, Artwork. Plays represented in this subseries
include Ah, Wilderness!, All God's Chillun Got Wings, Anna
Christie, Days Without End, Dynamo, The Great God
Brown, Hughie, The Iceman Cometh, Lazarus Laughed,
Long Day's Journey Into Night, Marco Millions, A Moon
for the Misbegotten, Mourning Becomes Electra, and Strange
Interlude, among others. There is some material regarding the
plagiarism suit brought against O'Neill for Strange Interlude.
There are a significant number of notes regarding O'Neill's cycle plays,
as well as drafts of More Stately Mansions and A Touch of the
Poet.
The second subseries, Poems, contains mostly typescript drafts. Some
of the typescripts appear to be original drafts that were annotated and
signed by O'Neill; others are drafts of early poems from 1915 to 1917
that were typed by Carlotta on Tao House stationery in the 1940s. There
are a few holograph drafts. In Series IV, there are also some poems by
O'Neill that were copied by Carlotta into a volume (box 106, folder
1787).
The third subseries, Other Writings, contains drafts of O'Neill's
tribute to his dog, the "Last Will and Testament of Silverdene
Emblem O'Neill"; a draft of his acceptance speech for the Nobel
Prize in 1936; clippings of O'Neill's tribute to George Pierce Baker
after Baker's death in 1935; and a draft of his tribute to Maksim Gorky
after Gorky's death in 1936. There are transcriptions by Carlotta for Inscriptions:
Eugene O'Neill to Carlotta Monterey O'Neill, which was published in
1960 under O'Neill's name.
The fourth subseries, Notes, contains holograph notes on ideas for
plays and for other writings. The notes for plays are not associated
with specific plays that O'Neill wrote. (Notes on specific plays are
filed in the subseries, Plays, under the title of each play). The notes
span the years 1918 to 1938; many are undated. The fifth subseries, Work
Diaries, contains four diaries in which O'Neill recorded where he was
and what he was working on, from 1924 to 1943. He notes in the first
diary that the information was copied from other diaries, except for
1925, which was written from memory (the original diary for 1925 is in
the Agnes Boulton Collection of Eugene O'Neill, YCAL MSS 122, box 5,
folder 171). The sixth subseries, Writings of Others, mainly contains
writings about O'Neill's work and life by various authors, including
Croswell Bowen, Barrett Harper Clark, Lawrence Langner, Jordan Yale
Miller, and George Jean Nathan. There are also works by Eugene O'Neill,
Jr., that he inscribed and sent to O'Neill and Carlotta.
Series IV, Personal Papers, is
organized into eight subseries: Address Books, Carlotta Monterey O'Neill
Diaries and Calendars, Certificates and Awards, Clippings and Ephemera,
Financial and Legal Material, Inscriptions and Signatures, Medical
Information, and Personal Writings and Notes. The first subseries,
Address Books, contains five address and telephone books that are either
in Carlotta's hand or are typewritten. One was signed by her in 1936;
the others were probably created by her after O'Neill's death. The
second subseries, Carlotta Monterey O'Neill Diaries and Calendars,
contains Carlotta's diaries, from 1928 to 1964. These diaries appear to
be copies that she made in the 1960s from older diaries; the entries
concern her and O'Neill's activities.
The third subseries, Certificates and Awards, contains O'Neill's
membership pins or certificates received from the American Academy of
Arts and Letters, the American Philosophical Society, and the National
Institute of Arts and Letters, as well as awards and medals received
during his lifetime for his plays, including the Nobel Prize and three
Pulitzer Prizes. Awarded posthumously were the Antoinette Perry Award, a
plaque from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the New
York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and a certificate
showing the 1967 O'Neill postage stamp. This subseries also contains
O'Neill's honorary doctorate from Yale University (1926), and one medal
that Carlotta received in 1962 from Dramatiska teatern.
The fourth subseries, Clippings and Ephemera, contains clippings from
newspapers and magazines; brochures; and programs regarding relatives,
friends, and associates, including Ralph Barton, Agnes Boulton, Oona
Chaplin, James O'Neill, and Shane Rudraighe O'Neill. There is also
material concerning O'Neill and Carlotta themselves. The fifth subseries,
Financial and Legal Material, contains contracts and royalty information
for productions and publications of O'Neill's plays. The contracts in
this subseries each pertain to more than one play. (Any contract that
pertains to a single play is filed under the name of that play in Series
III.) This subseries also contains cancelled checks, checkbooks,
documents regarding O'Neill's and Carlotta's marriage and living
expenses in France, tax information, copies of O'Neill's and Carlotta's
wills, O'Neill's certificate of discharge as a seaman (1911), a copy of
O'Neill's parents' marriage certificate and of his mother's birth
certificate.
The sixth subseries, Inscriptions and Signatures, contains
inscriptions and signatures that were removed from books owned by
O'Neill and Carlotta. The inscriptions are to them from various people
and from each other. The seventh subseries, Medical Information,
contains a medical record kept by O'Neill's nurse, by his doctor, and by
Carlotta, from 1951 until his death in November 1953. There are notes by
O'Neill listing the dates that he took the drug, tolserol. There is also
a copy of his death certificate and of his autopsy report. In addition,
there are medical notes regarding Carlotta from 1954 to 1963. The eighth
subseries, Personal Writings and Notes, contains O'Neill's
autobiographical notes and a diagram that he made of his family
relationship; there is also a folder of his signatures that were cut
from envelopes and financial documents. There are notes and
reminiscences written by Carlotta about O'Neill and other topics. There
are a few writings by O'Neill's father, including his version of Monte
Cristo.
Series V, Photographs, is organized
into nine subseries: Eugene O'Neill, Carlotta Monterey O'Neill, Other
Family, Other People, Albums, Animals, Places, Objects, and Play
Productions. Each subseries is arranged alphabetically and then
chronologically. Some of the photographs are copies and have been so
noted. (In these cases, the library does not own the original.) In
addition to photographic prints, there are negatives in this collection
(though stored separately). In the case of negatives for which there was
no corresponding print, the Library had one copy print made; this
information is specified after the folder title.
The first subseries, Eugene O'Neill, contains photographs from 1889
to 1948, including images of O'Neill as a baby and as a young child. The
second subseries, Carlotta Monterey O'Neill, spans the years from the
1890s to 1960, and includes some photographs from Carlotta's modeling
and acting careers. The third subseries, Other Family, contains
photographs of family members, including Agnes Boulton; Oona and Charlie
Chaplin; Eugene O'Neill, Jr.; O'Neill's parents, James O'Neill and Mary
Ellen Quinlan O'Neill; Shane Rudraighe O'Neill; Carlotta's daugher,
Cynthia Chapman Stram; Carlotta's grandson, Gerald Eugene Stram;
Carlotta's great-grand-daughter, Denise Dayle Stram; and Carlotta's
mother, Nellie Gotchett Tharsing. The fourth subseries, Other People,
contains photographs of non-family members, including Ingrid Bergman,
Ilka Chase, Lillian Gish, George Jean Nathan, Marian Seldes, James
Speyer, Carl Van Vechten, Fania Marinoff Van Vechten, and some of the
O'Neills' servants at Casa Genotta and at Tao House. There are a few
photographs that were probably collected by James O'Neill of Sarah
Bernhardt and Edwin Booth.
The fifth subseries, Albums, contains four albums of photographs from
the O'Neills' time in France, and five miniature albums of photographs
from their time at Tao House in California. There is also a scrapbook
that Carlotta made in 1954 that contains copies of photographs from her
life with O'Neill. The contents of each album are listed in the Appendix.
The sixth subseries, Animals, contains photographs of the O'Neills' dog,
Ben, at Chateau du Plessis; their dog, Silverdene Emblem; and the dog of
Carlotta's first husband, John Moffat. The seventh subseries, Places,
contains photographs of places where the O'Neills lived, such as Chateau
du Plessis in France; Beacon Farm in Northport, New York; Casa Genotta
in Sea Island, Georgia; Tao House in California; and Marblehead,
Massachusetts. There are also photographs of places that the O'Neills
visited, such as Pompeii, Italy; Cap-d'Ail, France; and Wolf Lake, New
York.
The eighth subseries, Objects, contains photographs of Egyptian
statues in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; O'Neill's Renault car at
Chateau du Plessis; a silver bracelet; a statue of a Chinese dog; and
flower arrangements (the latter photographs were taken by Carl Van
Vechten). The ninth subseries, Play Productions, contains photographs of
various productions of O'Neill's plays, from 1916 to 1966. When the
photographer was specified on the print, this has been listed in the
folder description. The earliest photographs are from a 1916 production
of Bound East for Cardiff by the Provincetown Players. O'Neill
himself appears in two photographs of the Provincetown Players' 1916
production of Thirst. There also are many photographs from Dudley
Nichols's film adaptation of Mourning Becomes Electra in 1947.
Series VI, Memorabilia, is organized
into three subseries: Office Material, Personal Effects, and Other. The
first subseries, Office Material, contains book-related items, including
bookends and bookplates; various kinds of stationery, including writing
paper, postcards, unused notebooks, and visiting cards; and writings
tools, including a pen, pencils, erasers, and leather writing
portfolios. The second subseries, Personal Effects, contains items
relating to O'Neill, Carlotta, and O'Neill's brother, James, including
Carlotta's braid of hair and two locks of her hair; war ration books;
money that O'Neill won in a crap game on the S. S. Coblenz in 1928; a
bank case containing French receipts; and James's missal case. This
subseries also contains O'Neill's monogrammed leather jewelry box
(holding various pieces of jewelry, and accessories belonging to O'Neill
and to Carlotta); O'Neill's Cartier pocket watch; and O'Neill's and
Carlotta's gold rings. The third subseries, Other, contains branches and
leaves (possibly from a tree at Casa Genotta) in a frame, Blemie's dog
collar, two banners (1956 and 1958) from Dramatiska teatern in
Stockholm, and a map of the Hudson River inscribed by James Speyer.
Series VII, Artwork, contains art
that was collected by, or given to, O'Neill and Carlotta. In this series
are portraits of O'Neill, including works by Cyrus Leroy Baldridge,
Miguel Covarrubias, and Edmond Thomas Quinn. There are seven drawings by
Alfred Joseph Frueh that were given by Frueh to Carlotta; one is a
portrait of Carlotta, and two are valentines. Some of the artwork
pertains to O'Neill's plays, including a print by Al Hirschfeld of The
Iceman Cometh, two watercolors by Robert Edmond Jones of scenes in The
Iceman Cometh, and three watercolors by Jones of scenes in Mourning
Becomes Electra. There are some artworks by unidentified artists,
including a silhouette of James O'Neill as Virginius, a statue of a
Chinese god of the theatre, two Noh masks, and a watercolor of a scene
in China.
Series VIII, Recordings, contains
five recordings (all after O'Neill's death) on phonograph records,
including two commercial recordings of O'Neill's plays, two recordings
by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (one of Desire Under the Elms
and one entitled "Tribute to E. O'Neil(l)"), and one recording
that appears to be of a dinner at Quo Vadis Restaurant in 1963. |
