Long Day's Journey Into Night

Long Day’s Journey into Night was a personal project for Eugene O’Neill, and he did not want it to be published or performed during his lifetime. The play itself is autobiographical in the sense that Edmund is O’Neill, who had a brother, James Jr., a father, James, and a mother, Mary Ellen, who are accurately captured in the characters of Jamie, Tyrone, and Mary, with only the last name changed from O’Neill to Tyrone, based on James’s Irish heritage. The child that passed away, Eugene, was Edmund in real life, with O’Neill being the third child of James and Mary. O’Neill did not want the play published until 25 years after his death, but his wife, Carlotta, had it published early in 1956 to fund the Eugene O’Neill Collection at Yale University in New Haven, CT. The play follows O’Neill’s real family, as O’Neill himself went to Princeton University for a year before traveling, as Edmund has in the play, while James, O’Neill’s father, was a successful actor who worked alongside Edwin Booth, as did Tyrone. O’Neill’s brother, Jamie, or James Jr., did have an alcohol addiction and died from alcohol-related complications in the early 1920s, along with James and Mary. When O’Neill was born, his mother was given morphine as a sedative during the birth, which lead to an addiction to morphine that lasted most of the rest of her life. The real Mary recovered from her addiction in 1914, though she died of a brain tumor in the early 1920s.

Like Tyrone, James O’Neill purchased the rights to The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas and adapted it to the stage, with Charles Fechter taking on the role of Edmond Dantes, the lead role. He performed this role thousands of times, and he became bored and accustomed to the role, making it difficult for him to take on new roles. Though he made a good deal of money on the play, many felt that it compromised his talent as an actor. It is possible that the name Edmund corresponds to the lead role in The Count of Monte Cristo, and this is the source of the name of O’Neill’s summer home in New London, CT, The Monte Cristo Cottage. The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center maintains the Cottage, and it is located along the coast of Connecticut. This home is where Long Day’s Journey into Night takes place, and the Theater Center has maintained the home to look as it would have in 1912 when the play occurs. In the play, when Mary and the family reference the town they are in, they refer to New London, CT, in the early 1900s.