“Only an hour after I’d left him to go to work-I was on the Liberator magazine then-he’d be calling me from the Hell Hole or some other bar to come back.” O’Neill had an affinity for people which showed in the characters he wrote about. ![]() “He couldn’t bear to be alone,” said Day. “She sat in the saloons for hours,” wrote Louis Sheaffer in 'O’Neill: Son and Playwright,' “matching the men drink for drink, and knew ribald choruses of ‘Frankie and Johnny’ her companions had never heard of.” But strangely, they took to each other, though apparently not as lovers. Before becoming a Catholic icon, she was a drinker and even had an abortion. However, back in the days when she used to drink with O’Neill at the Golden Swan bar on the corner of West 4th Street and Sixth Avenue she was no angel. She is universally praised for her work with the poor and underprivileged from her base in the Catholic Worker movement. She has been hailed in the last few years by both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. Today, Day is hailed as a “Servant of God” as she begins the journey to sainthood. If there ever was a Catholic odd couple it would be O’Neill and Day. There he hung around with the likes of John Reed, Louise Bryant, and a young woman by the name of Dorothy Day. O’Neill’s portrait of his mother in "Long Day’s Journey into Night" is devastating and chronicles the dark side of the Irish soul.Īfter spending some time at Princeton University, O’Neill took to the sea for several years and it inspired several of his plays, including "The Long Voyage Home" and "Bound East for Cardiff." A bout with tuberculosis landed him in a sanatorium for a time and when he recovered he headed for Greenwich Village. ![]() Oscar comes across as someone who didn’t care about class and who treated these young men, be they lovers or not, with generosity and kindness.īut his birth left a mark on his mother, who became a drug addict, and young Eugene with the middle name of Gladstone, after the English prime minister who wanted home rule for Ireland, began life with a saturnine disposition which only seemed to worsen with age. Carson seemed to prosecute him for stepping out with boys who were not of his class. What comes across in "The Fall of the House of Wilde" was Oscar’s naiveté. Carson skillfully demonstrated Wilde’s appetite for young men and when Oscar withdrew his court claim, charges were brought against him and a warrant was signed by H.H. ” Oscar, encouraged by the spoiled Douglas, sued for libel which put him face-to-face with Carson in court. Oscar, at the height of his fame, had an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas which caused Douglas’ father, Lord Queensberry, to accuse Wilde of “posing as somdomite.
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