Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
O'Neill's own family had its own share of dysfunction, and he mined it in writing his plays. Drug addicted mother, suicide attempts, a distant father, alcoholism—he didn't have to make this stuff up. His father was a traveling actor, and Eugene was born in a hotel room on one of his tours. (Source)
O'Neill attended Princeton University for a year in 1907 but got kicked out. There are a lot of stories involving disorderly conduct, but our favorite is that he threw a beer bottle through the university president's window. That university president being future U.S. prez Woodrow Wilson. (Source)
College drop-out or not, O'Neill was the first U.S. playwright to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for his amazing body of work. he couldn't make it to the ceremony and had someone else read his speech. You can read it on the Nobel website. (Source)
There's a statue of O'Neill as a child in New London, Connecticut, where he spent summers with his family until he was a young man. Why as a child? It's because the people of New London knew him as a drunkard and troublemaker who, in the words of the New London mayor of the time, was "a stewbum who never did nothing for New London." Finally, in 1960, the city forgave him and commissioned the statue, but one of the little future genius who liked to sit by the water and sketch. (Source)