Yale University Sarah Lawrence College The New School
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill Jr. (May 5, 1910 – September 25, 1950) was an American professor of Greek literature[1] and the only child of Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill and his first wife, Kathleen Jenkins.[2]
Early life
O'Neill Jr.'s parents divorced in 1912, when he was a toddler. O'Neill once said he did not even meet his father until age 12.[2] He entered Yale in 1928; in his freshman year a poem he had written was widely reprinted.[2] He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale in 1932, where he was a member of Skull and Bones secret student society.[1]
After studying abroad for a year, he earned a PhD in philosophy from Yale[2] in 1936.[1]
His father had two other children with Agnes Boulton, his wife from 1918 to 1929: Shane, born in 1919 and Oona born in 1925.
O'Neill married in 1931, to Elizabeth Green; this marriage ended in divorce after six years. He married secondly Sarah Hayward in 1939, whom he divorced after seven years. He then remarried a third time, to Janet Hunter Longley.[2] O'Neill abused alcohol, as did his father and grandfather. On September 25, 1950, in Woodstock, he committed suicide at age 40 by slitting his wrist and ankle with a razor. He then walked downstairs and expired by the front door of his cottage.[2] These lines were found among his effects after his death: "Never let it be said of O'Neill that he failed to empty a bottle. Ave atque vale [hail and farewell]." Shortly before his death, he had played the lead in a local theatrical production for the benefit of the local artists' colony.[2]
