James O'Neill

James O'Neill (November 15, 1847 – August 10, 1920) was an Irish-American theatre actor. He was the father of American playwright Eugene O'Neill and the inspiration for one of the primary characters in his son's play Long Day's Journey into Night.

Early life James O'Neill was born on November 15, 1847, in County Kilkenny, Ireland. His parents were distant cousins, Edward and Mary O'Neill. His father was a farmer. The family emigrated to America in 1851 and settled in Buffalo, New York. In 1857 they moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where James was apprenticed to a machinist.

Career

At the age of 21, he made his stage debut in a Cincinnati, Ohio, production of Boucicault's The Colleen Bawn (1867). Also in 1867, Edwin Forrest embarked on a "farewell tour". O'Neill had a minor part in Forrest's Cincinnati production of Virginius, and then joined a travelling repertory company. He played a young sailor in Joseph Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle and for the first time found his brogue a handicap. Casting O'Neill, who was called Black Irish because of his black hair, has been marked as one possible origin of disputes about whether the character Othello was meant to merely to have black hair and dark features, rather than to be of sub-Saharan African origin.

While in San Francisco, O'Neill became friends with fellow actor, John Elitch. When Elitch opened the Elitch Zoological Gardens in Denver, Colorado, on May 1, 1890, O'Neill attended the opening and promised "I'll come back and play on that stage whenever you say." On May 30, 1897, O'Neill kept his promise and appeared in the opening play, Helene, by Martha Morton.

He was considered a promising actor, quickly working his way up the ranks to become a matinee idol.

Scandal In 1874 O'Neill joined Richard M. Hooley's company, and the following year toured San Francisco, Virginia City and Sacramento. He then headed back east to join the Union Square Company. By 1887, The San Francisco Morning Call estimated O'Neill's fortune at a quarter of a million dollars. In March 1894, O'Neill took on the role of Shane O'Neill in the play The Prince of Ulster.

According to his son, Eugene,

My father was really a remarkable actor, but the enormous success of "Monte Cristo" kept him from doing other things. He could go out year after year and clear fifty thousand in a season. He thought that he simply couldn't afford to do anything else. But in his later years he was full of bitter regrets. He felt "Monte Cristo" had ruined his career as an artist.

The company toured as far west at St. Louis; Eugene O'Neill who had given up his studies at Princeton, was the assistant treasurer. He left the company to begin his wanderings at sea. O'Neill converted "Monte Cristo" into tabloid form for the vaudeville circuit to accommodate changing taste in theater entertainment.

O'Neill's celebrity and identification with Monte Cristo led Adolph Zukor to engage O'Neill in 1912 to appear in a feature film version of the play as the first production of his Famous Players Film Company. By that time O'Neill had been continuously playing the part for nearly 40 years and was 65 years old. Directed and photographed by Edwin S. Porter and co-starring Nance O'Neil as Mercedes, the film was initially held back in release but finally appeared in late 1913.

Death In mid-1920, James was struck by an automobile in New York City and taken to Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London, Connecticut. He died, aged 72, on August 11, 1920, from intestinal cancer, at the family summer home, the Monte Cristo Cottage in Connecticut. His funeral at St. Joseph's Church was attended by, among others, O'Neill's sister, Mrs. M. Platt of St. Louis and Edward D. White, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. O'Neill was buried in St. Mary's cemetery.

Legacy James O'Neill later became the model for James Tyrone, the tightwad, mercurial, insensitive father character in Eugene O'Neill's posthumously published autobiographical play Long Day's Journey into Night, which tells the story of the Tyrone family, which closely resembles the O'Neill family.