Throughout his prolific career, Eugene O'Neill mined the dark veins of his family's tragic history. In the trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra, O'Neill turned to the Greek myths of the House of Atreus, transplanting them to a New England landscape.
In September 1929 when O'Neill began work on the first draft of Electra, he and his third wife, the actress Carlotta Monterey, were living in France.
Carlotta shielded her husband from unwanted guests so he could write in peace. Her role was what Strindberg has described as "the labor of keeping the filth of life at a distance."Their home was Le Plessis, a forty five-room château in the Touraine with marble floors, tapestries and a corps of servants. In his study, O'Neill sat in what looked like a barber's chair, ordered from England, with built-in shelves for reference books. Of Electra, Monterey later recalled, "We went through such a horrible time with it. Gene used to want to tear it up. When he finally finished it he felt he never wanted to write another play."
The writing, which extended to six drafts, lasted two years. O'Neill kept a journal of his struggles. In a rare disclosure to a friend he wrote, 'Oh, for a language to write drama in! For a speech that is dramatic and isn't just conversation] I'm so strait-jacketed by writing in terms of talk!"
While O'Neill was satisfied with the play when he read it in galley proofs, he continued to make changes right up to opening night. He dedicated Mouming Becomes Electra to his wife. "In memory of the interminable days of rain in which you bravely suffered in silence that this trilogy might be born," he wrote, "days when I had my work but you had nothing but household frets, and a blank vista through the salon windows of the gray land of Le Plessis, with the wet black trees still and dripping, and the mist wraiths mourning over the drowned fields."
Mourning Becomes Electra opened on Broadway on October 26, 1931, to huge critical acclaim. It marked the pinnacle of Eugene O'Neill's career to date.
Eugene and Carlotta were friends of Mai-Mai Sze and Irene Sharaff. After her husband's death, Carlotta Monterey O'Neill inscribed this copy of Mourning Becomes Electra to Mai-Mai Sze. The couple's calling card is also pasted inside the front cover. A photograph of Eugene O'Neill with his dalmatian Blemie is pasted to the back flyleaf.
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