(5 of 6)
The Return. Why did O'Neill decide to return to Manhattan? Some people whisper about money difficulties, but that seems unlikely. Others suggest that after five years of infirmity, unproductiveness and cramped quarters the thought of having a new play produced might amount to a rebirth.
Whatever O'Neill's motives, he and his wife went to Manhattan last year, taking little except their toothbrushes and their big, indispensable collections of books and records (which jam two of the six rooms of their present apartment).
The Man. According to Iceman's Director Eddie Dowling, the actors, who at first were as shy as O'Neill, "warmed up to him after the first ten minutes; they knew he belongs in the theater." They "adored" him because his response was so keen, because he was so gentle and appreciative, and so quick to smile when anyone did something well. When he arrived late for a rehearsal, which rarely happened, they kept asking about him. Says Dowling: "They miss him when he's not there."
There is nothing upstage about O'Neill. The mass interview he gave the press, early last month, and his more intimate conversation after the conference, left an impression of the man which, in many respects, was much more affecting and revealing than the play with which he broke his long silence as an artist.
Newshawks had been warned that they were going to meet a man in poor health. They met a man as thin, brittle and white as a stick of chalk, who at the age of 58 looked 70. He shuddered with palsy. His face was shrunken tightly against his fine skull. His cheeks drooped wearily below his mouth. It was not until he had walked swiftly, but shakily, towards them and had taken his seat, that newsmen noticed much about him that was still youthful and perhaps more impressive than even before: the graceful, aquiline head; the quality of finality, of definitive-ness—and his eyes, which one of O'Neill's friends calls "the crow's-nest of his soul."
His paralysis agitans involved his whole emaciated body in one miserable stammer. Sometimes he could scarcely project his palsied voice past his lips. Sometimes, uncontrollably, it filled the whole room with its blurting bass boom. What gave him great dignity was the complete purity of his manner in its courtesy, diffidence, simplicity, and the pungency of his expression. Since, to avoid the fatigue of unnecessary speech, he edits his thoughts, his conversation has some of the finish of literature.
Enraged Resignation. O'Neill said that he regarded his illness with "enraged resignation. Outwardly, I might blame it on the war. . . . But inwardly . . . the war helped me realize that I was putting my faith in the old values, and they're gone. . . . It's very sad, but there are no values to live by today. . . . Anything is permissible if you know the angles.
"I feel, in that sense, that America is the greatest failure in history. It was given everything, more than any other country in history, but we've squandered our soul by trying to possess something outside it, and we'll end as that game usually does, by losing our soul and the thing outside it too. But why go on—the Bible said it much better: 'For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'