American playwright (1888–1953) who occupies a central place in the history of twentieth-century drama. Among his most famous works are The Iceman Cometh, Mourning Becomes Electra, and Long Day’s Journey into Night. Vintage matte-finish 7.25 x 8.5 photo of O’Neill on the wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts, taken in 1919 by Nickolas Muray, signed and inscribed in fountain pen to his psychiatrist, “To Doctor Bisch, with sincere friendship, Eugene O’Neill.” Matted and framed to an overall size of 14.5 x 16. In fine condition, with scattered silvering to darker areas of image, visible only at an angle.
The wharf in Provincetown was a special place for O’Neill. In 1916, he had followed friends to the seaside town with a trunk of his unproduced plays and fell in love with the fledgling Provincetown Players. By the end of the summer, the players produced his Bound East for Cardiff at a ramshackle theater on the wharf, he returned to New York that fall with the group to establish the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village.
O’Neill became acquainted with Dr. Louis Bisch in Bermuda. The psychiatrist’s wife, Maude, was a former nurse and aided Agnes O’Neill during her pregnancy as well as helped the playwright with his insomnia. O’Neill first met Dr. Bisch in 1924 and for a time consulted with him regarding his desire to overcome alcoholism. Bisch himself had written a play and enjoyed discussing the creative process with O’Neill, an exchange Bisch described in a 1925 radio talk called “The Psychology of Playwriting.” An exceedingly rare signed photograph of O’Neill inscribed for a close confidant.
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