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Notes on the Antecedents of Anna Christie

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Claude R. Flory
Claude R. Flory*
Affiliation:
Florida State University, Tallahassee
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Abstract

A letter from O'Neill to John Rogers, an actor in Tyler's production of “Chris,” refers to the play as “a frank experiment in dramatic construction.” Jordan Y. Miller alleges that elements of “The Ole Davil” were subsequently “combined with ‘Chris’ to become the final 'Anna Christie.' ” However, an examination of the manuscripts discloses that there was really nothing “experimental” in “Chris” and that “The Ole Davil” is virtually an alternate title for Anna Christie, with at least ninety-five percent of the text of “Davil” being identical with the published text of Anna. O'Neill complained of Tyler's cutting “Chris” during the productions in Atlantic City and Philadelphia, but this was apparently greatly exaggerated. When the playwright himself reworked “Chris” into “The Ole Davil” and finally Anna Christie, he deleted nine of the seventeen original characters and reduced his manuscript by ten thousand words. But Paul Anderson of “Chris” is a much closer antecedent of Mat Burke than most critics have indicated. There are many verbal parallels between the first Christopherson play and the last. A comparison of the manuscripts is an enlightening study of O'Neill's maturation.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 86 , Issue 1 , January 1971 , pp. 77 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1971

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References

Note 1 in page 83 Jordan Y. Miller, Eugene O'Neill and the American Critic (Hamden, Conn., 1962), p. 135. All subsequent references to Miller are given in the text.

Note 2 in page 83 O'Neill wrote at least one other letter to Rogers—apparently in 1924 or early 1925. It indicates that the playwright was capable of more graciousness toward actors than he is sometimes given credit for :

Dear Mr. Rogers :

I certainly do remember you—very clearly. You and your brother were the only happy spots in that ill-fated production of Chris.

I have only one play going on next year—the Fountain.—and don't know if there would be a part for you in that or not. Won't you go and see Mr. Hopkins, and show him this letter? I would like to have you in one of my plays again if there was a part for you; you were certainly good as the Cockney in Chris.

With all best wishes,

Eugene O'Neill

Peaked Hill Bars Provincetown, Mass.

Note 3 in page 83 Union List of Microfilms, Cumulations 1949–59, ed. J. W. Edwards (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1961), Vol. n, col. 1,839.

Note 4 in page 83 This, of course, O'Neill did not intend. In a letter to Tyler, Dec. 1920, he expressed his strong dislike for melodrama and declared: “. . . romantic melodrama is not art.” See “Letters of Eugene and James O'Neill in the George Tyler Correspondence,” Princeton Univ. Library. All subsequent references to the O'Neill-Tyler letters are to this “Correspondence.”

Note 5 in page 83 Arthur and Barbara Gelb, O'Neill (New York, 1962), p. 389. All subsequent references to the Gelbs are given in the text.

Note 6 in page 83 Ralph Sanborn and Barrett H. Clark, A Bibliography of the Works of Eugene O'Neill (New York, 1931), p. 28. Miller apparently overlooked this Sanborn and Clark reference to “The Ole Davil.”

Note 7 in page 83 Doris Alexander, The Tempering of Eugene O'Neill (New York, 1962), p. 279.

Note 8 in page 83 The Jonesy role was played by John Rogers, O'Neill's correspondent in the letter at the beginning of this article. The Philadelphia Inquirer reviewer reported that “John Rogers … did a sailorman with a cockney accent to the Queen's taste or distaste, depending entirely on how she likes cockney.”

Note 9 in page 83 O'Neill certainly accomplished his “rewriting the play on a more compact plan,” referred to in the letter to Rogers.

Note 10 in page 83 One might assume from Miller's bibliography listing the “Chris” manuscript as 111 pages and “The Ole Davil” manuscript as 119 pages that the latter is a longer work than the former. Not so. In the “Chris” typescript the character names for the dialogue are placed in the margin; in “The Ole Davil” they are in the center of the page with double spacing before and after each character and speech; the margins are very wide.

Note 11 in page 83 Another irritation in the Gelb biography is the invariable practice of spelling Burke's given name “Matt.” In both the manuscript of “The Ole Davil” and the published text of Anna Christie it is always spelled “Mat.”

Note 12 in page 83 In his letters to Tyler, O'Neill never refers to Anderson as other than second mate.

Note 13 in page 83 Except, as he tells Anna, that he would like to be a stoker on a regular steamer instead of a tramp.

Note 14 in page 83 In the “Chris” typescript there is one reference to Johnny as “Tommy”—a discrepancy that O'Neill apparently did not notice.

Note 15 in page 83 This is a phrase that O'Neill used several times in the correspondence with Tyler.