Professors Note Drama's Loss in Death of O'Neill

Two University professors last night praised the greatness of playwright Eugene O'Neill who died unexpectedly yesterday in Boston.

Archibald MacLeish, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, said, "O'Neill was one of the names you tell a time by. It was a great name and a piece of our time goes with it."

Herschel Baker, professor of English, added, "Although the veneration in which O'Neill was held a generation ago now seems quaint, it must be granted that he was a tonic influence on American drama when experiment and even audacity were needed."

O'Neill died of bronchial pneumonia. He had been ill with Parkinson's disease, an ailment which causes a form of palsy, and was unable to write for several years. He was 65.

Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936, he had previously won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1920, 1922, and 1928. His outstanding works include "Mourning Becomes Electra," "Strange Interlude," "The Hairy Ape," "Beyond the Horizon," "Anna Christie," and "Emperor Jones."

O'Neill attended Princeton for one year and later was a student in Professor George Pierce Baker's playwriting classes here.