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The First Five Years: 1964-69by George C. White,
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In chronicling the early history of what has come to be called “The O’Neill,” it is important to note that Waterford, Connecticut, is my home town. It is the place where, as a child and teenager, I fished, lobstered, sailed, played ball, and received my first eight years of formal education.
My grandfather and my father were prominent American impressionist painters (as is my middle brother); therefore, growing up with arts and art talk was as natural as breathing. Waterford and its large neighbor, New London, are towns with a rich history and huge inferiority complexes. Due to my family’s love of art and theater, I was brought up with a pride not shared by my community that one local “shining light” was Eugene O’Neill. (Our family doctor had cared for the O’Neills, some locals had been his friends, and my mother had even been whistled at by Eugene and his brother Jamie when she was a young Italian dress maker in a New London sweat shop).
In 1961, the town of Waterford bought the 95-acre Hammond farm with the plan to turn it into a park and town beach. Its situation on Long Island Sound constitutes one of the most ideal waterfronts in Connecticut.
In the summer of 1962, I was sailing with my father and my wife, Betsy, off the property on which I had played as a child, and I asked what use was planned for the buildings, e.g. the large, rambling main house, out buildings, and huge old barn. My father said that though there had been some proposals, the general feeling was the best use for the main buildings was to burn them as an exercise for the local fire departments.
At the time, I was working in New York in television, and I was also on the alumni board of my alma mater, the Yale School of Drama. The thought occurred to me that a better use of the buildings might be to marry Eugene O’Neill’s name to what might become a summer adjunct to the Drama School, particularly since O’Neill had willed his papers to Yale. Both the University and the town might benefit, academically and economically respectively.
Based on this concept, in the spring of 1963, I put Dean Curtis Canfield and Associate Dean Edward C. Cole together with a group of Waterford town officials. Both sides were excited by the property’s possibilities, and I felt I had dispensed my duty. Fate, however, intervened when the Yale Corporation vetoed the idea. In essence, this left my hometown, which had enthusiastically embraced my proposal, bereft of a theatrical partner – and me with a personal loss of face.
In order to save the situation, I began to look for alternatives. In the meantime, Dean Canfield used his influence with O’Neill’s widow, Carlotta, to permit use of her husband’s name; in due course she wrote me the following:
August 3, 1964
Dear Mr. White,
I beg of you to excuse this more than tardy reply to your letter of June 23. I have not been very well, which made a great deal of work pile up, and my time was not really my own.
This is to tell you that I am delighted that you wish to name your Foundation for a theater project in the name of Eugene O’Neill; could he know this, he would be more than pleased. Also, I hope that some day I will be able to visit the Foundation.
May you have even greater success than you expect.
Very sincerely yours,
Carlotta Monterey O’Neill
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