• LIFE

See Photos of the Original Production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night

2 minute read

The latest Broadway production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night is nominated for Best Revival of a Play at this year’s Tony Awards, which will take place on Sunday night. (The other nominees are Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, Blackbird and Noises Off.) The play, which is longer than your average show but covers just one day in 1912, has now been revived on Broadway five times.

Back in March of 1956, LIFE Magazine profiled the original production of the Eugene O’Neill masterwork, sending photographer Carl Mydans to Stockholm to capture the actors at work. The play would open on Broadway later that year.

O’Neill had completed the play in 1940, as the magazine explained, but barred it from being produced until after he died. Even after O’Neill’s passing in late 1953, it would take another few years for the first production to be mounted in Sweden. “[At that point], the reason for the delay became clear,” LIFE noted. “His last tragedy is pure autobiography, laying open the painful truth of the American dramatist’s early family life.”

Though the write-up wasn’t all praise for the work—Long Day’s Journey was and remains, well, very long with characters who “move as plotlessly as figures in a nightmare”—the magazine found that the play was a finding cap to the career of a theatrical genius. As to whether the revival is as worthy of equal accolades, the theater world will answer that question this weekend.

1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.
Caption from LIFE. At hysterical moment in Stockholm production Edmund, the counterpart of young Eugene O'Neill, tells distracted mother his "summer cold" has just been diagnosed by doctor as tuberculosis.Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.
Caption from LIFE. The pitiful mother, her hands crippled with rheumatism and half dazed with dope, offers whisky to the maid in order to win her companionship. Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.
Caption from LIFE. The posturing father recites Shakespeare to his son Edmund and bemoans the fact that he ruined his career by playing too long in popular role.Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.
A scene from the 1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.
A scene from the 1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.
Caption from LIFE. With angry fists Edmund reviles father for skimping on medical care both for himself and his mother.Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.
A scene from the 1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.
Caption from LIFE. With flimsy excuses to her husband, his wife justifies her trip to drugstore where she secretly buys dope. Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.
Scene from first production of Eugene O'Neill's play "Long Day's Journey Into Night."Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.
A scene from the 1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1956 production of Long Day's Journey into Night.
Caption from LIFE. Defending his mother, Edmund (left) strikes his brother James for sneeringly calling her "Ophelia" when, half-crazed she wanders in with wedding gown. At play's somber end she sinks into a reverie about her girlhood.Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com