Eugene O’Neill’s A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN

Blog 26

“There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.”

James Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s, A Moon for the Misbegotten

I once for a class designed the earthy 1920s costumes for Eugene O’Neill’s tragedy, A Moon for the Misbegotten, the play that continues the tale of James Tyrone just short of a decade following the end of A Long Day's Journey Into Night. His mother and father are deceased, and there is no mention of other family, so Jim is left with guilt about what he has done in life, a shattered spirit, and a constant stream of lifeless days. For him, much like Bill Murray’s character in the movie Groundhog Day, “There is no present or future — only the past happening over and over again.”

I have a favorite day in the past that I like to revisit occasionally. I fell in love with the Beatles the first time W-S-G-N radio played the Fab Four’s “Please Please Me” in late February 1963. Two years later, I had cultivated the Beatle Girlfriend Look: long, straight hair and short skirts made of English chintz. Lots of black and white with “Carnaby Street” bursts of color. Just the name of a Beatle song was a portal into another world.

My two best sister-friends across the street and I took crazy photos like we saw on Beatle trading cards. I chose John as my Beatle, one sister took George, and the other Paul, and my mother, who was the cool mom of the neighborhood, happily settled for Ringo. The summer I was 15, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Birmingham News.

That year, 1965, the News published letters to the editor blaming the mop top band for the declining morals of teenagers. Since my adoration has blossomed into full-blown Beatlemania, I wrote a thoughtful criticism of these foolhardy grown-ups, praying for my astute views to be published on the op-ed page. Something even more wonderful happened: the editor called me and said if I wanted to do something about changing the judgment of my elders, I could cover the August Beatle concert in Atlanta for the News. Whoa!

I traveled to Atlanta with several friends, staying in the Victorian home of one girl’s grandmother. To my great astonishment (I felt so very adult and powerful in my new role), I cried my way through the performance, calling: “John! John! John!”

But I soon recovered and back at the house — and while the other juvenilely immature girls were still screaming over seeing the Beatles in person — my friend Sandra and I sat on the side of a claw-foot tub with the bathroom door closed. In longhand, we wrote a review in a small notebook. I led with: “Help! The Beatles didn’t need any help last night in Atlanta…”

The budding reporters could not drive, being only 15, so a mother took us at 1:00 in the morning to Western Union to telegraph the story to the News. Even though I felt so very professional, I doubted my piece would be published. I might have been young, but I had had my share of rejections in life already. On the way home the next day, we stopped at the first place that might have a Birmingham paper and bought the News. I searched through the all sections from back to front — nothing.

Then, flipping finally to the front page, there it was! With a byline and an Associated Press photo! Help! After all, I didn’t need any help either — except from my collaborator Sandra.