Eugene O'Neill (Widescreen)

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America's only Nobel Prize-winning playwright, the triumphant author of such innovative works as "The Iceman Cometh," "A Touch Of The Poet," and the autobiographical masterpiece "Long Day's Journey Into Night," once described writing as his "vacation from living." Eugene O'Neill's dedication to his craft was astounding. In fewer than 25 years, he wrote 20 long plays, several of which were three times usual length. The work won him four Pulitzer Prizes. Much of his writing was influenced by his troubled childhood, his parent's difficult relationship, his mother's morphine addiction and his brother's alcoholism. At the age of 55, O'Neill was forced by a neurological disorder to put down his pen. He spent the next ten years in a frenzied frustration that he knew could end only in death. This "American Experience" production by award-winning director Ric Burns, ("New York: A Documentary Film") tells O'Neill's turbulent story from his childhood through the ascendant years of his magnificent, prolific career to his lonely, painful death at the age of 65.

Documentary.