Eugène O’Neill (1888 - 1953) was an American playwright who profoundly influenced American theatre. His plays include The Emperor Jones (1920), Desire Under the Elms (1925), and Strange Interlude (1928). He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1920 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. Edward Steichen was an admirer of O’Neill’s work and photographed him several times for Vanity Fair. While this portrait was never published in the magazine, another picture from the same sitting appeared in the October 1933 issue.