NUGGET #4
Desire Under the Elms: 1924 play by Eugene O’Neill (q.v.), said to have been inspired by the playwright’s time spent here. “It was not Brook Farm that inspired his play,” says Bedini*. “The inspiration came from his view of the smaller white colonial style house across the North Salem Road, owned by Louis G. Smith. From his front door O’Neill could see the Smith house framed behind the heavy drooping branches of two majestically tall elms on either side of it, which grew beside the road. The trees were cut down some years later to enable the road to be widened.” [P10/5/1983]
From Silvio Bedini, Ridgefield in Review, 1958.
