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Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 –
February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and author. He
was a prominent figure in American literature and cinema for over 61
years, writing a wide variety of plays, including The Crucible, A View
from the Bridge, All My Sons and Death of a Salesman, which are still
widely studied and performed worldwide [1] [2]. Miller was often in the
public eye, firstly for refusing to give evidence before the House
Un-American Activities Committee, and later by virtue of his marriage to
Marilyn Monroe in 1956. At the time of his death in 2005, Miller was
considered one of the greatest American playwrights of all time.
****
Born October 17, 1915
New York City, New York, USA
Died February 10, 2005
Roxbury, Connecticut, USA
****
Early
life
Arthur Miller, the son of affluent Jewish-American
parents, Isdore and Augusta Miller, [3], was born in Harlem, New York City in
1915. His father owned a coat-manufacturing business, which failed due to the
Wall Street Crash of 1929 [4], after which, his family moved to humbler quarters
in Brooklyn [5].
Due to the effects of the Depression on his family,
there was no money to send Miller to university in 1932 after he had graduated
from high school. [6]. After securing a place at the University of Michigan,
Miller worked in a number of menial jobs to pay for his tuition [7].
At the University of Michigan, Miller first majored
in journalism, where he became the reporter and night editor on the student
paper, The Michigan Daily. It was during this time when he wrote his first work,
No Villain [8]. After winning the Avery Hopwood Award for No Villain, Miller
switched his major to English, becoming particularly interested in ancient Greek
drama and the dramas of Henrik Ibsen [citation needed]. Miller retained strong
ties to his alma mater throughout the rest of his life, establishing the Arthur
Miller Award in 1985 and Arthur Miller Award for Dramatic Writing in 1999, and
lending his name to the Arthur Miller Theatre in the forthcoming year [9]. In
1937, Miller wrote Honors at Dawn, which also received the Avery Hopwood Award
[10].
In 1938, Miller received his bachelor's degree in
English. Upon his graduation, he joined the Federal Theater Project, a New Deal
agency, which was established to provide jobs in the theater, despite an offer
to work as a scriptwriter for 20th Century Fox [11]. However, Congress, worried
about possible communist infiltration, closed the scheme [12]. Miller began
working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard while continuing to write Radio plays, some of
which appeared on CBS [13][14].
On August 5, 1940, he married his college
sweetheart, Mary Slattery, the Catholic daughter of an insurance salesman [15].
The couple had two children, Jane, and Robert (a director, writer and producer
whose body of work includes producer of the 1996 movie version of "The Crucible"
[16]).
Miller was exempted from military service during
World War II because of a football injury to his left kneecap , which he picked
up during high school [17].
Career
as Playwright
In 1944 Miller wrote The Man Who Had All the Luck,
which was produced in New York, and won the Theater Guild's National Award. [18]
Despite this however, the play closed in just three days, after only six
performances [19]. The next few years are quite difficult for Miller, publishing
his first novel, Focus, to little acclaim, and adapting George Abbott's and John
C. Holm's Three Men on a Horse for the radio [20].
However, in 1947, Miller's All My Sons is produced
at the Coronet Theater. The play was directed by Elia Kazan, with whom Miller
would have a continuing professional and personal relationship, and run for
three hundred and twenty eight performances[21]. All My Sons won the New York
Drama Critics Circle Award [22] and two Tony Awards [23] in 1947, despite
receiving criticism for being unpatriotic [24].
It was in 1948 where Miller built a small studio in
Roxbury, Connecticut, a place that was to be his long time home, where would
write Death of a Salesman [25], the work for which he is best known [26][27].
Death of a Salesman premiered on February 10, 1949,
at the Morocco Theater, New York City, directed by Kazan, and staring Lee J.
Cobb as Willy Loman. The play was a huge critical success, winning a Tony Award
for best play [28] , a New York Drama Critics' Award [29], and a Pulitzer Prize
[30][31], and ran for seven hundred and forty two performances [32].
In 1952, Elia Kazan appeared before the House
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and, under pressure of being
blacklisted from Hollywood, named eight people from the Group Theater, who, in
the 1930s, along with himself, had been members of the American Communist Party
[33].
After speaking with Kazan about his testimony [34]
Miller traveled to Salem, Massachusetts to research the witch trials of 1692
[35]. The Crucible, a parable play in which Miller likened the situation with
the House Un-American Activities Committee to the witchhunt in Salem [36],
opened at the Beck Theater on Broadway on January 22, 1953. Though widely
considered unsuccessful at the time, and only running for one hundred and ninety
seven performances, of its initial release, today it is one of Miller's most
frequently-produced works [37]. Miller and Kazan had been close friends
throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, but after Kazan's testimony to HUAC,
the pair's friendship ended, and they did not speak to each other for the next
ten years[38]. It was not long, however, before HUAC took an interest in Miller,
denying him a passport to attend the Belgium opening of The Crucible in 1954
[39].
In 1955 a one-act version of Miller's verse drama,
A View From The Bridge, opened on Broadway in a joint bill with one of Miller's
less-known plays, A Memory of Two Mondays. The following year, Miller would
return to A View from the Bridge, revising in into a two act version, which
Peter Brook would produce in London [40].
Later in his career, Miller was reunited with his
former friend Kazan, collaborating with him in the 1964 play After the Fall.
Miller's final play, a drama with humor entitled
Finishing the Picture opened at the Goodman Theatre (Chicago) in the fall of
2004. The play is a poetic, thinly-veiled autobiographical examination of the
time Miller and Monroe spent shooting The Misfits (1961). Miller and Monroe's
marriage was deteriorating at the time of shoot—the summer and fall of 1960—due
to her rampant drug abuse, her open infidelity with actor Yves Montand, and her
panoply of mental illnesses. A similar account may be found in Miller's
autobiography, Timebends (1987), as well as in the 2001 PBS documentary, Making
'The Misfits'. The Misfits was directed by John Huston, who was nominated as
best director by the Director's Guild of America.
Personal and Political Life
In 1956, Miller divorced Mary Slattery. In that
year, he appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. On June
29, he married Marilyn Monroe, whom he had met eight years earlier through Elia
Kazan. Monroe converted to Judaism. His marriage to Monroe was thought by some
informants to be a coverup for Miller's 'communist' activities, and the Federal
Bureau of Investigation "shadowed" Miller in the 1940s and up until 1956 when
the Bureau discontinued updating Miller's file.
On May 31, 1957, Miller was found guilty of
contempt of Congress for refusing to reveal the names of members of a literary
circle suspected of Communist affiliation. Monroe aided Miller in a successful
media campaign intended to neutralize negative publicity and salvage his career
as a playwright. His conviction was reversed August 7, 1958, by the U.S. Court
of Appeals. The same year, Miller published Collected Plays.
On January 24, 1961, Monroe was granted a divorce
from Miller. Miller wed photographer Inge Morath on February 17, 1962. They had
met when she and other photographers from the Magnum Photos agency documented
the making of The Misfits (1961). The couple had two children, Daniel and
Rebecca, and were married 40 years until her death on January 30, 2002. Rebecca
Miller is an actress, writer, and director, and is married to actor Daniel
Day-Lewis, whom she met on the set of her father's 1996 film version of The
Crucible. Arthur Miller announced his engagement to painter Agnes Barley in
2004, though they did not marry; the couple had been living together since 2002.
Miller was one of the original founders of
International PEN's Writers in Prison committee, and in 1965 was elected its
president, a position he held for four years.[41]
In 1985, when Miller visited Turkey with Harold
Pinter on behalf of International PEN and a Helsinki Watch committee, he was
honored at a dinner party held at the American embassy; after Pinter raised the
issue of torture with the American ambassador, it was strongly suggested that he
leave, and Miller left with him in support.
On May 1, 2002, Miller was awarded Spain's Principe
de Asturias Prize for Literature as "the undisputed master of modern drama."
Previous winners include Doris Lessing, Günter Grass and Carlos Fuentes. The
following year Miller won the Jerusalem Prize.
Arthur Miller died of congestive heart failure on
the evening of February 10, 2005. Coincidentally, Miller passed away on the 56th
anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman. Miller was surrounded
by family when he died at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, four months after
the death of his older brother, Kermit Miller, and three years after the death
of his wife of forty years, Ingeborg Morath. Miller's writing career lasted
nearly 70 years, and he is often considered the conscience of American theater.
****
References
Arthur Miller by
Leonard Moss. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1980.
-
^ Odysseytheater.com. Death of a
Salesman at Odyssey.. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ emanuel.org. Death of a
Salesman studied at Emanuel.. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ umich.edu. Arthur Miller Files.
Retrieved on October 1, 2006.
-
^ BBC.co.uk. bbc.co.uk obituary.
Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ The Times Arthur Miller
Obituary, (London: The Times, 2005).
-
^ The Times Arthur Miller
Obituary, (London: The Times, 2005).
-
^ BBC.co.uk. bbc.co.uk obituary.
Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ ibiblio.org. Chronolog of
Arthur Miller's Life. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ umich.edu. Arthur Miller and
University of Michigan. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ ibiblio.org. Chronolog of
Arthur Miller's Life. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ ibiblio.org. Chronolog of
Arthur Miller's Life. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ The Times Arthur Miller
Obituary, (London: The Times, 2005).
-
^ The Times Arthur Miller
Obituary, (London: The Times, 2005).
-
^ ibiblio.org. Chronolog of
Arthur Miller's Life. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ Michael Ratcliffe, Arthur
Miller Obituary, (London: The Observer, 2005).
-
^ imdb.com. Robert A. Miller's
imdb profile. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ The Times Arthur Miller
Obituary, (London: The Times, 2005).
-
^ Royal National Theatre:
Platform Papers, 7. Arthur Milller (Battley Brothers Printers, 1995).
-
^ ibiblio.org. Chronolog of
Arthur Miller's Life. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ ibiblio.org. Chronolog of
Arthur Miller's Life. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ Michael Ratcliffe, Arthur
Miller Obituary, (London: The Observer, 2005).
-
^ infoplease.com. New York Drama
Critics' Circle Award. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ tonyawards.com. Tony Awards
1947. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ BBC.co.uk. bbc.co.uk obituary.
Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ ibiblio.org. Chronolog of
Arthur Miller's Life. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ CNN.com. Arthur Miller dies.
Retrieved on September 25, 2006.
-
^ The Times Arthur Miller
Obituary, (London: The Times, 2005).
-
^ tonyawards.com. Tony Awards
1949. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.
-
^ infoplease.com. New York Drama
Critics' Circle Award. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ Pulitzer.org. Pulitzer Prize.
Retrieved on September 25, 2006.
-
^ infoplease.com. Pulitzer Prize
for Drama. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.
-
^ The Times Arthur Miller
Obituary, (London: The Times, 2005).
-
^ pbs.org. American Masters.
Kazan. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.
-
^ spatacus schoolnet. Exert from
Timebends. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.
-
^ Michael Ratcliffe, Arthur
Miller Obituary, (London: The Observer, 2005)
-
^ writing.upenn.edu. Are you now,
or were you ever?. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.
-
^ Michael Ratcliffe, Arthur
Miller Obituary, (London: The Observer, 2005).
-
^ pbs.org. American Masters.
Kazan. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.
-
^ ibiblio.org. Chronolog of
Arthur Miller's Life. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ ibiblio.org. Chronolog of
Arthur Miller's Life. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.
-
^ Miller, Arthur. "A Visit With
Castro", The Nation, 2003-12-24. Retrieved on 2006-08-01.
****
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