Arthur Miller
Overview
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre
Theater in the United States
Theater of the United States is based in the Western tradition. Regional or resident theatres in the United States are professional theatre companies outside of New York City that produce their own seasons.- Early history:...
, writing drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
s that include plays such as All My Sons
All My Sons
All My Sons is a 1947 play by Arthur Miller. The play was twice adapted for film; in 1948, and again in 1987.The play opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1947 and ran for 328 performances...
(1947), Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman is a 1949 play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was the recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. Premiered at the Morosco Theatre in February 1949, the original production ran for a total of 742 performances.-Plot :Willy Loman...
(1949), The Crucible
The Crucible
The Crucible is a 1952 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatization of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the US government blacklisted accused communists...
(1953), and A View from the Bridge
A View from the Bridge
A View from the Bridge is a play by American playwright Arthur Miller that was first staged on September 29, 1955 as a one-act verse drama with A Memory of Two Mondays at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway. The play was unsuccessful and Miller subsequently revised the play to contain two acts; this...
(one-act, 1955; revised two-act, 1956).
Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, a period during which he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...
and the Prince of Asturias Award, and was married to Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
.
Arthur Asher Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, the second of three children of Isidore and Augusta Miller, Polish-Jewish immigrants.
Unanswered Questions
Quotations
I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult.
After being refused a passport for his supposed disloyalty. The New York Herald Tribune (31 March 1954)
I know that my works are a credit to this nation and I dare say they will endure longer than the McCarran Internal Security Act|McCarran Act.
The New York Herald Tribune (31 March 1954)
The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.
Harper's (August 1958)
The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism.
Collected Plays (1958) Introduction, Section 1
By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.
Collected Plays (1958) Introduction, Section 7
A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance — you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke.
"The State of the Theatre" an interview by Henry Brandon in Harpers 221 (November 1960)
A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
As quoted in The Observer [London] (26 November 1961)
The best of our theater is standing on tiptoe, striving to see over the shoulders of father and mother. The worst is exploiting and wallowing in the self-pity of adolescence and obsessive keyhole sexuality. The way out, as the poet says, is always through.
National Observer (20 January 1964)
Encyclopedia
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright
and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre
, writing drama
s that include plays such as All My Sons
(1947), Death of a Salesman
(1949), The Crucible
(1953), and A View from the Bridge
(one-act, 1955; revised two-act, 1956).
Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, a period during which he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee
, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
and the Prince of Asturias Award, and was married to Marilyn Monroe
.
, New York City
, the second of three children of Isidore and Augusta Miller, Polish-Jewish immigrants.
, lived on East 110th Street
in Manhattan
and owned a summer house in Far Rockaway, Queens
. They employed a chauffeur. In the Wall Street Crash of 1929
, the family lost almost everything and moved to Gravesend, Brooklyn
. As a teenager, Miller delivered bread every morning before school to help the family. After graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School, he worked at several menial jobs to pay for his college tuition.
At the University of Michigan
, Miller first majored in journalism and worked as a reporter and night editor for the student paper, the Michigan Daily
. It was during this time that he wrote his first play, No Villain
. Miller switched his major to English, and subsequently won the Avery Hopwood Award
for No Villain. The award brought him his first recognition and led him to begin to consider that he could have a career as a playwright. Miller enrolled in a playwriting seminar taught by the influential Professor Kenneth Rowe
, who instructed him in his early forays into playwriting; Rowe emphasized how a play is built in order to achieve its intended effect, or what Miller called "the dynamics of play construction". Rowe provided realistic feedback along with much-needed encouragement, and became a lifelong friend. Miller retained strong ties to his alma mater throughout the rest of his life, establishing the university's Arthur Miller Award in 1985 and Arthur Miller Award for Dramatic Writing in 1999, and lending his name to the Arthur Miller Theatre in 2000. In 1937, Miller wrote Honors at Dawn
, which also received the Avery Hopwood Award.
In 1938, Miller received a BA
in English. After graduation, he joined the Federal Theater Project, a New Deal
agency established to provide jobs in the theater. He chose the theater project although he had an offer to work as a scriptwriter for 20th Century Fox
. However, Congress
, worried about possible Communist
infiltration, closed the project in 1939. Miller began working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard
while continuing to write radio plays, some of which were broadcast on CBS
.
On August 5, 1940, he married his college sweetheart, Mary Slattery, the Catholic daughter of an insurance salesman. The couple had two children, Jane and Robert. Miller was exempted from military service during World War II
because of a high-school football
injury to his left kneecap. Robert, a writer and film director, produced the 1996 movie version of The Crucible.
, which was produced in New Jersey in 1940 and won the Theatre Guild's National Award. The play closed after four performances and disastrous reviews. In his book Trinity of Passion, author Alan M. Wald conjectures that Miller was "a member of a writer's unit of the Communist Party
around 1946", using the pseudonym Matt Wayne, and editing a drama column in the magazine The New Masses
. In 1946 Miller's play All My Sons
, the writing of which had commenced in 1941, was a success on Broadway (earning him his first Tony Award
, for Best Author
) and his reputation as a playwright was established.
In 1948 Miller built a small studio in Roxbury, Connecticut
. There, in less than a day, he wrote Act I of Death of a Salesman
. Within six weeks, he completed the rest of the play, one of the classics of world theater. Death of a Salesman premiered on Broadway on February 10, 1949 at the Morosco Theatre, directed by Elia Kazan
, and starring Lee J. Cobb
as Willy Loman, Mildred Dunnock
as Linda, Arthur Kennedy
as Biff, and Cameron Mitchell
as Happy. The play was commercially successful and critically acclaimed, winning a Tony Award for Best Author
, the New York Drama Circle Critics' Award
, and the Pulitzer Prize
for Drama. It was the first play to win all three of these major awards. The play was performed 742 times.
In 1952, Kazan appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC); fearful of being blacklisted from Hollywood, Kazan named eight members of the Group Theatre, including Clifford Odets
, Paula Strasberg
, Lillian Hellman
, Joe Bromberg
, and John Garfield
, who in recent years had been fellow members of the Communist Party
. After speaking with Kazan about his testimony Miller traveled to Salem, Massachusetts
to research the witch trials of 1692
. The Crucible
, in which Miller likened the situation with the House Un-American Activities Committee to the witch hunt in Salem in 1692, opened at the Beck Theatre on Broadway
on January 22, 1953. Though widely considered only somewhat successful at the time of its initial release, today The Crucible
is Miller's most frequently produced work throughout the world and was adapted into an opera
by Robert Ward which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1962. Miller and Kazan were close friends throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, but after Kazan's testimony to the HUAC, the pair's friendship ended, and they did not speak to each other for the next ten years. The HUAC took an interest in Miller himself not long after The Crucible opened, denying him a passport to attend the play's London opening in 1954. Kazan defended his own actions through his film On the Waterfront
, in which a dockworker heroically testifies against a corrupt union boss.
Miller's experience with the HUAC affected him throughout his life. In the late 1970s he became very interested in the highly publicized Barbara Gibbons murder case, in which Gibbons' son Peter Reilly was convicted of his mother's murder based on what many felt was a coerced confession and little other evidence. City Confidential
, an A&E Network
program about the murder, postulated that part of the reason Miller took such an active interest (including supporting Reilly's defense and using his own celebrity to bring attention to Reilly's plight) was because he had felt similarly persecuted in his run-in with the HUAC. He sympathized with Reilly, whom he firmly believed to be innocent and to have been railroaded by the Connecticut State Police and the Attorney General who had initially prosecuted the case.
A View from the Bridge
opened on Broadway in a joint bill with one of Miller's lesser-known plays, A Memory of Two Mondays
. The following year, Miller revised A View from the Bridge as a two-act prose
drama, which Peter Brook
directed in London.
In June 1956, Miller left his first wife Mary Slattery and on June 25 he married Marilyn Monroe
. Miller and Monroe had met in April 23 1951, when they had a brief affair, and had remained in contact since then.
When Miller applied in 1956 for a routine renewal of his passport, the HUAC used this opportunity to subpoena
him to appear before the committee. Before appearing, Miller asked the committee not to ask him to name names, to which the chairman agreed.
When Miller attended the hearing, to which Monroe accompanied him, risking her own career, he gave the committee a detailed account of his political activities. Reneging on the chairman's promise, the committee demanded the names of friends and colleagues who had participated in similar activities. Miller refused to comply, saying "I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him." As a result, a judge found Miller guilty of contempt of Congress
in May 1957. Miller was sentenced to a $500 fine or thirty days in prison, blacklisted, and disallowed a US passport. In 1958, his conviction was overturned by the court of appeals, which ruled that Miller had been misled by the chairman of the HUAC.
Miller began work on The Misfits
, starring his wife. Miller later said that the filming was one of the lowest points in his life; shortly before the film's premiere in 1961, the pair divorced. 19 months later, Monroe died of an apparent drug overdose.
Miller married photographer Inge Morath
on February 17, 1962 and the first of their two children, Rebecca
, was born that September. Their son Daniel was born with Down syndrome
in November 1966; he was institutionalized and excluded from the Millers' personal life at Arthur's insistence. The couple remained together until Inge's death in 2002. Arthur Miller's son-in-law, actor Daniel Day-Lewis
, is said to have visited Daniel frequently, and to have persuaded Arthur Miller to reunite with his adult son.
is a deeply personal view of Miller's experiences during his marriage to Monroe. The play reunited Miller with his former friend Kazan: they collaborated on both the script and the direction. After the Fall
opened on January 23, 1964 at the ANTA Theatre in Washington Square Park
amid a flurry of publicity and outrage at putting a Monroe-like character, called Maggie, on stage. That same year, Miller produced Incident at Vichy
. In 1965, Miller was elected the first American president of International PEN
, a position which he held for four years. During this period Miller wrote the penetrating family drama, The Price
, produced in 1968. It was Miller's most successful play since Death of a Salesman.
In 1969, Miller's works were banned in the Soviet Union
after he campaigned for the freedom of dissident writers. Throughout the 1970s, Miller spent much of his time experimenting with the theatre, producing one-act plays such as Fame and The Reason Why, and traveling with his wife, producing In The Country and Chinese Encounters with her. Both his 1972 comedy The Creation of the World and Other Business
and its musical adaptation, Up from Paradise
, were critical and commercial failures.
Miller was an unusually articulate commentator on his own work. In 1978 he published a collection of his Theater Essays, edited by Robert A. Martin and with a foreword by Miller. Highlights of the collection included Miller's introduction to his Collected Plays, his reflections on the theory of tragedy, comments on the McCarthy Era, and pieces arguing for a publicly supported theater. Reviewing this collection in the Chicago Tribune, Studs Terkel remarked, "in reading [the Theater Essays]...you are exhilaratingly aware of a social critic, as well as a playwright, who knows what he's talking about."
In 1983, Miller traveled to China
to produce and direct Death of a Salesman at the People's Art Theatre in Beijing
. The play was a success in China and in 1984, Salesman in Beijing, a book about Miller's experiences in Beijing, was published. Around the same time, Death of a Salesman was made into a TV movie starring Dustin Hoffman
as Willy Loman. Shown on CBS, it attracted 25 million viewers. In late 1987, Miller's autobiographical work,
Timebends, was published. Before it was published, it was well-known that Miller would not talk about Monroe in interviews; in Timebends Miller talks about his experiences with Monroe in detail. During the early 1990s Miller wrote three new plays, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan
(1991), The Last Yankee
(1992), and Broken Glass
(1994). In 1996, a film of The Crucible starring Daniel Day-Lewis
and Winona Ryder
opened. Miller spent much of 1996 working on the screenplay to the film.
Mr. Peters' Connections
was staged Off-Broadway
in 1998, and Death of a Salesman was revived on Broadway in 1999 to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The play, once again, was a large critical success, winning a Tony Award for best revival of a play.
In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts
. In 2001 the National Endowment for the Humanities
(NEH) selected Miller for the Jefferson Lecture
, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities
. Miller's lecture was entitled "On Politics and the Art of Acting."
Miller's lecture analyzed political events (including the U.S. presidential election of 2000
)
in terms of the "arts of performance", and it drew attacks from some conservatives such as Jay Nordlinger
, who called it "a disgrace",
and George Will
, who argued that Miller was not legitimately a "scholar".
In 1999 Miller was awarded The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
, one of the richest prizes in the arts, given annually to “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.” On May 1, 2002, Miller was awarded Spain's Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature as "the undisputed master of modern drama". Later that year, Ingeborg Morath died of lymphatic cancer at the age of 78. The following year Miller won the Jerusalem Prize
.
In December 2004, the 89-year-old Miller announced that he had been in love with 34-year-old minimalist painter
Agnes Barley and had been living with her at his Connecticut farm since 2002, and that they intended to marry. Within hours of her father's death, Rebecca Miller
ordered Barley to vacate the premises, having consistently opposed the relationship. Miller's final play, Finishing the Picture
, opened at the Goodman Theatre
, Chicago
, in the fall of 2004, with one character said to be based on Barley. Miller said that the work was based on the experience of filming The Misfits.
When interviewed by BBC4 for The Atheism Tapes
, he stated that he had been an atheist since his teens.
Miller died of heart failure after a battle against cancer, pneumonia and congestive heart disease at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut
. He had been in hospice care at his sister's apartment in New York since his release from hospital the previous month. He died on the evening of February 10, 2005 (the 56th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman), aged 89, surrounded by Barley, family and friends.
s darkened their lights in a show of respect.
Miller's alma mater, the University of Michigan opened the Arthur Miller Theatre in March, 2007. Per his express wish, it is the only theatre in the world that bears Miller's name.
Christopher Bigsby
wrote Arthur Miller: The Definitive Biography based on boxes of papers Miller made available to him before his death in 2005. The book was published in November 2008, and is reported to reveal unpublished works in which Miller "bitterly attack[ed] the injustices of American racism long before it was taken up by the civil rights movement".
Miller's papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
at The University of Texas at Austin.
Interviews
Obituaries
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre
Theater in the United States
Theater of the United States is based in the Western tradition. Regional or resident theatres in the United States are professional theatre companies outside of New York City that produce their own seasons.- Early history:...
, writing drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
s that include plays such as All My Sons
All My Sons
All My Sons is a 1947 play by Arthur Miller. The play was twice adapted for film; in 1948, and again in 1987.The play opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1947 and ran for 328 performances...
(1947), Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman is a 1949 play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was the recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. Premiered at the Morosco Theatre in February 1949, the original production ran for a total of 742 performances.-Plot :Willy Loman...
(1949), The Crucible
The Crucible
The Crucible is a 1952 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatization of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the US government blacklisted accused communists...
(1953), and A View from the Bridge
A View from the Bridge
A View from the Bridge is a play by American playwright Arthur Miller that was first staged on September 29, 1955 as a one-act verse drama with A Memory of Two Mondays at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway. The play was unsuccessful and Miller subsequently revised the play to contain two acts; this...
(one-act, 1955; revised two-act, 1956).
Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, a period during which he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...
and the Prince of Asturias Award, and was married to Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
.
Early life
Arthur Asher Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in HarlemHarlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, the second of three children of Isidore and Augusta Miller, Polish-Jewish immigrants.
Joan Copeland
Joan Copeland is an American actress and the younger sister of celebrated playwright Arthur Miller. She began her career appearing in theatre in New York City during the mid 1940s. She moved into television and film during the 1950s while still maintaining an active stage career...
, lived on East 110th Street
110th Street (Manhattan)
110th Street is a street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is commonly known as the boundary between Harlem and Central Park, along which it is known as Central Park North. In the west, it is also known as Cathedral Parkway....
in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
and owned a summer house in Far Rockaway, Queens
Far Rockaway, Queens
Far Rockaway is a neighborhood on the Rockaway Peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens in the United States. It is the easternmost section of the Rockaways. The neighborhood starts at the Nassau County line and extends west to Beach 32nd Street. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community...
. They employed a chauffeur. In the Wall Street Crash of 1929
Wall Street Crash of 1929
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 , also known as the Great Crash, and the Stock Market Crash of 1929, was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout...
, the family lost almost everything and moved to Gravesend, Brooklyn
Gravesend, Brooklyn
Gravesend is a neighborhood in the south-central section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, USA.The derivation of the name is unclear. Some speculate that it was named after the English seaport of Gravesend, Kent. An alternative explanation suggests that it was named by Willem Kieft for the...
. As a teenager, Miller delivered bread every morning before school to help the family. After graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School, he worked at several menial jobs to pay for his college tuition.
At the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, Miller first majored in journalism and worked as a reporter and night editor for the student paper, the Michigan Daily
Michigan Daily
The Michigan Daily is the daily student newspaper of the University of Michigan. Its first edition was published on September 29, 1890. The newspaper is financially and editorially independent of the University's administration and other student groups, but shares a university building with other...
. It was during this time that he wrote his first play, No Villain
No Villain
No Villain is a play written by Arthur Miller during his sophomore year in 1936, during spring break. This was his first work, reportedly written in six days in the hope of winning a $250 Hopwood Award, the first of two that he won....
. Miller switched his major to English, and subsequently won the Avery Hopwood Award
Hopwood Award
The Hopwood Awards are a major scholarship program at the University of Michigan, founded by Avery Hopwood.Under the terms of the will of Avery Hopwood, a prominent American dramatist and member of the Class of 1905 of The University of Michigan, one-fifth of Mr. Hopwood's estate was given to the...
for No Villain. The award brought him his first recognition and led him to begin to consider that he could have a career as a playwright. Miller enrolled in a playwriting seminar taught by the influential Professor Kenneth Rowe
Kenneth Thorpe Rowe
Kenneth Thorpe Rowe was a professor and much-loved teacher at the University of Michigan. Rowe taught Shakespeare and modern drama, but was best known as an influential teacher of playwriting.-Approach to playwriting:...
, who instructed him in his early forays into playwriting; Rowe emphasized how a play is built in order to achieve its intended effect, or what Miller called "the dynamics of play construction". Rowe provided realistic feedback along with much-needed encouragement, and became a lifelong friend. Miller retained strong ties to his alma mater throughout the rest of his life, establishing the university's Arthur Miller Award in 1985 and Arthur Miller Award for Dramatic Writing in 1999, and lending his name to the Arthur Miller Theatre in 2000. In 1937, Miller wrote Honors at Dawn
Honors at Dawn
Honors at Dawn, written in 1936, is Arthur Miller's second play , for which he won a second Avery Hopwood Award. It was written at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan....
, which also received the Avery Hopwood Award.
In 1938, Miller received a BA
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in English. After graduation, he joined the Federal Theater Project, a New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
agency established to provide jobs in the theater. He chose the theater project although he had an offer to work as a scriptwriter for 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
. However, Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
, worried about possible Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
infiltration, closed the project in 1939. Miller began working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard
Brooklyn Navy Yard
The United States Navy Yard, New York–better known as the Brooklyn Navy Yard or the New York Naval Shipyard –was an American shipyard located in Brooklyn, northeast of the Battery on the East River in Wallabout Basin, a semicircular bend of the river across from Corlear's Hook in Manhattan...
while continuing to write radio plays, some of which were broadcast on CBS
CBS Radio
CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country...
.
On August 5, 1940, he married his college sweetheart, Mary Slattery, the Catholic daughter of an insurance salesman. The couple had two children, Jane and Robert. Miller was exempted from military service during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
because of a high-school football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
injury to his left kneecap. Robert, a writer and film director, produced the 1996 movie version of The Crucible.
Early career
In 1940 Miller wrote The Man Who Had All the LuckThe Man Who Had All the Luck
The Man Who Had All the Luck is a play by Arthur Miller.David Beeves is a young Midwestern automobile mechanic who discovers he is blessed with what appears to be almost supernatural good fortune that allows him to overcome every seemingly insurmountable obstacle that crosses his path while those...
, which was produced in New Jersey in 1940 and won the Theatre Guild's National Award. The play closed after four performances and disastrous reviews. In his book Trinity of Passion, author Alan M. Wald conjectures that Miller was "a member of a writer's unit of the Communist Party
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
around 1946", using the pseudonym Matt Wayne, and editing a drama column in the magazine The New Masses
The New Masses
The "New Masses" was a prominent American Marxist publication edited by Walt Carmon, briefly by Whittaker Chambers, and primarily by Michael Gold, Granville Hicks, and Joseph Freeman....
. In 1946 Miller's play All My Sons
All My Sons
All My Sons is a 1947 play by Arthur Miller. The play was twice adapted for film; in 1948, and again in 1987.The play opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1947 and ran for 328 performances...
, the writing of which had commenced in 1941, was a success on Broadway (earning him his first Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
, for Best Author
Tony Award for Best Author
The Tony Award for Best Author is a now retired category once presented to playwrights, authors and librettists of theatrical plays and musicals...
) and his reputation as a playwright was established.
In 1948 Miller built a small studio in Roxbury, Connecticut
Roxbury, Connecticut
Roxbury is a town in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 2,136 at the 2000 census.-History:Roxbury, whose Indian name was "Shepaug", a Mahican name signifiying "rocky water", was settled about the year 1713...
. There, in less than a day, he wrote Act I of Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman is a 1949 play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was the recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. Premiered at the Morosco Theatre in February 1949, the original production ran for a total of 742 performances.-Plot :Willy Loman...
. Within six weeks, he completed the rest of the play, one of the classics of world theater. Death of a Salesman premiered on Broadway on February 10, 1949 at the Morosco Theatre, directed by Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
, and starring Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb was an American actor. He is best known for his performance in 12 Angry Men his Academy Award-nominated performance in On the Waterfront and one of his last films, The Exorcist...
as Willy Loman, Mildred Dunnock
Mildred Dunnock
Mildred Dunnock was an American theater, film and television actress.- Early life :Born in Baltimore, Maryland and graduated from Western Senior High School, Dunnock was a school teacher who did not start acting until she was in her early thirties...
as Linda, Arthur Kennedy
Arthur Kennedy (actor)
Arthur Kennedy was an American stage and film actor known for his versatility in supporting film roles and his ability to create "an exceptional honesty and naturalness on stage" especially in the original casts of Arthur Miller plays on Broadway.- Early life and education :Kennedy was born John...
as Biff, and Cameron Mitchell
Cameron Mitchell (actor)
Cameron Mitchell was an American film, television and Broadway actor with close ties to one of Canada's most successful families, and considered, by Lee Strasberg, to be one of the founding members of The Actor's Studio in New York City.-Early life and career:Born Cameron MacDowell Mitzel in...
as Happy. The play was commercially successful and critically acclaimed, winning a Tony Award for Best Author
Tony Award for Best Author
The Tony Award for Best Author is a now retired category once presented to playwrights, authors and librettists of theatrical plays and musicals...
, the New York Drama Circle Critics' Award
New York Drama Critics' Circle
The New York Drama Critics' Circle is made up of 24 drama critics from daily newspapers, magazines and wire services based in the New York City metropolitan area. The organization was founded in 1935 at the Algonquin Hotel by a group that included Brooks Atkinson, Walter Winchell, and Robert Benchley...
, and the Pulitzer Prize
1949 Pulitzer Prize
-Journalism awards:*Public Service:** Nebraska State Journal for the campaign establishing the Nebraska All-Star Primary presidential preference primary which spotlighted, through a bi-partisan committee, issues early in the presidential campaign....
for Drama. It was the first play to win all three of these major awards. The play was performed 742 times.
In 1952, Kazan appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
(HUAC); fearful of being blacklisted from Hollywood, Kazan named eight members of the Group Theatre, including Clifford Odets
Clifford Odets
Clifford Odets was an American playwright, screenwriter, socialist, and social protester.-Early life:Odets was born in Philadelphia to Romanian- and Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Louis Odets and Esther Geisinger, and raised in Philadelphia and the Bronx, New York. He dropped out of high...
, Paula Strasberg
Paula Strasberg
Paula Miller Strasberg was a former stage actress who became actor and teacher Lee Strasberg's second wife, mother of actors John and Susan Strasberg as well as Marilyn Monroe's acting coach and confidante....
, Lillian Hellman
Lillian Hellman
Lillian Florence "Lily" Hellman was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes...
, Joe Bromberg
J. Edward Bromberg
Joseph Edward Bromberg was a Hungarian-born American character actor in motion picture and stage productions dating mostly from the 1930s and 1940s....
, and John Garfield
John Garfield
John Garfield was an American actor adept at playing brooding, rebellious, working-class character roles. He grew up in poverty in Depression-era New York City and in the early 1930s became an important member of the Group Theater. In 1937 he moved to Hollywood, eventually becoming one of Warner...
, who in recent years had been fellow members of the Communist Party
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
. After speaking with Kazan about his testimony Miller traveled to Salem, Massachusetts
Salem, Massachusetts
Salem is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 40,407 at the 2000 census. It and Lawrence are the county seats of Essex County...
to research the witch trials of 1692
Salem witch trials
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693...
. The Crucible
The Crucible
The Crucible is a 1952 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatization of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the US government blacklisted accused communists...
, in which Miller likened the situation with the House Un-American Activities Committee to the witch hunt in Salem in 1692, opened at the Beck Theatre on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
on January 22, 1953. Though widely considered only somewhat successful at the time of its initial release, today The Crucible
The Crucible
The Crucible is a 1952 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatization of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the US government blacklisted accused communists...
is Miller's most frequently produced work throughout the world and was adapted into an opera
The Crucible (opera)
The Crucible is an English language opera written by Robert Ward based on the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. It won both the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the New York Music Critics Circle Citation. The libretto was lightly adapted from Miller's text by Bernard Stambler.Ward received a...
by Robert Ward which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1962. Miller and Kazan were close friends throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, but after Kazan's testimony to the HUAC, the pair's friendship ended, and they did not speak to each other for the next ten years. The HUAC took an interest in Miller himself not long after The Crucible opened, denying him a passport to attend the play's London opening in 1954. Kazan defended his own actions through his film On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront is a 1954 American drama film about union violence and corruption among longshoremen. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint, Lee J. Cobb and Karl Malden. The soundtrack score was composed by Leonard...
, in which a dockworker heroically testifies against a corrupt union boss.
Miller's experience with the HUAC affected him throughout his life. In the late 1970s he became very interested in the highly publicized Barbara Gibbons murder case, in which Gibbons' son Peter Reilly was convicted of his mother's murder based on what many felt was a coerced confession and little other evidence. City Confidential
City Confidential
City Confidential is an American documentary television show, transmitted on the A&E Network, which singled out a community during each episode and investigated a crime that had occurred there. Rather than being a straighforward procedural, the installments began by focusing on the history and...
, an A&E Network
A&E Network
The A&E Network is a United States-based cable and satellite television network with headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles and Stamford. A&E also airs in Canada and Latin America. Initially named the Arts & Entertainment Network, A&E launched...
program about the murder, postulated that part of the reason Miller took such an active interest (including supporting Reilly's defense and using his own celebrity to bring attention to Reilly's plight) was because he had felt similarly persecuted in his run-in with the HUAC. He sympathized with Reilly, whom he firmly believed to be innocent and to have been railroaded by the Connecticut State Police and the Attorney General who had initially prosecuted the case.
1956–1964
In 1956, a one-act version of Miller's verse dramaVerse drama and dramatic verse
Verse drama is any drama written as verse to be spoken; another possible general term is poetic drama. For a very long period, verse drama was the dominant form of drama in Europe...
A View from the Bridge
A View from the Bridge
A View from the Bridge is a play by American playwright Arthur Miller that was first staged on September 29, 1955 as a one-act verse drama with A Memory of Two Mondays at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway. The play was unsuccessful and Miller subsequently revised the play to contain two acts; this...
opened on Broadway in a joint bill with one of Miller's lesser-known plays, A Memory of Two Mondays
A Memory of Two Mondays
A Memory of Two Mondays is a one-act play by Arthur Miller.Based on Miller's own experiences, the play focuses on a group of desperate workers earning their livings in a Brooklyn automobile parts warehouse during the Great Depression in the 1930s, a time of 25 percent unemployment in the United...
. The following year, Miller revised A View from the Bridge as a two-act prose
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
drama, which Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
directed in London.
In June 1956, Miller left his first wife Mary Slattery and on June 25 he married Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
. Miller and Monroe had met in April 23 1951, when they had a brief affair, and had remained in contact since then.
When Miller applied in 1956 for a routine renewal of his passport, the HUAC used this opportunity to subpoena
Subpoena
A subpoena is a writ by a government agency, most often a court, that has authority to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of subpoena:...
him to appear before the committee. Before appearing, Miller asked the committee not to ask him to name names, to which the chairman agreed.
When Miller attended the hearing, to which Monroe accompanied him, risking her own career, he gave the committee a detailed account of his political activities. Reneging on the chairman's promise, the committee demanded the names of friends and colleagues who had participated in similar activities. Miller refused to comply, saying "I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him." As a result, a judge found Miller guilty of contempt of Congress
Contempt of Congress
Contempt of Congress is the act of obstructing the work of the United States Congress or one of its committees. Historically the bribery of a senator or representative was considered contempt of Congress...
in May 1957. Miller was sentenced to a $500 fine or thirty days in prison, blacklisted, and disallowed a US passport. In 1958, his conviction was overturned by the court of appeals, which ruled that Miller had been misled by the chairman of the HUAC.
Miller began work on The Misfits
The Misfits (film)
The Misfits is a 1961 American drama film written by Arthur Miller, directed by John Huston, and starring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, and Eli Wallach. It was the final film appearance for both Gable and Monroe...
, starring his wife. Miller later said that the filming was one of the lowest points in his life; shortly before the film's premiere in 1961, the pair divorced. 19 months later, Monroe died of an apparent drug overdose.
Miller married photographer Inge Morath
Inge Morath
Ingeborg Morath was an Austrian-born photographer. In 1953 she joined the Magnum Photos Agency, founded by top photographers in Paris, and became a full photographer with them in 1955...
on February 17, 1962 and the first of their two children, Rebecca
Rebecca Miller
Rebecca Augusta Miller is an American film director, screenwriter and actress, most known for her films Personal Velocity: Three Portraits , The Ballad of Jack and Rose, and Angela,and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee all of which she wrote and directed.-Life and career:Born in Roxbury,...
, was born that September. Their son Daniel was born with Down syndrome
Down syndrome
Down syndrome, or Down's syndrome, trisomy 21, is a chromosomal condition caused by the presence of all or part of an extra 21st chromosome. It is named after John Langdon Down, the British physician who described the syndrome in 1866. The condition was clinically described earlier in the 19th...
in November 1966; he was institutionalized and excluded from the Millers' personal life at Arthur's insistence. The couple remained together until Inge's death in 2002. Arthur Miller's son-in-law, actor Daniel Day-Lewis
Daniel Day-Lewis
Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is an English actor with both British and Irish citizenship. His portrayals of Christy Brown in My Left Foot and Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood won Academy and BAFTA Awards for Best Actor, and Screen Actors Guild as well as Golden Globe Awards for the latter...
, is said to have visited Daniel frequently, and to have persuaded Arthur Miller to reunite with his adult son.
Later career
In 1964 Miller's next play was produced. After the FallAfter the Fall (play)
After the Fall is a play by American dramatist Arthur Miller. The original performance opened in New York City on January 23, 1964, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Barbara Loden and Jason Robards Jr., with an early appearance by Faye Dunaway. Kazan also collaborated with Miller on the script...
is a deeply personal view of Miller's experiences during his marriage to Monroe. The play reunited Miller with his former friend Kazan: they collaborated on both the script and the direction. After the Fall
After the Fall (play)
After the Fall is a play by American dramatist Arthur Miller. The original performance opened in New York City on January 23, 1964, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Barbara Loden and Jason Robards Jr., with an early appearance by Faye Dunaway. Kazan also collaborated with Miller on the script...
opened on January 23, 1964 at the ANTA Theatre in Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park is one of the best-known of New York City's 1,900 public parks. At 9.75 acres , it is a landmark in the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village, as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity...
amid a flurry of publicity and outrage at putting a Monroe-like character, called Maggie, on stage. That same year, Miller produced Incident at Vichy
Incident At Vichy
Incident at Vichy is a 1964 play by American dramatist Arthur Miller focusing upon the subjects of human nature, guilt, fear, and complicity using Vichy France for the setting. Miller, a Jew himself, wrote the one act play about a group of detainees waiting for inspection by German officers during...
. In 1965, Miller was elected the first American president of International PEN
International PEN
PEN International , the worldwide association of writers, was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere....
, a position which he held for four years. During this period Miller wrote the penetrating family drama, The Price
The Price (play)
The Price is a 1968 play by Arthur Miller. It is a piece about family dynamics, the price of furniture and the price of one's decisions. The play opened on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre on February 7, 1968 where it played until the production moved to the 46th Street Theatre on November 18, 1968....
, produced in 1968. It was Miller's most successful play since Death of a Salesman.
In 1969, Miller's works were banned in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
after he campaigned for the freedom of dissident writers. Throughout the 1970s, Miller spent much of his time experimenting with the theatre, producing one-act plays such as Fame and The Reason Why, and traveling with his wife, producing In The Country and Chinese Encounters with her. Both his 1972 comedy The Creation of the World and Other Business
The Creation of the World and Other Business
The Creation of the World and Other Business is a play by Arthur Miller.A parable inspired by the Book of Genesis in the Bible, it explores the classic theme of good versus evil by way of a comedic retelling of the story of the creation of man . Miller's God is powerful but lacks wisdom...
and its musical adaptation, Up from Paradise
Up from Paradise
Up from Paradise is a musical with a book and lyrics by Arthur Miller and music by Stanley Silverman.In 1972, Miller's comedy The Creation of the World and Other Business closed after only twenty performances...
, were critical and commercial failures.
Miller was an unusually articulate commentator on his own work. In 1978 he published a collection of his Theater Essays, edited by Robert A. Martin and with a foreword by Miller. Highlights of the collection included Miller's introduction to his Collected Plays, his reflections on the theory of tragedy, comments on the McCarthy Era, and pieces arguing for a publicly supported theater. Reviewing this collection in the Chicago Tribune, Studs Terkel remarked, "in reading [the Theater Essays]...you are exhilaratingly aware of a social critic, as well as a playwright, who knows what he's talking about."
In 1983, Miller traveled to China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
to produce and direct Death of a Salesman at the People's Art Theatre in Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
. The play was a success in China and in 1984, Salesman in Beijing, a book about Miller's experiences in Beijing, was published. Around the same time, Death of a Salesman was made into a TV movie starring Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....
as Willy Loman. Shown on CBS, it attracted 25 million viewers. In late 1987, Miller's autobiographical work,
Timebends, was published. Before it was published, it was well-known that Miller would not talk about Monroe in interviews; in Timebends Miller talks about his experiences with Monroe in detail. During the early 1990s Miller wrote three new plays, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan
The Ride Down Mt. Morgan
The Ride Down Mt. Morgan is a play by Arthur Miller.The play's central character is Lyman Felt, an insurance agent and bigamist who maintains families in New York City and Elmira in upstate New York...
(1991), The Last Yankee
The Last Yankee
The Last Yankee is a play by Arthur Miller, which premiered on January 05, 1993 at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City. The cast included Tom Aldredge as John Frick, Frances Conroy as Patricia Hamilton, Rose Gregorio as Karen Frick, John Heard as Leroy Hamilton, and Charlotte Maier as the...
(1992), and Broken Glass
Broken Glass (play)
Broken Glass is a 1994 play by Arthur Miller, focusing on a couple in New York City in 1938, the same time of Kristallnacht, in Nazi Germany. The play's title is derived from Kristallnacht, which is also known as the Night of Broken Glass.-Characters:...
(1994). In 1996, a film of The Crucible starring Daniel Day-Lewis
Daniel Day-Lewis
Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is an English actor with both British and Irish citizenship. His portrayals of Christy Brown in My Left Foot and Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood won Academy and BAFTA Awards for Best Actor, and Screen Actors Guild as well as Golden Globe Awards for the latter...
and Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder is an American actress. She made her film debut in the 1986 film Lucas. Ryder's first significant role came in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice as a goth teenager, which won her critical and commercial recognition...
opened. Miller spent much of 1996 working on the screenplay to the film.
Mr. Peters' Connections
Mr. Peters' Connections
Mr. Peters' Connections is a play by Arthur Miller. The title character is a former Pan Am pilot who worked for the airline in its glory days. He recalls flying into a thousand sunsets and bedding eighteen Rockettes in a month, eventually marrying one of them...
was staged Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
in 1998, and Death of a Salesman was revived on Broadway in 1999 to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The play, once again, was a large critical success, winning a Tony Award for best revival of a play.
In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts
National Medal of Arts
The National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and patrons of the arts. It is the highest honor conferred to an individual artist on behalf of the people. Honorees are selected by the National Endowment for the...
. In 2001 the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
(NEH) selected Miller for the Jefferson Lecture
Jefferson Lecture
The Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities is an honorary lecture series established in 1972 by the National Endowment for the Humanities . According to the NEH, the Lecture is "the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities."-History of...
, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
. Miller's lecture was entitled "On Politics and the Art of Acting."
Miller's lecture analyzed political events (including the U.S. presidential election of 2000
United States presidential election, 2000
The United States presidential election of 2000 was a contest between Republican candidate George W. Bush, then-governor of Texas and son of former president George H. W. Bush , and Democratic candidate Al Gore, then-Vice President....
)
in terms of the "arts of performance", and it drew attacks from some conservatives such as Jay Nordlinger
Jay Nordlinger
Jay Nordlinger is an American journalist. He is a senior editor of National Review, the conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. He also writes a column for the magazine’s website, "National...
, who called it "a disgrace",
and George Will
George Will
George Frederick Will is an American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winner best known for his conservative commentary on politics...
, who argued that Miller was not legitimately a "scholar".
In 1999 Miller was awarded The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize or Gish Prize is given annually to “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.” It is one of the richest prizes in the American arts, for example the 2010 winner received...
, one of the richest prizes in the arts, given annually to “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.” On May 1, 2002, Miller was awarded Spain's Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature as "the undisputed master of modern drama". Later that year, Ingeborg Morath died of lymphatic cancer at the age of 78. The following year Miller won the Jerusalem Prize
Jerusalem Prize
The Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society is a biennial literary award given to writers whose works have dealt with themes of human freedom in society. It is awarded at the Jerusalem International Book Fair, and the recipient usually delivers an address when accepting the award...
.
In December 2004, the 89-year-old Miller announced that he had been in love with 34-year-old minimalist painter
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
Agnes Barley and had been living with her at his Connecticut farm since 2002, and that they intended to marry. Within hours of her father's death, Rebecca Miller
Rebecca Miller
Rebecca Augusta Miller is an American film director, screenwriter and actress, most known for her films Personal Velocity: Three Portraits , The Ballad of Jack and Rose, and Angela,and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee all of which she wrote and directed.-Life and career:Born in Roxbury,...
ordered Barley to vacate the premises, having consistently opposed the relationship. Miller's final play, Finishing the Picture
Finishing the Picture
Finishing the Picture is Arthur Miller's final play. It was produced at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, Illinois in October 2004,just months before Miller's death on February 10, 2005.-Production:...
, opened at the Goodman Theatre
Goodman Theatre
The Goodman Theatre is a professional theater company located in Chicago's Loop. A major part of Chicago theatre, it is the city's oldest currently active nonprofit theater organization...
, Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, in the fall of 2004, with one character said to be based on Barley. Miller said that the work was based on the experience of filming The Misfits.
When interviewed by BBC4 for The Atheism Tapes
The Atheism Tapes
The Atheism Tapes is a 2004 BBC television documentary series presented by Jonathan Miller. The material that makes up the series was originally filmed in 2003 for another, more general series, Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief, but was too lengthy for inclusion...
, he stated that he had been an atheist since his teens.
Miller died of heart failure after a battle against cancer, pneumonia and congestive heart disease at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut
Roxbury, Connecticut
Roxbury is a town in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 2,136 at the 2000 census.-History:Roxbury, whose Indian name was "Shepaug", a Mahican name signifiying "rocky water", was settled about the year 1713...
. He had been in hospice care at his sister's apartment in New York since his release from hospital the previous month. He died on the evening of February 10, 2005 (the 56th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman), aged 89, surrounded by Barley, family and friends.
Legacy
Miller's career as a writer spanned over seven decades, and at the time of his death, Miller was considered to be one of the greatest dramatists of the twentieth century. After his death, many respected actors, directors, and producers paid tribute to Miller, some calling him the last great practitioner of the American stage, and Broadway theatreBroadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
s darkened their lights in a show of respect.
Miller's alma mater, the University of Michigan opened the Arthur Miller Theatre in March, 2007. Per his express wish, it is the only theatre in the world that bears Miller's name.
Christopher Bigsby
Christopher Bigsby
Christopher Bigsby is a British literary analyst and novelist, with more than forty books to his credit. Earlier in his writing career, his books were published under the name C. W. E. Bigsby....
wrote Arthur Miller: The Definitive Biography based on boxes of papers Miller made available to him before his death in 2005. The book was published in November 2008, and is reported to reveal unpublished works in which Miller "bitterly attack[ed] the injustices of American racism long before it was taken up by the civil rights movement".
Miller's papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
The Harry Ransom Center is a library and archive at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the United States and Europe. The Ransom Center houses 36 million literary manuscripts, 1 million rare books, 5 million photographs, and more...
at The University of Texas at Austin.
Stage plays
- No VillainNo VillainNo Villain is a play written by Arthur Miller during his sophomore year in 1936, during spring break. This was his first work, reportedly written in six days in the hope of winning a $250 Hopwood Award, the first of two that he won....
(1936) - They Too AriseThey Too AriseThey Too Arise was an early work of Arthur Miller. It was a rewrite of No Villain....
(1937, based on No Villain) - Honors at DawnHonors at DawnHonors at Dawn, written in 1936, is Arthur Miller's second play , for which he won a second Avery Hopwood Award. It was written at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan....
(1938, based on They Too Arise) - The Grass Still Grows (1938, based on They Too Arise)
- The Great Disobedience (1938)
- Listen My Children (1939, with Norman Rosten)
- The Golden Years (1940)
- The Man Who Had All the LuckThe Man Who Had All the LuckThe Man Who Had All the Luck is a play by Arthur Miller.David Beeves is a young Midwestern automobile mechanic who discovers he is blessed with what appears to be almost supernatural good fortune that allows him to overcome every seemingly insurmountable obstacle that crosses his path while those...
(1940) - The Half-Bridge (1943)
- All My SonsAll My SonsAll My Sons is a 1947 play by Arthur Miller. The play was twice adapted for film; in 1948, and again in 1987.The play opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1947 and ran for 328 performances...
(1947) - Death of a SalesmanDeath of a SalesmanDeath of a Salesman is a 1949 play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was the recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. Premiered at the Morosco Theatre in February 1949, the original production ran for a total of 742 performances.-Plot :Willy Loman...
(1949) - An Enemy of the People (1950, based on Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the PeopleAn Enemy of the PeopleAn Enemy of the People is an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen wrote it in response to the public outcry against his play Ghosts, which at that time was considered scandalous...
) - The CrucibleThe CrucibleThe Crucible is a 1952 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatization of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the US government blacklisted accused communists...
(1953) - A View from the BridgeA View from the BridgeA View from the Bridge is a play by American playwright Arthur Miller that was first staged on September 29, 1955 as a one-act verse drama with A Memory of Two Mondays at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway. The play was unsuccessful and Miller subsequently revised the play to contain two acts; this...
(1955) - A Memory of Two MondaysA Memory of Two MondaysA Memory of Two Mondays is a one-act play by Arthur Miller.Based on Miller's own experiences, the play focuses on a group of desperate workers earning their livings in a Brooklyn automobile parts warehouse during the Great Depression in the 1930s, a time of 25 percent unemployment in the United...
(1955) - After the FallAfter the Fall (play)After the Fall is a play by American dramatist Arthur Miller. The original performance opened in New York City on January 23, 1964, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Barbara Loden and Jason Robards Jr., with an early appearance by Faye Dunaway. Kazan also collaborated with Miller on the script...
(1964) - Incident at VichyIncident At VichyIncident at Vichy is a 1964 play by American dramatist Arthur Miller focusing upon the subjects of human nature, guilt, fear, and complicity using Vichy France for the setting. Miller, a Jew himself, wrote the one act play about a group of detainees waiting for inspection by German officers during...
(1964) - The PriceThe Price (play)The Price is a 1968 play by Arthur Miller. It is a piece about family dynamics, the price of furniture and the price of one's decisions. The play opened on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre on February 7, 1968 where it played until the production moved to the 46th Street Theatre on November 18, 1968....
(1968) - The Reason Why (1970)
- Fame (one-act, 1970; revised for television 1978)
- The Creation of the World and Other BusinessThe Creation of the World and Other BusinessThe Creation of the World and Other Business is a play by Arthur Miller.A parable inspired by the Book of Genesis in the Bible, it explores the classic theme of good versus evil by way of a comedic retelling of the story of the creation of man . Miller's God is powerful but lacks wisdom...
(1972) - The Archbishop's CeilingThe Archbishop's CeilingThe Archbishop's Ceiling is a drama written in the 1970s by Arthur Miller.The setting is an ornate room in a former Archbishop's palace in an Eastern European capital, a room which has probably been bugged by the secret police...
(1977) - The American ClockThe American ClockThe American Clock is a play by Arthur Miller. The play is about 1930s America during The Great Depression. It is based in part on Studs Terkel's Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. The play premiered on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre on November 11, 1980; closing on November 30,...
(1980) - Playing for TimePlaying For Time (film)Playing For Time is a 1980 CBS television film, written by Arthur Miller and Fania Fénelon, based on Fénelon's autobiography, The Musicians of Auschwitz...
(television play, 1980) - Elegy for a LadyElegy for a Lady"Elegy for a Lady" is a one-act play by Arthur Miller. It was first presented in 1982 by the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, where it was combined with "Some Kind of Love Story" under the title 2 by A.M.; the combination of these two plays has also been presented as Two-Way...
(short play, 1982, first part of Two Way Mirror) - Some Kind of Love StorySome Kind of Love Story"Some Kind of Love Story" is a one-act play by Arthur Miller. It was first presented in 1982 by the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, where it was combined with "Elegy for a Lady" under the title 2 by A.M.; the combination of these two plays has also been presented as Two-Way...
(short play, 1982, second part of Two Way Mirror) - I Think About You a Great Deal (1986)
- Playing for Time (stage version, 1985)
- I Can’t Remember Anything (1987, collected in Danger: Memory!)
- Clara (1987, collected in Danger: Memory!)
- The Last YankeeThe Last YankeeThe Last Yankee is a play by Arthur Miller, which premiered on January 05, 1993 at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City. The cast included Tom Aldredge as John Frick, Frances Conroy as Patricia Hamilton, Rose Gregorio as Karen Frick, John Heard as Leroy Hamilton, and Charlotte Maier as the...
(1991) - The Ride Down Mt. MorganThe Ride Down Mt. MorganThe Ride Down Mt. Morgan is a play by Arthur Miller.The play's central character is Lyman Felt, an insurance agent and bigamist who maintains families in New York City and Elmira in upstate New York...
(1991) - Broken GlassBroken Glass (play)Broken Glass is a 1994 play by Arthur Miller, focusing on a couple in New York City in 1938, the same time of Kristallnacht, in Nazi Germany. The play's title is derived from Kristallnacht, which is also known as the Night of Broken Glass.-Characters:...
(1994) - Mr Peter’s Connections (1998)
- Resurrection BluesResurrection BluesResurrection Blues is Arthur Miller's penultimate play. Though Miller was not known for his humor, this play uses a pointed comedic edge to intensify his observations about the dangers, as well as the benefits, of blind belief: political, religious, economic and emotional.-Plot:The story is set in...
(2002) - Finishing the PictureFinishing the PictureFinishing the Picture is Arthur Miller's final play. It was produced at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, Illinois in October 2004,just months before Miller's death on February 10, 2005.-Production:...
(2004)
Non-fiction
- Situation Normal (1944) is based on his experiences researching the war correspondence of Ernie PyleErnie PyleErnest Taylor Pyle was an American journalist who wrote as a roving correspondent for the Scripps Howard newspaper chain from 1935 until his death in combat during World War II. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944...
. - In Russia (1969), the first of three books created with his photographer wife Inge Morath, offers Miller's impressions of RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and Russian society. - In the Country (1977), with photographs by Morath and text by Miller, provides insight into how Miller spent his time in Roxbury, Connecticut and profiles of his various neighbors.
- Chinese Encounters (1979) is a travel journal with photographs by Morath. It depicts the Chinese society in the state of flux which followed the end of the Cultural RevolutionCultural RevolutionThe Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
. Miller discusses the hardships of many writers, professors, and artists as they try to regain the sense of freedom and place they lost during Mao ZedongMao ZedongMao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
's regime. - Salesman in Beijing (1984) details Miller's experiences with the 1983 BeijingBeijingBeijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
People's Theatre production of Death of a Salesman. He describes the idiosyncrasies, understandings, and insights encountered in directing a Chinese cast in a decidedly American play. - Timebends: A Life, Methuen London (1987) ISBN 0413414809. Like Death of a Salesman, the book follows the structure of memory itself, each passage linked to and triggered by the one before.
Radio plays
- The Pussycat and the Plumber Who Was a Man (1941)
- William Ireland’s Confession (1941)
- Joel Chandler Harris (1941)
- Captain Paul (1941)
- The Battle of the Ovens (1942)
- Thunder from the Mountains (1942)
- I Was Married in Bataan (1942)
- Toward a Farther Star (1942)
- The Eagle’s Nest (1942)
- The Four Freedoms (1942)
- That They May Win (1943)
- Listen for the Sound of Wings (1943)
- Bernardine (1944)
- I Love You (1944)
- Grandpa and the Statue (1944)
- The Philippines Never Surrendered (1944)
- The GuardsmanThe GuardsmanThe Guardsman is a 1931 film based on the play Testőr by Ferenc Molnár. It stars Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Roland Young and ZaSu Pitts...
(1944, based on Ferenc MolnárFerenc MolnárLanguageFerenc Molnár was a Hungarian dramatist and novelist. His Americanized name was Franz Molnar...
’s play) - The Story of Gus (1947)
Assorted fiction
- FocusFocus (novel)Focus is a 1945 novel by Arthur Miller dealing with issues of racism, particularly antisemitism. In 2002, a film version, starring William H. Macy, was released.-Plot summary:...
(novel, 1945) - "The Misfits" (short story, 1957)
- I Don’t Need You Anymore (short stories, 1967)
- "Homely Girl" (short story, 1992, published in UK as "Plain Girl: A Life" 1995)
- "The Performance" (short story)
- Presence: Stories (short stories, 2007)
Screenplays
- All My Sons (1947)
- The Hook (1947)
- The MisfitsThe Misfits (film)The Misfits is a 1961 American drama film written by Arthur Miller, directed by John Huston, and starring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, and Eli Wallach. It was the final film appearance for both Gable and Monroe...
(1961) - Everybody WinsEverybody WinsEverybody Wins is a play written by Arthur Miller, who also wrote the screenplay for the film of the same name directed by Karel Reisz released in 1990 starring Debra Winger and Nick Nolte.-Synopsis:...
(1984) - Death of a SalesmanDeath of a Salesman (1985 film)Death of a Salesman is a 1985 CBS made for television film directed by Volker Schlöndorff, based on the 1949 play of the same name by Arthur Miller. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Kate Reid, John Malkovich, Stephen Lang and Charles Durning...
(1985) - The Crucible (1995)
Collections
- Kushner, Tony, ed. Arthur Miller, Collected Plays 1944–1961 (Library of AmericaLibrary of AmericaThe Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
, 2006) ISBN 978-1-93108291-4. - Martin, Robert A. (ed.), "The theater essays of Arthur Miller", foreword by Arthur Miller. NY: Viking Press, 1978 ISBN 0140049037.
- Steven R Centola, ed. Echoes Down the Corridor: Arthur Miller, Collected Essays 1944–2000, Viking Penguin (US)/Methuen (UK), 2000 ISBN 0413756904
Biographies and critical studies of Miller
- File on Miller, Christopher Bigsy (1988)
- Arthur Miller & Company, Christopher Bigsby, editor (1990)
- Arthur Miller: A Critical Study, Christopher Bigsby (2005)
- Remembering Arthur Miller, Christopher Bigsby, editor (2005)
- Arthur Miller 1915–1962, Christopher Bigsby (2008, U.K.; 2009, U.S.)
- The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller (Cambridge Companions to Literature), Christopher Bigsby, editor (1998, updated and republished 2010)
- Arthur Miller 1962–2005, Christopher Bigsby (February 2011)
External links
- Arthur Miller Society, including a chronology
- A Visit With Castro – Miller's article in The Nation, January 12, 2004
- Joyce Carol Oates on Arthur Miller
Interviews
- Miller interview, Humanities, March–April 2001
Obituaries