ARTHUR ASHER MILLER

Arthur Asher Miller

Arthur Asher Miller

Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 - February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include award-winning plays such as All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible. 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 was married to Marilyn Monroe.

Arthur Miller was the second of three children of Isidore and Augusta Miller, Polish-Jewish immigrants. His father, an illiterate but wealthy businessman, owned a women's clothing store employing 400 people. The family, including his younger sister Joan, 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 make ends meet. After graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School, he worked at several menial jobs to pay for his college tuition.

In 1940 Miller wrote The Man Who Had All the Luck, which was produced in New Jersey in 1940 and won the Theater Guild's National Award. The play closed after the 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, a town that was to be his long time home. 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 ...