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Playwright Arthur Miller's (1915-2005) Life and Influence
by Franklin and Betty J. Parker: bfparker@frontiernet.net
Arthur Miller died at age 89 on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2005, at his Roxbury, CT. home. Broadway lights dimmed at curtain time the next evening in his honor. World press comments poured in, including the following quotes:
Miller's plays…were less elaborate than those of Eugene O'Neill, more approachable than those of Tennessee Williams, and more theatrical than those of Clifford Odets. His approach to social relevance mirrored that of Henrik Ibsen, but drew from uniquely American stories. And his plays continue to be rediscovered because they are both universal and timeless. Tony Vellela, Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 14, 2005.
"With the passing of Arthur Miller goes the last of the great dramatists -- Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Miller -- of the American Century." John G. Nettles, Pop Matters, Feb. 15, 2005.
"Mr. Miller's death last week meant… the loss of a great public thinker who believed strongly…that the essence of America (its greatness ) was in its promises." Bob Herbert, New York Times, Feb. 14, 2005.
"[Death of a Salesman] is the great American Domestic Tragedy. The Crucible is the American Political Tragedy…[which] he wrote…to protest the horror of the McCarthy era." David Mamet, Pulitzer winning playwright and screenwriter, New York Times, Feb. 13, 2005.
…"on the strength of his best plays, he seems…destined for immortality." Adam Cohen. New York Times, Feb. 14, 2005.
Theatergoers who enjoyed his plays will long ponder such platitudes. Others, less familiar with his plays, will also wonder what made him a playwright, why his best plays were so timely, memorable, had universal appeal, and insightful into our times of trouble from the 1930s Depression to the end of the 20th century.
Miller's four Jewish grandparents and his father Isadore Miller all emigrated to New York City (NYC) from a village in Poland. His wife was Augustus Barnett, born in NYC, a high school graduate who read books and saw plays. She married Isadore Miller, who had arrived in NYC from Poland at age six, was unschooled, worked at a sewing machine, yet by hard work and business talent became president of Miltex Coat and Suit Co. The Millers lived well atop a 6-story apartment building on West 110th Street, facing Central Park.
Arthur Miller, born October 17, 1915, had a brother Kermit, 3 years older, and a younger sister Joan. The Millers were not strictly observant Jews, yet Jewishness permeated their lives. Arthur was an indifferent student who preferred sports and bike riding. He grew lanky, tall, and Lincolnesque like his father.
The stock market crashed on October 24, 1929, when Arthur was 14. The bankrupt family had to move to cheaper housing near relatives in Brooklyn. Arthur's father often sat home dazed. Brother Kermit dropped out of New York University. For the first time Arthur, a Brooklyn high schooler, heard family arguments over their fallen status. Early each morning before school, Arthur delivered baked goods. He worked after school and Saturdays in an auto supply store and drove its delivery truck.
His plays reflect the Depression-era strains and family conflicts he experienced. He graduated from high school in June 1933. Poor grades kept him from entering low cost City College of New York. He applied for a stock clerk job at a large Manhattan auto parts warehouse. When no response came from his application, he phoned his former auto parts employer, who explained:
"They are Irish Catholic and have not replied because you are Jewish. I will phone and tell the manager that you know more about auto parts than anyone else they are likely to hire."
Arthur, the only Jew at the auto parts warehouse, striving to fit in, felt the then rampant anti-Semitism. His later one act play, A Memory of Two Mondays (1955), captures the idiom, life style, and prejudices of his blue collar coworkers. They lived drab lives, had dead-end jobs, had many mouths to feed, and were resigned to drudgery for bare survival. But Arthur read books on the subway and at lunch breaks, and he had hopes and aspirations. Planning for college, Arthur saved $12 of his $15 per week earnings. Hearing that the University of Michigan had low tuition, he applied, was turned down, not because of anti-Semitism but because of poor high school grades.
He worked, saved, and wrote again to the admissions dean: "I am more mature now, work full time, study at night, am saving for college, and I ask to be admitted." The letter worked. He was admitted. At 19 in early Sept. 1934 he arrived by bus in Ann Arbor to find his place and follow his star.
Studying hard at the University of Michigan, Arthur held part time jobs, joined campus debates, and wrote for the campus newspaper, the Michigan Daily. His girl friend, coed Mary Slattery from Lakewood, Ohio, a lapsed Catholic, shared his leftist socio-political views. Needing money, he had his eye on the university's $250 Hopwood prize for the best undergraduate writing. University of Michigan graduate Avery Hopwood, a successful Broadway playwright, had funded the prize.
In six days and nights on 120 typed pages in play form, about which he knew little, he finished and submitted No Villain, a play about his family's fall from affluence to near poverty. It won the 1936 Hopwood prize. Encouraged by his mentor, playwriting Professor Richard Rowe, Arthur revised No Villain. Retitled They Too Arise, it won an award from the prestigious NYC Theater Group's Bureau of New Plays and was staged in Ann Arbor and Detroit.
In 1938, his senior year, he won his second $250 Hopwood Award for his play, Honors at Dawn. After graduating in June 1938, still Depression time, he worked in the Federal Theater Project writing radio plays. He later made a bare living writing radio scripts for DuPont's Cavalcade of America and other radio series. In 1940 he married Mary Grace Slattery. Her work for a book publisher helped support them.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, Miller was 26. His brother Kermit became an infantry officer. Arthur volunteered but was rejected because of a knee injury. He chose to do heavy war work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard repairing damaged war ships.
Because movie scripts were team written, Miller declined Hollywood invitations. An exception was his original screenplay for The Story of G.I. Joe, 1945, about beloved WWII war correspondent Ernie Pyle. But Miller never listed it among his works because other writers had altered his screenplay.
Miller wanted his own successful hit. No one would publish his novel, The Man Who Had All the Luck, 1941. He revised it as a play. It closed after four NYC performances.
Disappointed, Miller wrote a friend that he might never write another play: "This is now my fifth or sixth play, and I seem to have gotten nowhere." But Miller persisted. That persistence paid off when in 1947 his play All My Sons became a Broadway hit.
All My Sons is based on an incident told him by his mother-in-law, Mrs. Julia Slattery. It is about an Ohio girl who reported her father for selling defective airplane parts to the Air Force. All My Sons opened Jan. 29, 1947, in NYC. Here is the plot and flavor of All My Sons.
Act 1: A few years after WWII. The backyard of a comfortable suburban Ohio home owned by 60-ish Joe Keller and his wife Kate Keller. Their son Larry, an Air Force pilot, declared missing in action for the past 3 years, is believed dead by all but his mother. Mrs. Keller wants to believe that Larry is alive, that he will return, and that he will marry his next door sweetheart Ann Deever. Ann Deever and her brother George left town in shame after their father was convicted and jailed as a war profiteer.
Chris Keller, the second Keller son, has returned safely from service in WWII. He believes his pilot brother Larry is dead. Chris also loves Ann Deever. He has invited her to the Keller home to ask her to marry him.
Ann Deever arrives. Her father, Steve Deever, was Joe Keller's partner in a factory with a WWII contract to make cylinder heads for Air Force P 40 fighter aircraft engines. One day 120 cracked cylinder heads were shipped. They caused 21 U.S. pilots to die. An investigation cleared Joe Keller, home sick on shipment day.
Steve Deever claimed that Joe Keller phoned him from the Keller home. Keller was afraid the Air Force would cancel their contract for non-shipment. Joe Keller urged Deever to weld the cracks and ship the cylinder heads. Joe Keller then assured Deever that an inspector would surely spot the welded cracks and junk the cylinders. Because no record of Joe Keller's phone call could be found, Keller was cleared. Deever was found guilty and imprisoned.
Ann Deever's brother, George Deever, phones her at the Keller home. He says to her: "Don't marry Chris Keller. I talked to our father in prison. He confirmed Joe Keller's guilt. I'm coming to take you from that evil house." Curtain.
Act 2. A distraught and angry George Deever arrives. Joe Keller glibly tells George Deever: "When your father is released from prison, there will be a job waiting for him." George Deever explodes: "He hates your guts. Don't you know that? He's a broken, a sick man."
Joe Keller says: "Oh? I'm sorry he's sick. Me, I don't have time to get sick." Mrs. Keller unthinkingly adds: "Joe hasn't been sick in 15 years." George Deever freezes. Realizing her mistake, Mrs. Keller quickly adds: "Except for that flu. It slipped my mind. That flu that kept him in bed on shipment day."
Shocked at her admission, Mrs. Keller says to George Deever: "Don't look at me that way. Joe wanted to go to the shop that day but he just could not lift himself out of bed."
Dialogue now tense, quick. George Deever to his sister Ann: "We must leave this evil house." Chris Keller to Ann: "I love you, Ann." Mrs. Keller to her son Chris: "You can't marry Ann Deever. She's Larry's girl. Larry's coming back."
Chris to his mother: "Larry's dead and I am marrying his girl." His mother cries, "Never! Never!" Joe Keller to his wife: "Larry's dead, for Christ sake. For three years you've been talking like a maniac." Mrs. Keller slaps her husband's face.
Shocked silence.
Chris to his mother: "I've accepted Larry's death. Why can't you?" Mother Keller, hysterically, to Chris: "Your brother is alive. Because if he's dead, your father killed him. Do you understand me now?" Shocked silence again.
Joe Keller, dazed, says: "Me? Kill? Larry never flew P 40s. I'm in business. One hundred and twenty cracked cylinders, you're out of business. They tear up your contract. You put 40 years into a business and they knock you out in a minute. I swear to God I never thought they'd install those cylinders." Turning to Chris: "It was a chance I took…for you… so you…could take over… a thriving business."
Chris, livid, says: "For me! You were killing our boys and you did it for me? Is business all you know? Don't you have a country? Don't you live in the world? No animal kills its own. What must I do?" Curtain.
Act III. Mrs. Keller sits dazed in a lawn chair. Joe Keller, head bent, comes out of the house. Mrs. Keller tells him coldly, "Joe, this thing is not over yet. Confess to Chris. Offer to go to prison. Maybe he'll forgive you."
Joe Keller rasps: You wanted money, so I made money. Must I be forgiven for that?
Ann and Chris come from the house. Ann calmly tells Joe Keller and Mrs. Keller: "I have known for a long time that Larry is dead. He sent me this letter the day he died." Chris takes Larry's letter and reads it aloud: "Dear Ann, Yesterday they flew in newspapers from the States. I read about our fathers being tried and your father being convicted. I can't bear to live any more. I am going out on a mission. They will probably report me missing. You mustn't wait for me. If I had my father here now, I could kill him."
Silence broken by Joe Keller who says hoarsely : "Those 21 P-40 pilots who were killed. My own son who killed himself…. He was my son. They were all… my sons." He stands, jaw set, whispers: "I have a price to pay." Grimly, he strides into the house.
Mrs. Keller shakes her head and says: "He won't last long in prison."
Silence, broken by thunderclap gunshot from the house. In horror they realize that Joe Keller has killed himself.
(Fast action). Ann goes to Chris. They hold each other, cry, rock back and forth.
Mother Keller slowly rises, embraces Ann and Chris; tells them: "It's over. Forget now. Wipe your tears. Cry no more ." Curtain. End of Play.
All My Sons ran 328 performances, received rave reviews, won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Donaldson Award, was filmed, and is still revived all over the world.
Critics, asked to explain its lasting power, point out that All My Sons is about greed, private and corporate greed. Think of Enron, Wall Street insider trading, cover ups, pay-offs, Robber Barons past and present, Halliburton charging the government exorbitant prices.
Arthur Miller is saying in All My Sons that we are our brother's keeper; that all the children are our children, even the homeless and the destitute. Like the Prophet Micah, Miller would temper justice with mercy. All My Sons is a morality play.
Miller then 32, cheered by his first success, cast about for another play idea. It came by accident. He ran into his uncle, Manny Newman, who had just seen the Boston theater tryout of All My Sons. Saying nothing about All My Sons, uncle Manny Newman instead boasted to Arthur, as he had years before boasted to Arthur's parents, about his, Manny Newman's, success and the success of his two sons. He puffed himself up by putting down the Miller sons.
Uncle Manny Newman, braggart, failed clothing salesman, with selfish sons, was the model for Arthur Miller's Willy Loman. Miller wanted to get inside the mind of a failed salesman at the end of his tether; a man who believed in, pursued, and could not understand why he failed to achieve the American Dream; a confused man whose mind flashes back and forth, mixes past with present.
Death of a Salesman, written in 8 months in 1948, opened Feb. 10, 1949, in NYC, exactly 56 years to the day before his death. Here's is Death of a Salesman's plot and flavor.
Act. 1. The curtain opens on the simple one-story one-family Brooklyn home of 63 year old salesman Willy Loman and wife Linda Loman. The set is a cutaway of the house. In full sight are the back of the garage, back garden, steps to opened living room and kitchen and an attic bedroom.
The two Loman sons, around 30, are in shadow in the attic bedroom. One son, Happy, who lives there, is a ne'er do well womanizer.
His brother Biff, earlier a high school athlete and class cheat, had failed senior math. Unable to graduate, about to lose his hoped for college athletic scholarship, Biff rushed to his father's Boston hotel to ask his father to talk his math teacher into giving him a retest.
What Biff discovered in Boston made him leave home and become a drifter. Biff is now home on a visit.
Nighttime. A bent Willy Loman comes in wearily from the garage, drops his heavy sample cases, sits in the living room, mutters to himself. His concerned wife Linda from the kitchen says: "You're home early. Is everything all right? You didn't crash the car again, did you?" Willie answers: "No, No. I cut my sales trip short. Couldn't get past Yonkers. Couldn't concentrate on driving. Car kept veering off the road."
Linda answers soothingly: "You're tired, Willie. Rest now." Willy's mind slips back 15 years. Back from a selling trip. Bantering with his young sons polishing the family car: "That's it, boys. What a simonizing job!…. Remember…. Be liked, be popular; you'll never want for anything. It's the only way to win big in life."
Linda lists their unpaid bills and this pulls Willy back to reality. Willy says: "I'll do better next week. I'm well liked in Hartford." He then adds plaintively, "You know, the trouble is, Linda, people don't seem to take to me anymore. I talk too much, joke too much. I look foolish."
Linda affectionately reassures him. Willie's mind wanders to the Boston hotel room. Biff bursts in. Hears a woman's laugh…. Biff cries, "Liar. Cheat…," ….runs out. [Pause] Returning to the present Willy says to Linda, again plaintively, "I get so lonely on the road."
Hearing noises, knowing Willy's back, neighbor Charley enters, greets Willy, suggests a card game. Neighbor Charley is a successful salesman who knows that buyers avoid Willy. Charley's card games are a ruse: he loses, they argue, Charley leaves in a huff, always returns, knowing that his losses will be passed to Linda as Willy's sales earnings.
Willy's mind shifts to his older successful dead brother, Ben. Willy asks Ben: "What's the answer, Ben? How did you make your fortune?"
Biff and Happy have heard everything from the attic. They confront Mother Linda Loman. Biff asks: "How long has he been raving like that?"
Linda replies: "Willy Loman is not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, must be finally paid to such a person."
Linda explains further: "The man is exhausted. Still on the road at age 63. Worse yet, he's been taken off salary. Like a beginner. He earns only commissions on what he sells. [She holds up a rubber hose.] I found this [shaking hose] fitted to the basement gas jet. He's suicidal. I hide it. But I'm afraid." Curtain.
Act 2. Next morning. Willy Loman promised Linda he will ask for an office job close to home, will ask for an advance to pay their bills. Later, he will meet his boys at a restaurant. They want to treat him to a dinner. He departs. Mother Linda implores Happy and Biff: "Be sweet to him tonight. Be loving to him. Because he's only a little boat looking for a harbor."
Scene shifts to Howard Wagner's office, Loman's boss. Wagner asks: "Why are you in New York and not selling in New England?" Willy: "Howard, I'm tired. I need a change. I'm asking for a home office job." Howard Wagner: "But where would we put you? We sell to buyers through salesmen on the road. Willy, business is business." Willy, slamming his fist on young Wagner's desk, says: "Your father made promises to me across this desk." Wagner: "Pull yourself together. People are waiting. They're listening. I need the office. Now, take a long rest. Then we'll see. And, turn in your sample cases."
Willy, dazed, stumbles out, heads for the restaurant, hopes his boys will have some good news. His mind wanders. He asks dead brother Ben: "How did you do it? What's the answer? Nothing's working out for me, Ben, nothing."
Happy, first at the restaurant, flirts with a woman. Biff arrives; is introduced; they talk, drink, laugh; the woman says: "I'll go and get a girl friend for you, Biff."
A subdued Willy Loman enters the restaurant, sits with his boys, asks if they got the loan they need to go into business together. Biff says roughly: "We didn't get it. You know why? Because you always filled us full of hot air. You ruined our lives."
Willy Loman, dazed, says: "I'm not interested…the woods are burning, …the woods are burning, boys, you understand?" Willy blurts out: "I was fired today…. I was fired, and I'm looking for a little good news to tell your mother, because the woman has waited and the woman has suffered.…"
The boys argue with him. But Willy's mind is in the Boston hotel room. Biff's sudden appearance: "I flunked math, Dad. I won't graduate… I won't get that college athletic scholarship. Talk to my math teacher. Get him to give me a retest. You know how good you talk to people." A woman, offstage, laughs. Biff, shocked, cries: "Liar. Fake." Runs out.
(Pause.) The restaurant waiter shakes Willy Loman back to reality, says: "Your boys just left with the girls; you know, the chippies."
Later that night. Biff and Happy return home. Biff guiltily offers flowers to their mother. She smashes them to the floor: "Don't you care whether he lives or dies? Pick up this stuff. I'm not your maid anymore. Pick it up, you bums…. Not one, not another soul, would have had the cruelty to walk out on that man in a restaurant. Get out of this house."
Still later that night. Willy, gardening by flashlight, speaks grimly to his dead brother Ben: "Ben, its foolproof. Don't you think its foolproof, Ben? Don't you think it's a guaranteed $20,000 proposition?"
Ben replies warily: "They--might--not--honor--the--insurance-policy."
Linda from bedroom: "Come to bed, dear." Willy, still grim: "In a minute. In a minute."
Willy enters garage. Car door slams. Ignition grinds. Engine revs. Car speeds out. Linda cries from the bedroom, "No, No." Music flares to a frenzy. Loud crash. Metal hits tree. Glass splinters. Curtain down.
[Curtain immediately rises for Requiem, Miller's creative use of the Greek chorus, setting the tragic hero against the immensity of time.]
Requiem. Front center stage. Linda Loman and neighbor Charley are dressed in funeral clothes. Linda lays flowers on Willie's grave. She looks around and asks: "Where are all the people he knew?"
Charley steps forward and says: "Willie was a salesman…. A salesman is a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. When they start not smiling back—that's an earthquake. When you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream. It comes with the territory." Charley exits.
Linda, alone, says: "Forgive me, dear, I can't cry…. Why did you do it? I search and I search and I can't understand it. I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And there'll be nobody home. We're debt free. For the first time…we're free…" Curtain. End of play.
On opening night the audience reacted in stunned silence. Sobs were heard here and there, mainly from men. Voices said: "I know that family. Willy Loman is like my father… my uncle… my cousin…. my friend…" Scattered applause rose to a crescendo. Some stood…. stamped their feet. Others whistled,…shouted,.. "Author! Author!" The opening night audience went wild.
Death of a Salesman ran 742 performances, won Miller his second New York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Tony Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The published play was the first book in play form chosen by the Book of the Month Club. Miller's reputation was established.
Tragedies hitherto had been about the fall of heroes from high places, a King Lear. a Prince Hamlet. Death of a Salesman is about the fall of a common man, a salesman whose big dreams turn to ashes. Yet it has been called an American tragedy, maybe the greatest American tragedy.
Willy Loman's failure in Death of a Salesman symbolizes to some the failed American dream. Not all who work hard make it in America. The American dream of abundance for all may be—just a dream.
And what about Miller's 3 wives? He was never an easy husband--busy writing, involved with theater people, movie people, surrounded by alluring women. He confessed sexual temptations to his first wife Mary Slattery. Naturally, she was hurt. Miller's public appearances with sex goddess Marilyn Monroe from 1951 were the last straw. Mary told him to leave the house.
Miller moved to Manhattan's Chelsea Hotel and asked for a divorce. Mary agreed in Feb. 1956, receiving child support plus a percentage of all his future earnings. Awaiting his divorce in Reno, Nevada, Miller observed some local drifters. His short story about them, The Misfits, was published in Esquire, 1957. Had the drifters lived on the frontier 100 years earlier they might have been nation-building pioneers.
But in the Nevada desert in 1956 they were reduced to rounding up wild horses for a meat canning factory. In 1961 Miller rewrote The Misfits as a screenplay to star his second wife, Marilyn Monroe. In the film Marilyn Monroe, befriended by the men, watches in horror as they rope the wild horses. Pitying the struggling roped horses she begs the men to set them free.
Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson, June 1, 1926, to a father she never knew and a depressed mother who gave her to foster homes. She married at 16; her husband went into the Navy, soon ending the marriage. She worked in a WW II factory folding parachutes. Eye-catching photos of her folding parachutes led to her being a cover girl on some 30 national magazines. She was a nude calendar girl and a Playboy centerfold. Bit parts in films led to starring roles. As the world knows she became a phenomenal sex goddess, but--at terrible cost.
Marilyn Monroe's public success could not hide little Norma Jeane's deep pain. Publicly glamorous, Marilyn privately had abortions, was drug dependent, ill, late or absent from work, and unreliable. She threw tantrums; was suicidal.
Her marriage to baseball legend Joe DiMaggio lasted only 9 months. Desperate for happiness, she clung to older, almost fatherly Arthur Miller from 1951. Miller, smitten, succumbed, but could not solve her emotional problems. Her inability to work almost shut down filming of The Misfits. Uncontrollable, she screamed at Miller as she had at others: "get out! get out!" Their 5 year marriage, 1956-61, ended in mutual agony. Her death of a drug overdose on Aug. 4, 1962, made world headlines. In death she became an even greater legend.
Was Marilyn Monroe, like Willy Loman, killed by the American dream: Willy Loman because he could not achieve it; Marilyn Monroe because she did achieve it but at unbearable cost? Miller, who created failed fictional Willy Loman, could not save his doomed wife Marilyn Monroe.
In 1956 Arthur Miller was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). When told he could get off scott-free if Marilyn Monroe had her picture taken with HUAC's chairman, Miller refused. Nor would he name his communist sympathizer acquaintances. He was held in contempt and fined, but a later court reversed that decision.
Miller's play, The Crucible, is about the Puritan witch trials in Salem, Mass., 1692. First performed in 1953, it invited comparison with the McCarthy anti-communist witch hunts. Miller saw both witch hunts as periods of national paranoia, intolerant of dissent. The Crucible is Miller's most often performed play worldwide, probably because of its warning against absolutism.
Arthur Miller's play in 1964, After the Fall, based on his bittersweet marriage to Marilyn Monroe, appeared too soon after her death and offended her fans. Years later at a hotel conference a reporter salaciously asked Miller: "Do you ever dream about Marilyn Monroe?" Miller, then 80, knocked the reporter down.
Miller remained haunted by tragic Marilyn Monroe, who in 2005, the year of his death, would have been age 79 if she had lived. His newest play about Marilyn Monroe, entitled Finishing the Picture, was performed in Chicago and NYC in late 2004.
Miller's third wife was a still photographer on the set of The Misfits, Inge Morath. She was born in Graz, Austria, May 27, 1923, was well educated, and spoke several languages. She declined to join the Hitler Youth, did forced labor at Berlin's Tempelhof airport, then being bombed daily. After WWII she was a displaced person.
Her skill at writing photo captions in magazines and books led her to Paris where she worked with master photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, a founder of the international photo agency Magnum. Working with these masters she became a leading world photographer.
Inge Morath and Arthur Miller were married Feb. 17, 1962. It was a congenial marriage of 40 years until she died of cancer, January 30, 2002, age 79, leaving two children. Together they wrote four books--Arthur's words to Inge's photographs. The first was titled In Russia, 1969, about Miller's presidency (1965-69) of PEN International, a world wide writers' group. Through PEN Miller helped free imprisoned dissident writers in countries which restricted artistic freedom.
Their other books were: In the Country, 1977, a travel book; Chinese Encounters, 1979, and Salesman in Beijing, 1984, the last two about Arthur Miller as director of Death of a Salesman at the Beijing People's Art Theater.
Miller's two children with Mary Slattery (married 16 years, 1940-56) were a daughter and son; the son is a movie producer. Miller had no children with Marilyn Monroe, who had two miscarriages in their 5 years of marriage, 1956-61. Miller's two children with third wife Inge Morath during their 40 year marriage were a son institutionalized with Down Syndrome and a daughter who is an actress and film director.
Miller's writing career was interrupted by a 1973 Connecticut murder case. Some Connecticut citizens, convinced of a miscarriage of justice, sent Miller at his home in Roxbury, CT. clippings of the police interrogation report of 18-year-old Peter Reilly accused of murdering his mother. A mixed up boy from a broken home, Peter confused and exhausted, had been coerced into signing a confession which he retracted after a night's rest.
Miller was initially reluctant to be involved. But, sensing fraud, he hired a new defense lawyer, a criminal pathologist, and asked the New York Times to cover the retrial. Peter was found not guilty and freed. Not wanting to damage further the boy's life, Miller never wrote about case. His intervention was in the Hebraic tradition: "He who saves a life, saves the world."
At the time of the Peter Reilly affair Miller was writing a semi-comic play, The Creation of the World and Other Business. It was about the Book of Genesis; Adam and Eve, why Cain slew Abel, why God let it happen; who God is, and why each generation reinvents God.
Turning points that made Arthur Miller a playwright included coming to maturity during the Depression, attending the University of Michigan, and needing money. He would have become some kind of writer, no matter what. But it was the lure of the Hopwood Prize and Prof. Richard Rowe's encouragement which pointed him toward playwrighting.
The Depression also shaped his political outlook, made him a reformer. He determined to write plays to improve society. Being of a persecuted minority made him want through his plays to fix a broken world.
Also, the Broadway theater gave him great collaborative artists: director Elia Kazan, set designer Jo Mielzner, others. Early failures almost made him quit. What saw him through was his drive, creativity, determination, and luck.
Miller's hit plays of the 1940s-50s coincided with Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, and others. Yet Arthur Miller's plays seem richer. Why? Perhaps because his plays about our personal and national times of trouble hold up a mirror to our worse and better natures. They show us the sinners we are, maybe the saints we could be.
All Our Sons was a paean against corruption. Death of a Salesman questioned the America dream. The Crucible was a warning against national paranoia After the Fall explored why Americans worship celebrities. Creation of the World and Other Business pondered whey we humans had to invent God.
Arthur Miller's 1987 autobiography, Timebends, A Life, is an odd retrospective, his elliptical look back on his life. Why the strange title? Perhaps because space is curved and both light and life seem to curve back on themselves. We don't think from 1 to 10, A to Z. Instead our brain cells interweave memories, thoughts, ideas, hopes, failures, successes. Hence, Timebends.
Arthur Miller on his Connecticut farm planted many trees. His greatest plays, like those trees, seem destined to live on and provide towering strength for a still troubled world.
Playwright Arthur Miller (1915-2005) Chronology by Franklin and Betty J. Parker
1915, Oct. 17: Arthur Aster Miller born in NYC.
1920-28: Attended Public School #24 in Harlem.
1923: Saw his first play--a melodrama at the Schubert Theater.
1928: Bar-mitzvah at the Avenue M temple.
1929: Father's business failed and family move to Brooklyn, NYC.
1932: Graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School. Registered for night school at City College, but quit after 2 weeks.
1932: Held various jobs, including singing on a local radio station and truck driving.
1932-34: Clerked in an auto-parts warehouse, where he was the only Jew employed and had his first personal experiences of American anti-Semitism.
1934-35: University of Michigan, studying journalism. Reporter and night editor on student paper, The Michigan Daily.
1936: Wrote No Villain in six days and received Hopwood Award in Drama. Transferred to an English major.
1937: Took playwrighting class with Professor Kenneth T. Rowe. Rewrote No Villain, retitled, They Too Arise which received a major award from the Bureau of New Plays and was produced in Ann Arbor and Detroit. Honors at Dawn received the Hopwood Award in Drama. Drove Ralph Neaphus East to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain during their Civil War, and decided not to go with him.
1938: The Great Disobedience received second place in the Hopwood contest. They Too Arise is revised and titled The Grass Still Grows for anticipated production in NYC. Graduated with a B.A. in English. Joined NYC's Federal Theater Project to write radio plays and scripts, having turned down a much better paying offer to work as a scriptwriter for 20th Century Fox, in Hollywood.
1939: Wrote Listen My Children, with Norman Rosten.
1940: Married Mary Grace Slattery. Wrote The Golden Years. Met Clifford Odets in a second-hand bookstore. Traveled to NC to collect dialect speech for the folk division of the Library of Congress.
1941: Took extra job working as a shipfitter's helper at the Brooklyn Naval Yard. Wrote The Pussycat and the Plumber Who Was a Man, a radio play for Columbia Workshop (CBS), and other radio plays: William Ireland's Confession, Joel Chandler Harris, and Captain Paul.
1942: Wrote radio plays The Battle of the Ovens, Thunder from the Mountains, I Was Married in Bataan, Toward a Farther Star, The Eagle's Nest, and The Four Freedoms.
1943: Wrote The Half-Bridge, and one-act, That They May Win, produced in NYC. Wrote Listen for the Sound of Wings (radio play).
1944: Daughter, Jane, is born. Wrote radio plays Bernadine, I Love You, Grandpa and the Statue, and The Philippines Never Surrendered. Adapted Ferenc Molnar's The Guardsman and Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice for the radio. Having toured army camps to research for The Story of G.I. Joe (film for which he wrote the initial draft screenplay; later withdrew from project when they would not let him write it his way). He published book about experience, Situation Normal. The Man Who Had All The Luck premiered on Broadway but closed after 6 performances, though it received the Theater Guild National Award.
1945: Focus (novel) published. Wrote Listen for the Sound of Wings (radio play) and "Should Ezra Pound Be Shot?" for New Masses (article).
1946: Adapted George Abbott's and John C. Holm's Three Men on a Horse for radio.
1947: All My Sons, 328 performances, premiered and received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the Donaldson Award. Son, Robert, was born. Wrote The Story of Gus (radio play) and "Subsidized Theatre" for The New York Times (article). Went to work for a short time in an inner city factory assembling beer boxes for minimum wage to stay in touch with his audience. Gave first interview to John K. Hutchens, for The New York Times. Explored Brooklyn dock Red Hook area, tried to get into the world of the longshoremen working there, and found out about Pete Panto, whose story would form the nucleus of his screenplay The Hook.
1948: Built himself the small Connecticut studio in which he wrote Death of a Salesman. Trip to Europe with Vinny Longhi where he got sense of the Italian background he would use for the Carbones and their relatives in The Hook. He also met some Jewish death camp survivors held captive in a post-war tangle of bureaucracy.
1949: Death of a Salesman, 742 performances, premiered and received the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Antoinette Perry Award, the Donaldson Award, and the Theater Club Award, among others. New York Times published his essay, "Tragedy and the Common Man." Attended the pro-Soviet Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to chair an arts panel with Clifford Odets and Dmitri Shostakovich.
1950: Met Marilyn Monroe for the first time. Adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, 36 performances, premiered. The Hook failed to reach production due to pressure from HUAC. First sound recording of Death of a Salesman.
1951: Yiddish production of Death of a Salesman, translated by Joseph Buloff. First film production of Death of a Salesman, with Frederic March, for Columbia Pictures. Inge Morath, his third wife, came to the U.S.
1951-52: U.S. tour of Death of a Salesman.
1952: Visits the Historical Society "Witch Museum" in Salem, Mass., to research for The Crucible.
1953: The Crucible, 197 performances, premiered and received the Antoinette Perry Award, and the Donaldson Award. Tried his hand at directing, a production of All My Sons for the Arden, Del., summer theatre. Was asked to attend the Belgian premier of The Crucible, but was unable to attend as denied passport by the U.S.
1954: First radio production of Death of a Salesman, on NBC.
1955 The one-act A View From the Bridge premiered in a joint bill with A Memory of Two Mondays, 149 performances. HUAC pressured city officials to withdraw permission for Miller to make a film he'd been planning about NYC juvenile delinquency.
1956: Lived in Nevada for six weeks in order to divorce Mary Slattery and got the material for The Misfits. Married Marilyn Monroe. Subpoenaed to appear before HUAC. Received honorary Doctor of Human Letters (L.H.D.) from the University of Michigan. Went to England with Monroe to meet Laurence Olivier. Revised A View From the Bridge into two acts for Peter Brook to produce in London, England.
1957: Arthur Miller's Collected Plays published. Convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to name names to the HUAC. "The Misfits" is published as short story in Esquire. First television production of Death of a Salesman, on ITA, England.
1958: U.S. Court of Appeals overturned his contempt conviction. Elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
1959: Received the Gold Medal for Drama from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
1961: Divorced Marilyn Monroe. Misfits (film) premiered. Recorded The Crucible: An Opera in Four Acts by Robert Ward and Bernard Stambler. Sidney Lumet directed a movie version of View From a Bridge. Mother, Augusta Miller, died.
1962: Married Inge Morath. Marilyn Monroe died.
1963: Daughter, Rebecca, was born. Jane's Blanket (children's book) published.
1964: After visiting the Mauthausen death camp with Inge, covered the Nazi trials in Frankfurt, Germany for the New York Herald Tribune. After the Fall, 208 performances, and Incident at Vichy, 99 performances, premiered.
1965: Elected president of International P.E.N., the international literary organization, and went to Yugoslavian conference. Ulu Grosbard's Off-Broadway production of A View from the Bridge.
1966: First sound recording of A View From the Bridge. Father, Isidore Miller died.
1967: I Don't Need You Anymore (short stories) published. Sound recording of Incident at Vichy. TV production of The Crucible, on CBS. Visited Moscow to persuade Soviet writers to join P.E.N.
1968: The Price premiered. Attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago as the delegate from Roxbury. Sound recording of After the Fall.
1969: In Russia published (Miller's words to Inge Morath's photos). Visited Czechoslovakia to show support for writers there and briefly met Václav Havel. Retired as President of P.E.N.
1970: One act plays Fame and The Reason Why produced. Miller's works are banned in the Soviet Union as a result of his work to free dissident writers.
1971: Sound recording of An Enemy of the People. Television productions of A Memory of Two Mondays, on PBS and The Price, on NBC. The Portable Arthur Miller is published
.
1972: The Creation of the World and Other Business, 20 performances, premiered. Attended the Democratic National Convention in Miami as a delegate. First sound recording of The Crucible.
1973: TV PBS production of Incident at Vichy.
1974: Up From Paradise (musical version of The Creation of the World and Other Business ) premiered at the University of Michigan. NBC TV production of After the Fall.
1977: In the Country published (Miller's words to Inge Morath's photos). Miller petitioned the Czech government to halt arrests of dissident writers. The Archbishop's Ceiling premiered in Washington, D.C.
1978: The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller, edited by Robert A. Martin published. Fame (film) appeared on NBC. Belgian National Theatre performed the 25th anniversary production of The Crucible, and this time Miller issued U.S. passport to attend.
1979: Chinese Encounters published (Miller's words to Inge Morath's photos).
1980: Playing for Time (film) appeared on CBS. The American Clock premiered at the Spoleto Festical in S.C., then opened later in NYC. TV film Arthur Miller on Home Ground shown on PBS.
1981: The second volume of Arthur Miller's Collected Plays published.
1982: One act plays, Elegy for a Lady and Some Kind of Love Story ,are produced under the title 2 by A.M. in Conn.
1983: Directed Death of a Salesman at the People's Art Theater in Beijing, the People's Republic of China.
1984: Salesman in Beijing is published. Elegy and Some Kind are published under the new title Two-Way Mirror. Miller received Kennedy Center Honors for his lifetime achievement.
1985: Death of a Salesman with Dustin Hoffman aired on CBS to an audience of 25 million. Miller went to Turkey with Harold Pinter for International PEN. He was a delegate at a meeting of Soviet and American writers in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he tried to persuade the Soviets to stop persecuting writers.
1986: I Think About You a Great Deal is published (monologue). One of 15 writers and scientists invited to the Soviet Union to a conference with Mikhail Gorbachov to discuss Soviet policies. British production of The Archbishop's Ceiling, with a restored script.
1987: One act plays I Can't Remember Anything and Clara are produced under the title Danger: Memory! Published Timebends: A Life (autobiography), which appeared as a Book -of the-Month Club popular selection. University of East Anglia named its centre for American studies, the Arthur Miller Centre. The Golden Years is premiered on BBC Radio. TV PBS production of All My Sons.
1990: Everybody Wins, a film based on Some Kind, is released. TV PBS production of An Enemy of the People.
1991: The one-act The Last Yankee is produced. The Ride Down Mt. Morgan is premiered in London, England. Received Mellon Bank Award for lifetime achievement in the humanities. TV production of Clara, and an interview on A&E. South Bank Show television special on Miller.
1992: Homely Girl is published (novella).
1993: Expanded version of The Last Yankee premiered. Television production of The American Clock, on TNT.
1994: Broken Glass premiered. Interviewed on The Charley Rose Show, PBS.
1995: Received William Inge Festival Award for distinguished achievement in American theater. Tributes to the playwright on the occasion of his eightieth birthday are held in England and America. Homely Girl, A Life and Other Stories is published (novella and short stories).
1996: Received the Edward Albee Last Frontier Playwright Award. Revised and expanded book of Theater Essays, ed. by Steven R. Centola is published.
1997: Revised version of The Ride Down Mt. Morgan is given its American Premier in Williamstown, Mass. The Crucible (film with Daniel Day Lewis) opened. BBC TV production of Broken Glass.
1998: Mr. Peter's Connections premiered. Major revival of A View From the Bridge won two Tony Awards. Miller named as the Distinguished Inaugural Senior Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. Revised version of The Ride Down Mount Morgan appeared on Broadway.
1999: Death of a Salesman revived on Broadway for the play's 50th anniversary, and wins Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.
2000: The Ride Down Mount Morgan appeared again on Broadway, also a revival of The Price. There are major 85th birthday celebrations for Miller held at University of Michigan and at the Arthur Miller Center at University of East Anglia, England. Echoes Down the Corridor is published (collected essays from 1944-2000).
2001: Untitled, a previously unpublished one act written for Vaclav Havel appeared in NYC. Williamstown Theater Festival revived The Man Who Had All the Luck. Focus, a film based on the book, is released. Miller is awarded a NEH Fellowship and the John H. Finley Award for Exemplary Service to NYC. On Politics and the Art of Acting is published (essay).
2002: NYC revivals of The Man Who Had All the Luck and The Crucible. Wife Inge Morath died. Premier of Resurrection Blues.
2003: Miller awarded the Jerusalem Prize. Kermit Miller, older brother, died on October 17th.
2004: New York City revival of After the Fall. Premier of Finishing the Picture. During Sept.-Oct. the play, Finishing the Picture, about Marilyn Monroe, performed in Chicago and NYC.
2005: Thursday, Feb. 10. Miller died of cancer and congestive heart failure, Roxbury, CT.
END of Manuscript. Corrections, comments: bfparker@frontiernet.net
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