Arthur Miller
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- For the cinematographer, see Arthur C. Miller.
| Arthur Miller | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 17 1915 New York City, New York, USA |
Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and author. He was a prominent figure in American literature and cinema for over 61 years, writing a wide variety of plays, including The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, All My Sons and Death of a Salesman, which are still widely studied and performed worldwide <ref>Death of a Salesman at Odyssey. Odyssey Theater Ensemble. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.</ref><ref>Death of a Salesman studied at Emanuel. Emanuel School. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.</ref>. Miller was often in the public eye, most famously for refusing to give evidence before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and by virtue of his marriage to Marilyn Monroe from June 1956 through January 1961. At the time of his death on February 10, 2005, Miller, the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama among other awards, was considered one of the greatest American playwrights of all time.
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[edit] Early life
Arthur Miller, the son of moderately affluent Jewish-American parents, Isidore and Augusta Miller, <ref name="UMICH_Early">Arthur Miller Files. University of Michigan. Retrieved on October 1, 2006.</ref>, was born in Harlem, New York City in 1915. His father owned a coat-manufacturing business, which failed in the Wall Street Crash of 1929 <ref name="BBC_obit">Obituary: Arthur Miller. BBC. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.</ref>, after which, his family moved to humbler quarters in Brooklyn <ref name="Times_obit">The Times Arthur Miller Obituary, (London: The Times, 2005)</ref>.
Because of the effects of the Depression on his family, Miller had no money to attend a university in 1932 after he had graduated from high school <ref name="Times_obit"/>. After securing a place at the University of Michigan, Miller worked in a number of menial jobs to pay for his tuition <ref name="BBC_obit"/>.
At the University of Michigan, Miller first majored in journalism, where he became the reporter and night editor on the student paper, The Michigan Daily. It was during this time that he wrote his first work, No Villain <ref name="chronology">A Brief Chronology of Arthur Miller's Life and Works. The Arthur Miller Society. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.</ref>. After winning the Avery Hopwood Award for No Villain, Miller switched his major to English, where he met Professor Kenneth Rowe, who aided Miller with his early experiences of Playwriting <ref>Arthur Miller Files (UM days). University of Michigan. Retrieved on November 6th, 2006.</ref>. Miller retained strong ties to his alma mater throughout the rest of his life, establishing the Arthur Miller Award in 1985 and Arthur Miller Award for Dramatic Writing in 1999, and lending his name to the Arthur Miller Theatre in 2000 <ref>Arthur Miller and University of Michigan. University of Michigan. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.</ref>. In 1937, Miller wrote Honors at Dawn, which also received the Avery Hopwood Award <ref name="chronology"/>.
In 1938, Miller received his bachelor's degree 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<ref name="chronology"/>. However, Congress, worried about possible communist infiltration, closed the project <ref name="Times_obit"/>. Miller began working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard while continuing to write radio plays, some of which were broadcast on CBS <ref name="Times_obit"/><ref name="chronology"/>.
On August 5 1940, he married his college sweetheart, Mary Slattery, the Catholic daughter of an insurance salesman <ref name="Observer_obit">Michael Ratcliffe, Arthur Miller Obituary, (London: The Observer, 2005).</ref>. The couple had two children, Jane and Robert (a director, writer and producer whose body of work includes producer of the 1996 movie version of The Crucible <ref>Robert A. Miller's IMDB profile. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.</ref>).
Miller was exempted from military service during World War II because of a high-school football injury to his left kneecap <ref name="Times_obit"/>.
[edit] Early career
In 1944 Miller wrote The Man Who Had All the Luck, which was produced in New York, and won the Theater Guild's National Award <ref>Royal National Theatre: Platform Papers, 7. Arthur Milller (Battley Brothers Printers, 1995).</ref>. Despite this however, the play closed after only six performances <ref name="chronology"/>. The next few years were quite difficult for Miller: He published his first novel, Focus, to little acclaim, and adapted George Abbott's and John C. Holm's Three Men on a Horse for the radio <ref name="chronology"/>.
However, in 1947, Miller's All My Sons was produced at the Coronet Theater. The play was directed by Elia Kazan, with whom Miller would have a continuing professional and personal relationship, and ran for three hundred and twenty-eight performances <ref name="Observer_obit"/>. All My Sons won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award <ref name="NY_Drama_Critics">New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. infoplease.com. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.</ref> and two Tony Awards<ref>Tony Awards 1947. tonyawards.com. Retrieved on September 24, 2006.</ref> in 1947, despite receiving criticism for being unpatriotic<ref name="BBC_obit"/>.
It was in 1948 where Miller built a small studio in Roxbury, Connecticut, a place that was to be his long time home, where he would, within the space of six weeks, write Death of a Salesman <ref name="chronology"/>, the work for which he is best known <ref name="CNN_obit">Arthur Miller dies. CNN. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.</ref><ref name="Times_obit"/>.
Death of a Salesman premiered on February 10 1949, at the Morocco Theater, New York City, directed by Kazan, and staring Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman. The play was a huge critical success, winning a Tony Award for best play <ref>tonyawards.com. Tony Awards 1949. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.</ref> , a New York Drama Critics' Award <ref name="NY_Drama_Critics"/>, and a Pulitzer Prize <ref>Pulitzer.org. Pulitzer Prize. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.</ref><ref>infoplease.com. Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.</ref>, and ran for seven hundred and forty-two performances <ref name="Times_obit"/>.
In 1952, Elia Kazan appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and, under fear of being blacklisted from Hollywood, named eight people from the Group Theater, who, in the 1930s, along with himself, had been members of the American Communist Party <ref name="AmMasters">American Masters: Elia Kazan. PBS. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.</ref>.
After speaking with Kazan about his testimony <ref>Exert from Timebends. Spatacus Schoolnet. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.</ref> Miller traveled to Salem, Massachusetts to research the witch trials of 1692 <ref name="Observer_obit"/>. The Crucible, a parable play in which Miller likened the situation with the House Un-American Activities Committee to the witchhunt in Salem <ref>Are you now, or were you ever?. University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.</ref>, opened at the Beck Theater on Broadway on January 22 1953. Though widely considered unsuccessful at the time of its initial release, today The Crucible is one of Miller's most frequently-produced works <ref name="Observer_obit"/>. Miller and Kazan had been close friends throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, but after Kazan's testimony to HUAC, the pair's friendship ended, and they did not speak to each other for the next ten years <ref name="AmMasters"/>. It was not long, however, before HUAC took an interest in Miller, denying him a passport to attend the Belgium opening of The Crucible in 1954 <ref name="chronology"/>.
In 1955 a one-act version of Miller's verse drama, A View From The Bridge, opened on Broadway in a joint bill with one of Miller's lesser-known plays, A Memory of Two Mondays. The following year, Miller returned to A View from the Bridge, revising it into a two-act version, which Peter Brook produced in London <ref name="chronology"/>.
[edit] 1956 - 1964
In June of 1956, Miller divorced Mary Slattery, his wife of sixteen years, and, later that month, June 29th, he married Marilyn Monroe <ref name="Observer_obit"/>. Miller and Monroe had first met one another in 1951, when they had brief affair, and had remained in contact since then <ref name="Times_obit"/>.
Taking advantage of the publicity of Miller and Monroe's marriage, HUAC subpoenaed Miller to appear before the committee shortly before the marriage. Before appearing, Miller asked the committee to not ask him to name names, to which the chairman agreed <ref name="BBCOnThisDay">BBC On This Day. BBC.co.uk. Retrieved on October 14, 2006.</ref> When Miller attended the hearing, to which Monroe accompanied him, risking her own career <ref name="Observer_obit"/>, he gave the committee a detailed account of his political activities. Despite what the chairman had told Miller, the committee asked him to reveal to them names of friends and colleges who partaken in similar activities <ref name="BBCOnThisDay"/>. Miller refused to comply with the request, saying: "I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him." <ref name="BBCOnThisDay"/>.
Because of his refusal, in May of 1957 a judge found Miller guilty of contempt of Congress . Miller was fined $500, sentenced to thirty days in prison, blacklisted, and disallowed a US passport <ref name="UMICH_Early"/>. However, in 1958, his conviction was overturned by the court of appeals, ruling that Miller was misled by the chairman of HUAC <ref name="UMICH_Early"/>.
After his conviction was overturned, Miller began work on The Misfits, a film which would star his wife. Miller said that the filming of The Misfits was one of the lowest points in his life <ref name="Observer_obit"/>, and shortly before the film's premier in 1961, the pair divorced <ref name="chronology"/>. Miller's marriage to Monroe lasted longer than either of her two previous marriages: four years and seven months. By contrast, her marriage to Joe DiMaggio lasted only nine months.
A year later, Monroe died of an apparent drug overdose, and Miller married his third, and final wife, the photographer Inge Morath <ref name="chronology"/>. Late in 1962, Miller and Morath's first child, Daniel was born, followed by their second, Rebecca in 1963.
[edit] Later career
It was in 1964 that Miller's next play, released seven years after his last, was produced. Titled After the Fall, the play was a deeply personal view of Miller's own experiences during his marriage to Monroe, which reunited Miller with his former friend Kazan, with whom he collaborated on the script, and on the direction of the play. 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 character, called Maggie, on stage <ref name="Observer_obit"/>. Also in the same year, Miller produced Incident at Vichy.
In 1965, Miller was elected International PEN's president, the organization’s first American president, a position which he held for four years <ref>Miller, Arthur. "A Visit With Castro", The Nation, 2003-12-24. Retrieved on 2006-08-01.</ref>. Miller is often credited as the person who changed PEN from being a literary group, to what he called, "the conscience of the world writing community." <ref name="Times_obit"/>.
In the late 60's Miller dedicated a lot of his time to campaigning against the Vietnam War, leading an American group of writers to Paris in 1968, with a proposal to stop the war. His dislike of the Vietnam War never appeared in Miller's work however, his only full length play of the period being the family comedy, The Price, produced in 1968 <ref name="Observer_obit"/>, which was Miller's most successful play since Death of a Salesman <ref name="UMICH_60s70s80s">Arthur Miller Files 60s70s80s. University of Michigan. Retrieved on October 14, 2006.</ref>.
After retiring as President of PEN in 1969, Miller's works were banned in the Soviet Union after he campaigned for the freedom of dissident writers <ref name="chronology"/>.
Throughout the 1970s, Miller spent a lot 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.
In 1983, Miller traveled to the People's Republic of China to produce and direct Death of a Salesman at the People's Art Theatre, in Beijing. The play was a success in China <ref name="UMICH_60s70s80s"/> and, in 1984, Salesman in Beijing, a book about Miller's experience in Beijing, was published. In late 1987, Miller's autobiography, Timebends was published. While it was generally accepted before Timebends was published that Miller would not talk about Monroe in interviews, Miller's autobiography talked about his experiences with Monroe in detail <ref name="Observer_obit"/>.
During the early 1990s, Miller produced three of new plays; The Ride Down Mount Morgan in 1991, The Last Yankee in 1992, and Broken Glass in 1994.
In 1996, a film of The Crucible, staring Daniel Day Lewis and Winona Ryder opened. Miller had spent much of 1996 working on the screenplay to the film <ref name="chronology"/>.
Death of a Salesman was revived on Broadway in 1999 to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The play, once again, was a large critical success, winning a Tony Award for best revival of a play <ref>Tony Awards 1999. tonyawards.com. Retrieved on October 28, 2006.</ref>.
On May 1 2002, Miller was awarded Spain's Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature as "the undisputed master of modern drama." Previous winners include Doris Lessing, Günter Grass and Carlos Fuentes. Later that year, Miller's wife of forty years, Ingeborg Morath, died. The following year Miller won the Jerusalem Prize.
Miller's final play, a drama with humor, entitled Finishing the Picture opened at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, in the fall of 2004. The play once again examined Miller and Monroe's relationship, this time focusing on the troubled shooting of The Misfits, during the summer and fall of 1960.
Arthur Miller died of congestive heart failure on the evening of February 10, 2005. Coincidentally, Miller passed away on the 56th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman. Miller was surrounded by family when he died at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, four months after the death of his older brother, Kermit Miller.
[edit] Legacy
Miller's career as a writer spanned over six decades, and at the time of his death in 2005, Miller was considered to be one of the greatest dramatists of the twentieth century, among the likes of Eugene O'Neill, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertolt Brecht, and Tennessee Williams <ref name="CNN_obit"/>. The University of East Anglia is home to the Arther Miller centre. After his death, many respected actors, directors, and producers paid tribute to Miller <ref>Tributes to Arthur Miller. BBC.co.uk. Retrieved on November 9, 2006.</ref>, as well as Broadway darkening their lights in a show of respect <ref>Broadway lights go out for Arthur Miller. BBC.co.uk. Retrieved on November 9, 2006.</ref>.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
Arthur Miller by Leonard Moss. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1980. <references />
[edit] External links
- Arthur Miller at the Internet Broadway Database
- Arthur Miller at the Internet Movie Database
- Arthur Miller Society
- Arthur Miller at Monologue Search
- New York Times Obituary
- CNN Obituary
- BBC Obituary
- PBS: Arthur Miller
- Miller interview, Humanities, March-April 2001
- Miller interview, The Paris Review, summer 1966
- Arthur Miller at the Open Directory Project
- A Visit With Castro - Miller's article in The Nation., January 12 2004
- Chronology of Arthur Miller
- A Literary Life: Arthur Miller - Playwright and Protagonist, Steve Newman
| The Works of Arthur Miller |
|---|
| Plays |
| Honors at Dawn | The Man Who Had All the Luck | All My Sons | Death of a Salesman | An Enemy of the People | The Crucible | A View From the Bridge | Incident At Vichy | The Price | In Russian | The Creation of the World and Other Business | The American Clock | A Memory of Two Mondays: Play in One Act | Up From Paradise | The Archbishop's Ceiling | The Last Yankee | Everybody Wins | Ride Down Mount Morgan | Broken Glass | Mr. Peters' Connections | Resurrection Blues | Finishing the Picture |
| Other works |
| Focus | "The Misfits" (short story) | I Don't Need You Anymore (short stories)| Homely Girl: A Life (three short stories) | Timebends (autobiography) | On Politics and the Art of Acting (speech) |
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