arthur miller biography book

Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller is considered one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century. His best-known plays include 'All My Sons,' 'The Crucible' and the Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Death of a Salesman.'

(1915-2005)

Who Was Arthur Miller?

Early life and education.

Miller was born in Harlem, New York, on October 17, 1915, to an immigrant family of Polish and Jewish descent. His father, Isidore, owned a successful coat manufacturing business, and his mother, Augusta, to whom he was closer, was an educator and an avid reader of novels.

The affluent Miller family lost almost everything in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and had to move from Manhattan to Flatbush, Brooklyn. After graduating high school, Miller worked a few odd jobs to save enough money to attend the University of Michigan. While in college, he wrote for the student paper and completed his first play, No Villain , for which he won the school's Avery Hopwood Award. He also took courses with playwright and professor Kenneth Rowe. Inspired by Rowe's approach, Miller moved back East to begin his career as a playwright.

Early Career & 'Death of a Salesman'

Miller's career got off to a rocky start. His 1944 Broadway debut, The Man Who Had All the Luck , garnered a fate that was the antithesis of its title, closing after just four performances with a stack of woeful reviews. Focus , Miller's novel about anti-Semitism, was published a year later. His next play, All My Sons, was a hit in 1947, running for almost a full year on Broadway and earning Miller his first Tony Award for Best Author.

Working in a small studio that he built in Roxbury, Connecticut, Miller wrote the first act of Death of a Salesman in less than a day. The play, directed by Elia Kazan , opened on February 10, 1949, at the Morosco Theatre, and was adored by nearly everyone, becoming an iconic stage work.

The drama follows the travails of Willy Loman, an aging Brooklyn salesman whose career is in decline and who finds the values that he so doggedly pursued have become his undoing. New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson described Willy Loman in his 1949 review of the play: "In his early sixties he knows his business as well as he ever did. But the unsubstantial things have become decisive; the spring has gone from his step, the smile from his face and the heartiness from his personality. He is through. The phantom of his life has caught up with him. As literally as Mr. Miller can say it, dust returns to dust. Suddenly there is nothing."

Salesman won Miller the highest accolades in the theater world: the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Tony for Best Play. (The work, in fact, swept all of the six Tony categories in which it was nominated, including for Best Direction and Best Author.)

Marriage to Marilyn Monroe

In 1956, Miller divorced his first wife, Mary Slattery, his former college sweetheart with whom he had two children, Jane Ellen and Robert. Less than a month later, Miller married actress and Hollywood sex symbol Marilyn Monroe , whom he'd first met in 1951 at a Hollywood party. At the time, Monroe was dating Kazan, who had directed Miller's All My Sons and Death of a Salesman . When Kazan asked Miller to keep Monroe company while he dated another actress, Miller and Monroe struck up a friendship that turned into a romance. Author Norman Mailer called their marriage the union of "the Great American Brain" and "the Great American Body."

Miller and Monroe's high-profile marriage placed the playwright in the Hollywood spotlight. At the time of their marriage, he told the press that Monroe would curtail her movie career for the "full-time job" of being his wife.

'The Crucible' & McCarthyism

Later in 1956, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) refused to renew Miller's passport, and called him to appear before the committee. His 1953 play, the Tony Award-winning The Crucible , a dramatization of the Salem witch trials of 1692 and an allegory about McCarthyism , was believed to be one of the reasons why Miller came under the committee's scrutiny. Miller refused to comply with the committee's demands to "out" people who had been active in certain political activities and was thus cited in contempt of Congress.

In 1957, Brooks Atkinson wrote about Miller’s stand against HUAC: "He refused to be an informer. He refused to turn his private conscience over to administration by the state. He has accordingly been found in contempt of Congress. That is the measure of the man who has written these high-minded plays."

The contempt ruling was overturned two years later.

Divorce and Marilyn's Death

Miller and Monroe were married for five years, during which time the tragic sex symbol struggled with personal troubles and drug addiction. Miller barely wrote during their marriage, except for penning the screenplay of The Misfits as a gift for Monroe. The 1961 film, directed by John Huston, starred Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift . Around the same time as The Misfits release, Monroe and Miller divorced.

Monroe died the following year, and Miller's controversial 1964 drama After the Fall was believed to have been partially inspired by their relationship. Miller was criticized for capitalizing on his marriage to Monroe so soon after her death, although the playwright denied this. Miller responded to his critics by saying: ''The play is a work of fiction. No one is reported in this play. The characters are created as they are in any other play in order to develop a coherent theme, which in this case concerns the nature of human insight, of self-destructiveness and violence toward others.''

In 1962, Miller married Austrian-born photographer Inge Morath. The couple had two children, Rebecca and Daniel. Miller insisted that their son, Daniel, who was born with Down syndrome, be excluded from the family's personal life. The infant was institutionalized, and Morath reportedly tried to bring him home as a toddler but to no avail.

Years later, actor Daniel Day-Lewis who married Miller's daughter Rebecca, visited his wife's brother frequently. Day-Lewis eventually persuaded Miller to make further contact with his adult son, who had been able to establish a happy life with outside support. Daniel's existence was unknown to most of the public until after Miller's death.

Other Works

Miller's other plays include A View From the Bridge (1955), Incident at Vichy (1964), The Price (1968), The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), The American Clock (1980) and Broken Glass (1994).

In his later career, Miller continued to explore societal and personal issues that probed the American psyche, though critical and commercial responses to the work didn't garner the acclaim of his earlier productions.

He also wrote the 1980 TV movie Playing for Time and an adaptation for the theater . The project was based on the autobiography of Fania Fénelon, who was a member of an all-women's orchestra that was imprisoned at the Auschwitz death camps during the Holocaust. The film courted controversy from Jewish organizations and Fénelon herself for its casting of Vanessa Redgrave , who had criticized Zionism and supported Palestinian organizations.

In addition to his plays, Miller collaborated with Morath on books including In the Country (1977) and 'Salesman' in Beijing (1984). In 1987, Miller published his autobiography Timebends: A Life . In his autobiography, he wrote that when he was young he “imagined that with the possible exception of a doctor saving a life, writing a worthy play was the most important thing a human being could do.”

Miller's plays have become American classics that continue to speak to new generations of audiences. Death of a Salesman has had numerous screen adaptations, including a 1985 TV version that starred Dustin Hoffman, who also starred in the previous year's Broadway revival. In 1996, a film adaptation of The Crucible hit theaters, starring Winona Ryder , Joan Allen and Day-Lewis. Miller penned the screenplay, which earned him the sole Academy Award nomination of his career.

Death of a Playwright

In 2002, Miller's third wife, Morath, died. He soon was engaged to 34-year-old minimalist painter Agnes Barley but fell into ill health before they could walk down the aisle. On February 10, 2005, the 56th anniversary of Death of a Salesman 's Broadway debut, Miller died of heart failure at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, surrounded by Barley, family and friends. He was 89 years old.

In March 2018, HBO aired the documentary Arthur Miller: Writer . Directed and narrated by his daughter Rebecca, the piece chronicled the life of the great American playwright, from the creation of his iconic plays, to his marriage to Monroe to his relationships with family members.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Arthur Miller
• Birth Year: 1915
• Birth date: October 17, 1915
• Birth State: New York
• Birth City: New York City
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Arthur Miller is considered one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century. His best-known plays include 'All My Sons,' 'The Crucible' and the Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Death of a Salesman.'
• Theater and Dance
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• Astrological Sign: Libra
• University of Michigan
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• Death Year: 2005
• Death date: February 10, 2005
• Death State: Connecticut
• Death City: Roxbury
• Death Country: United States

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• The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.
• You know, a playwright lives in an occupied country. He's the enemy. And if you can't live like that, you don't stay. It's tough. He's got to be able to take a whack, and he's got to swallow bicycles and digest them.
• The mission of the theater, after all, is to change, to raise the consciousness of people to their human possibilities.
• A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from. And by those he has walked away from that cause him remorse.

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Arthur Miller

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What is playwright Arthur Miller best known for?

American playwright Arthur Miller is known for combining social awareness with a searching concern for his characters’ inner lives. He is best known for  Death of a Salesman  (1949).

What was Arthur Miller’s early life like?

American playwright Arthur Miller was born and raised in New York City, where his father owned a successful manufacturing business. The  Great Depression , however, brought financial ruin onto his father, demonstrating to the young Miller the insecurity of modern existence.

When did Arthur Miller die?

American playwright Arthur Miller died on February 10, 2005, in Roxbury, Connecticut. He was 89 years old. He died of heart failure .

Arthur Miller (born October 17, 1915, New York , New York, U.S.—died February 10, 2005, Roxbury, Connecticut) was an American playwright, who combined social awareness with a searching concern for his characters’ inner lives. He is best known for Death of a Salesman (1949).

Miller was shaped by the Great Depression , which brought financial ruin onto his father, a small manufacturer, and demonstrated to the young Miller the insecurity of modern existence. After graduation from high school he worked in a warehouse. With the money he earned he attended the University of Michigan (B.A., 1938), where he began to write plays. His first public success was with Focus (1945; film 1962 [made-for-television]), a novel about anti-Semitism . All My Sons (1947; film 1948), a drama about a manufacturer of faulty war materials that strongly reflects the influence of Henrik Ibsen , was his first important play. It won Miller a Tony Award , and it was his first major collaboration with the director Elia Kazan , who also won a Tony.

Miller’s next play, Death of a Salesman , became one of the most famous American plays of its period. It is the tragedy of Willy Loman , a man destroyed by false values that are in large part the values of his society. For Miller, it was important to place “the common man” at the centre of a tragedy. As he wrote in 1949 :

The quality in such plays [i.e., tragedies] that does shake us…derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world. Among us today this fear is as strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was. In fact, it is the common man who knows this fear best.

Miller had been exploring the ideas underlying Death of a Salesman since he was a teenager, when he wrote a story about a Jewish salesman; he also drew on memories of an uncle. He wrote the play in 1948, and it opened in New York City , directed by Kazan, in February 1949. The play won a Tony Award for best play and a Pulitzer Prize for drama, while Miller and Kazan again each won individual Tonys, as author and director respectively. The play was later adapted for the screen (1951 and several made-for-television versions) and was revived several times on Broadway.

Miller based The Crucible (1953) on the witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts , in 1692–93, a series of persecutions that he considered an echo of the McCarthyism of his day, when investigations of alleged subversive activities were widespread. Though not as popular as Death of a Salesman , it won a Tony for best play. It was also adapted numerous times for film and television. In 1956, when Miller was himself called before the House Un-American Activities Committee , he refused to name people he had seen 10 years earlier at an alleged communist writers’ meeting. He was convicted of contempt but appealed and won.

A Memory of Two Mondays and another short play, A View from the Bridge , about an Italian-American longshoreman whose passion for his niece destroys him, were staged on the same bill in 1955. (A year later A View from the Bridge was performed in a revised, longer form.) After the Fall is concerned with failure in human relationships and its consequences, large and small, by way of McCarthyism and the Holocaust ; it opened in January 1964, and it was understood as largely autobiographical, despite Miller’s denials. Incident at Vichy , which began a brief run at the end of 1964, is set in Vichy France and examines Jewish identity. The Price (1968) continued Miller’s exploration of the theme of guilt and responsibility to oneself and to others by examining the strained relationship between two brothers. He directed the London production of the play in 1969.

The Archbishop’s Ceiling , produced in Washington, D.C., in 1977, dealt with the Soviet treatment of dissident writers. The American Clock , a series of dramatic vignettes based on Studs Terkel ’s Hard Times (about the Great Depression), was produced at the 1980 American Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina . Miller’s later plays included The Ride Down Mount Morgan (1991), Mr. Peters’ Connections (1998), and Resurrection Blues (2002).

Miller also wrote a screenplay, The Misfits , for his second wife, the actress Marilyn Monroe ; they were married from 1956 to 1961. The Misfits , released in 1961, was directed by John Huston and also starred Clark Gable ; its filming served as the basis for Miller’s final play, Finishing the Picture (2004). I Don’t Need You Any More , a collection of his short stories, appeared in 1967 and a collection of theatre essays in 1977. His autobiography , Timebends , was published in 1987. In 2001 Miller received the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for theatre/film.

Biography of Arthur Miller, Major American Playwright

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Arthur Miller (October 17, 1915–February 10, 2005) is considered one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century, having created some of America's most memorable plays over the course of seven decades. He is the author of " Death of a Salesman ," which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize in drama, and " The Crucible ." Miller is known for combining social awareness with a concern for his characters’ inner lives.

Fast Facts: Arthur Miller

• Known For : Award-winning American playwright
• Born : October 17, 1915 in New York City
• Parents : Isidore Miller, Augusta Barnett Miller
• Died : Feb. 10, 2005 in Roxbury, Connecticut
• Education : University of Michigan
• Produced Works : All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A View From the Bridge
• Awards and Honors : Pulitzer Prize, two New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, two Emmy Awards, three Tony Awards
• Spouse(s) : Mary Slattery, Marilyn Monroe, Inge Morath
• Children : Jane Ellen, Robert, Rebecca, Daniel
• Notable Quote : "Well, all the plays that I was trying to write were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from."

Arthur Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in Harlem, New York to a family with Polish and Jewish roots. His father Isidore, who came to the U.S. from Austria-Hungary, ran a small coat-manufacturing business. Miller was closer to his mother Augusta Barnett Miller, a native New Yorker who was a teacher and an avid reader of novels.

His father's company was successful until the Great Depression dried up virtually all business opportunities and shaped many of the younger Miller's beliefs, including the insecurity of modern life. Despite facing poverty, Miller made the best of his childhood. He was an active young man, in love with football and baseball.

When he wasn’t playing outside, Miller enjoyed reading adventure stories. He also kept busy with many boyhood jobs. He often worked alongside his father; other times, he delivered bakery goods and worked as a clerk in an auto parts warehouse.

After working at several jobs to save money for college, in 1934 Miller left the East Coast to attend the University of Michigan, where he was accepted into the school of journalism. He wrote for the student paper and completed his first play, "No Villain," for which he won a university award. It was an impressive beginning for a young playwright who had never studied plays or playwriting. What's more, he had written his script in just five days.

He took several courses with Professor Kenneth Rowe, a playwright. Inspired by Rowe's approach to constructing plays, after graduating in 1938, Miller moved back East to begin his career as a playwright.

Miller wrote plays as well as radio dramas. During World War II, his writing career gradually became more successful. (He couldn't serve in the military because of a football injury.) In 1940 he finished "The Man Who Had All the Luck," which reached Broadway in 1944 but closed after only four performances and a pile of unfavorable reviews.

His next play to reach Broadway came in 1947 with "All My Sons," a powerful drama that earned critical and popular praise and Miller's first Tony Award, for best author. From that point on, his work was in high demand.

Miller set up shop in a small studio that he had built in Roxbury, Connecticut, and wrote Act I of " Death of Salesman " in less than a day. The play, directed by Elia Kazan, opened on February 10, 1949, to great acclaim and became an iconic stage work, earning him international recognition. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, the play won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and swept all six of the Tony categories in which it was nominated, including best direction, best author, and best play.

Communist Hysteria

Since Miller was in the spotlight, he was a prime target for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), led by Wisconsin Sen.  Joseph McCarthy . In an age of anti-communism fervor, Miller’s liberal political beliefs seemed threatening to some American politicians, which is unusual in retrospect, considering that the Soviet Union banned his plays.

Miller was summoned before the HUAC and was expected to release names of any associates he knew to be communists. Unlike Kazan and other artists, Miller refused to give up any names. “I don’t believe a man has to become an informer in order to practice his profession freely in the United States,” he said. He was charged with contempt of Congress, a conviction that was later overturned.

In response to the hysteria of the time, Miller wrote one of his best plays, "The Crucible." It is set during another time of social and political paranoia, the Salem Witch Trials , and is an insightful criticism of the phenomenon.

Marilyn Monroe

By the 1950s, Miller was the most recognized playwright in the world, but his renown wasn’t only because of his theatrical genius. In 1956, Miller divorced Mary Slattery, his college sweetheart with whom he had had two children, Jane Ellen and Robert. Less than a month later he married actress and Hollywood sex symbol  Marilyn Monroe , whom he'd met in 1951 at a Hollywood party.

From then on, he was even more in the limelight. Photographers hounded the famous couple and the tabloids were often cruel, puzzling over why the “world’s most beautiful woman” would marry such a “homely writer." Author Norman Mailer said their marriage represented the union of "the Great American Brain" and "the Great American Body."

They were married for five years. Miller wrote little during that period, with the exception of the screenplay for "The Misfits" as a gift for Monroe. The 1961 film, directed by John Huston, starred Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift. Around the time the film was released, Monroe and Miller divorced. A year after divorcing Monroe (she died the following year), Miller married his third wife, Austrian-born American photographer Inge Morath.

Later Years and Death

Miller continued to write into his 80s. His later plays didn't attract the same attention or acclaim as his earlier work, though film adaptations of "The Crucible" and "Death of a Salesman" kept his fame alive. Much in his later plays dealt with personal experience. His final drama, "Finishing the Picture ," recalls the turbulent last days of his marriage to Monroe.

In 2002, Miller's third wife Morath died and he soon was engaged to 34-year-old painter Agnes Barley, but he became ill before they could marry. On February 10, 2005—the 56th anniversary of the Broadway debut of "Death of a Salesman"—Miller died of heart failure at his home in Roxbury, surrounded by Barley, family, and friends. He was 89 years old.

Miller's sometimes bleak view of America was shaped by his and his family's experiences during the Great Depression. Many of his plays deal with the ways capitalism affects the lives of everyday Americans. He thought of theater as a way to speak to those Americans: "The mission of the theater, after all, is to change, to raise the consciousness of people to their human possibilities," he said.

He established the Arthur Miller Foundation to help young artists. After his death, his daughter Rebecca Miller focused his mandate on expanding the arts education program in New York City public schools.

In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Miller won two New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, two Emmy Awards, three Tony Awards for his plays, and a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He also received the John F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award and was named Jefferson Lecturer for the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2001.

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Arthur Miller

American Witness

by John Lahr

Series: Jewish Lives

264 Pages , 5.75 x 8.25 in , 1 b-w illus.

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• Published: Tuesday, 13 Feb 2024
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John Lahr has been a contributor to the New Yorker since 1991, where for twenty-one years he was its senior drama critic. He is the author of eighteen books, including Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh , which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. He is the first critic to win a Tony Award, for coauthoring Elaine Stritch at Liberty .

“Lahr’s cogent analyses [in Arthur Miller ] are revelatory but not surgical, and his sympathy never cloys. He does what a good literary biographer must do: He does not reduce the work to the life, but shows how it explains the life from which it emerges. He is an investigative reporter, a profiler of personality, mind and character, and a critic who understands drama on the page and in the house.”—Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal “His plays, although rooted in the personal as John Lahr establishes, can still disclose truths about the political world that might otherwise be denied.”—John Stokes, Times Literary Supplement Named by the New Yorker as a Best Book of 2022 “It is a tapestry rich with personal as well as public detail, but it also makes irrefutable the argument (sometimes opposed) that Miller’s Jewishness was foundational to his writing.”—John Nathan, Jewish Chronicle “ New Yorker critic Lahr shines in this searching account of the life of playwright Arthur Miller. . . . It’s a great introduction to a giant of American letters.”— Publishers Weekly “An engaging summary of a celebrated and checkered career.”— Kirkus Reviews “In this succinct and gorgeously written portrait, the former New Yorker drama critic and award-winning biographer of Tennessee Williams offers a keen psychological appraisal of Miller’s works, and of Miller himself.”—Julia Klein, Boston Globe “John Lahr’s slender, sharp biography offers an engaging account of the playwright’s life, beginning with his New York childhood. Lahr also provides a penetrating interpretation of Arthur Miller’s canonical works.”— Christian Science Monitor , “November’s 10 Best Books” “Beautifully written. . . . Lahr’s latest book is the achievement of a fine and mature scholar, and the volume has the interpretive sensitivity, scholarly scruple, narrative energy, and cultural depth to make it one of the major coordinates in Miller studies.”—Matthew Roudané, Tennessee Williams Annual Review “In this instructive, well-wrought interpretative biography, Lahr illuminates the enduring contributions Miller made to cultural affairs, at home and abroad. This insightful, accessible presentation will captivate Miller scholars and novices alike.”—H. I. Einsohn, Choice “With this admirably brief book, Mr. Lahr, a prominent theater critic, delivers a no-filler biography that still leaves room for his keen critical insights.”—Kurt Wenzel, East Hampton Star “No one writes about playwrights and the theater the way John Lahr does. In this probing, brilliantly insightful, and also deeply readable and entertaining book, he offers unique insight into how Miller’s mind works, and how the details of his biography impacted his body of work.”—Sarah Ruhl, MacArthur Prize–winning playwright “Lahr lets us see the great American playwright with new eyes. After his highly acclaimed Tennessee Williams biography, Lahr scores a second smash hit with Arthur Miller . No one writes more perceptively about the twentieth-century theater than John Lahr.”—John Guare, playwright, Six Degrees of Separation “A superbly written, impeccably researched biography from the great John Lahr. The close relationship between Miller and his plays is detailed and sympathetic. A classic book about a classic American playwright.”—André Bishop, artistic director, Lincoln Center Theater “In Arthur Miller , the great critic and biographer John Lahr has found a perfect subject: complex, gifted, a man of his times. This is biography-as-collaboration, and utterly captivating.”—Hilton Als, Pulitzer Prize–winning essayist and author

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Arthur Miller

Christopher Bigsby

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ISBN 9780674057081

Publication date: 11/08/2010

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“Thanks to Bigsby’s research, particularly into previously unseen material, his account of Miller trying to hang on to his soul in midcentury America shows that he was large not least in his contradictions…What the book makes newly clear, though, is how much of Miller’s work reflects his own personal struggles.”—Jeremy McCarter, New York Times Book Review

“Bigsby’s biography is so effective because it manages to locate Miller’s art in terms both of the progression of his idealism and the regressions of his actual experience. There can’t be many writers who appeared to live so much at the center of their times and who suffered so much from that seeming centrality.”—Andrew O’Hagan, London Review of Books

This is the long-awaited biography of one of the twentieth century’s greatest playwrights, Arthur Miller, whose postwar decade of work earned him international critical and popular acclaim. Christopher Bigsby’s gripping, meticulously researched biography, based on boxes of papers made available to him before Miller’s death, examines his refusal to name names before the notorious House on Un-American Activities Committee, offers new insights into Miller’s marriage to Marilyn Monroe, and sheds new light on how their relationship informed Miller’s subsequent great plays.

Bigsby has produced a thorough book that is unlikely to be surpassed in its wealth of detail. —Toby Young, Mail on Sunday

[A] fascinating biography of Arthur Miller. —Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard

[A] colossal biography...This is a fat, endlessly informative book, the work of a lifetime...It is as definitive as we are likely to get, with plenty of new material. It also reveals much more than Miller did in his autobiography, Timebends . Above all, it is a book about the puzzle of politics and art and about the unreliable solution provided by sex--or Marilyn Monroe as it was once called. —Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

Christopher Bigsby's lengthy, sympathetic study contains electrifying new perspectives on its subject...The man who emerges from these pages is more of a showman than is usually credited and more of a modern hero, too. —Vanessa Thorpe, The Observer

Bigsby gives a remarkably full account of this complex and somewhat remote figure...A richly detailed, revealing look at the making of a playwright and a man. —Kirkus Reviews

[A] multiperspective masterpiece, which surpasses all other Miller biographies, including his autobiography, Timebends . Bigsby gives the reader an intense and personal look at Miller's life, from his birth in 1915 to moderately affluent Jewish American parents and his college years working at a newspaper to his intense attraction and eventual marriage to Marilyn Monroe and his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Everything is here, from the mundane to the revelatory. This detailed look at his life reveals his shared experiences as the basis for his sympathies for the common man. —Mark Alan Williams, Library Journal

Bigsby leaves no facet of playwright Arthur Miller's life, public or private, unexamined in this literally and figuratively weighty tome...Although this volume covers only the first 48 of Miller's 89 years, the book is a definite godsend to theater lovers and generations of students probing Miller's life and work. —Jack Helbig, Booklist (starred review)

A feature of this encyclopedic study of the first half of Miller's life is the excellence of the writing and the trans-Atlantic acuity of observation. Bigsby is always at home in Miller's America...Bigsby's extended defense of Miller's gut rejection of Kazan's apostasy is an intellectual triumph. —David Caute, Spectator

Contains electrifying new perspectives on its subject...Miller, it's clear, was not a dry, cerebral naive but a principled, passionate talent, who recognized imperfection in himself and in others. The man who emerges from these pages is more of a showman than is usually credited and more of a modern hero, too. —Vanessa Thorpe, The Observer

A landmark biography. —Toby Young, Independent on Sunday

A masterly biography of Miller. —Tony Rennell, Daily Mail

[A] magisterial biography...This is a must-read for anyone seriously interested in twentieth century theatre and particularly Miller's life and work...The author goes into remarkable detail based on years of research, to come to conclusions about the life of a man who at his best was perhaps the greatest American playwright of the last fifty years, or possibly ever. —Philip Fisher, British Theatre Guide

[A] meteor-size new biography...Bigsby's book is crammed with piquant details. —Dwight Garner, New York Times

Monumental...A portrait of a man with a passion for social (and racial) justice and a fierce belief in responsibility for one's own life, though Miller was often harder on himself than on others for not always living up to such ideals. —James Hebert, creators.com

Thanks to Bigsby's research, particularly into previously unseen material, his account of Miller trying to hang on to his soul in midcentury America shows that he was large not least in his contradictions...What the book makes newly clear, though, is how much of Miller's work reflects his own personal struggles. —Jeremy McCarter, New York Times Book Review

Christopher Bigsby has a perfect ear for the manners and motions of Miller's art, and he tells a gripping story of Miller's hunt for truth. There are mysteries to bear and ironies to become invested in—all good biographies must have their share—and yet the Miller who emerges from this book is ambiguous enough to become a beacon of the Cold War period...Bigsby's biography is so effective because it manages to locate Miller's art in terms both of the progression of his idealism and the regressions of his actual experience. There can't be many writers who appeared to live so much at the center of their times and who suffered so much from that seeming centrality...One of the coups of Bigsby's terrific biography is that it finally allows Miller to name the names he refused to name in 1956. —Andrew O'Hagan, London Review of Books

[A] monumental new biography...Miller's art was a constant, arduous and often soul-searing process of working through themes from his life....[Bigsby's] book is a portrait of a man with a passion for social (and racial) justice and a fierce belief in responsibility for one's own life, though Miller was often harder on himself than on others for not always living up to such ideals. —James Hebert, San Diego Union-Tribune

Christopher Bigsby is the first to offer a serious biography since Miller's death. —Robert Birnbaum, The Morning News

Christopher Bigsby has very likely written the definitive biography of Miller...Bigsby has assiduously read countless unfinished scripts, unpublished stories, and drafts of Miller's plays, and he supplies abundant context so that the reader can compare Miller's views and social situations with those of his contemporaries. Bigsby takes extraordinary pains to explain how each play evolved and how it was received. He persuasively argues that Miller's career was shaped by a profound conviction that the theater could play a meaningful role in changing the world. Even if that belief appears overly hopeful, Miller's plays stand as a testament to his courageous capacity to explore dilemmas of civic conscience and the human heart. —Michael Kammen, Boston Globe

• Christopher Bigsby is Professor of American Studies and Director of the Arthur Miller Centre at the University of East Anglia.

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Arthur Miller Biography

Born: October 17, 1915 New York, New York American dramatist, novelist, and screenwriter

Best known for his play Death of a Salesman, American playwright, novelist, and screenwriter Arthur Miller is considered one of the major dramatists of twentieth-century American theater.

Early years

Miller returned to New York City to a variety of jobs, including writing for the Federal Theater Project, a government-sponsored program that ended before any of his work could be produced. Because of an old football injury, he was rejected for military service, but he was hired to tour army camps to collect material for a movie, The Story of G. I. Joe. His notes from these tours were published as Situation Normal (1944). That same year the Broadway production of his play The Man Who Had All the Luck opened, closing after four performances. In 1945 his novel Focus, an attack on anti-Semitism (the hatred of Jewish people), appeared.

Three successful plays

Miller's career blossomed with the opening of All My Sons on Broadway in 1947. The play, a tragedy (a drama having a sad conclusion), won three prizes and fascinated audiences across the country. Then Death of a Salesman (1949) brought Miller the Pulitzer Prize for drama, international fame, and an estimated income of two million dollars. The words of its hero, Willy Loman, have been heard in at least seventeen languages as well as on movie screens everywhere.

By the time of Miller's third Broadway play, The Crucible (1953), audiences were ready to accept his belief that "a poetic drama rooted in American speech and manners" was the only way to produce a tragedy out of the common man's life. The play was set in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, a time when many people were accused of being witches and were burned alive. Miller's play pointed out how similar those events were to Senator Joseph McCarthy's (1909–1957) investigations of anti-American activities during the early 1950s, which led to wild accusations against many public figures. Miller himself was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in June 1956 and was asked to give the names of guilty parties. He stated, "My conscience will not permit me to use the name of another person and bring trouble to him." He was convicted of contempt of (lack of respect for) Congress, but the conviction was reversed in 1958.

Hit-or-miss efforts

Two of Miller's one-act plays, A View from the Bridge and A Memory of Two Mondays (1955), were social dramas focused on the inner life of working men; neither had the power of Death of a Salesman. Nor did his film script, The Misfits (1961). His next play, After the Fall (1964), was based on his own life. His second wife, actress Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962), was the model for one of the characters. Incident at Vichy (1965), a long, one-act play based on a true story set in France during World War II (1939–45; when Germany, Italy, and Japan battled France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States), examined the nature of guilt and the depth of human hatred. In The Price (1968) Miller returned to domestic drama in his portrayal of a tight, intense struggle between two brothers, almost strangers to each other, brought together by their father's death. It is Miller at the height of his powers, cementing his position as a major American dramatist.

But The Price proved to be Miller's last major Broadway success. His next work, The Creation of the World and Other Business, was a series of comic sketches first produced on Broadway in 1972. It closed after only twenty performances. All of Miller's works after that premiered outside of New York. Miller staged the musical Up From Paradise (1974) at the University of Michigan. Another play, The Archbishop's Ceiling, was presented in 1977 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

In the 1980s Miller produced a number of short pieces. The American Clock was based on Studs Terkel's (1912–) history of the Great Depression (a slump in the country's system of producing, distributing, and using goods and services that led to almost half of the industrial workers in the country losing their jobs during the 1930s). Elegy for a Lady and Some Kind of Story were two one-act plays that were staged together in 1982. Miller's Danger, Memory! was composed of the short pieces I Can't Remember Anything and Clara. All of these later plays have been regarded by critics as minor works. In the mid-1990s Miller adapted The Crucible for a film version starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Joan Allen.

Later years

Despite the absence of any major successes since the mid-1960s, Miller seems secure in his reputation as a major figure in American drama. In addition to his Pulitzer Prize in 1949, his awards include the Theatre Guild National Prize, 1944; Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award (given for achievement in the theater), 1947 and 1953; Emmy Award (given for achievement in television broadcasting), 1967; George Foster Peabody Award, 1981; John F. Kennedy Award for Lifetime Achievement, 1984; Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, 1999; National Book Foundation lifetime achievement award, 2001; New York City College Alumni Association medal for artistic devotion to New York, 2001; and the Japan Art Association lifetime achievement award, 2001.

For More Information

Bigsby, C. W. E. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Glassman, Bruce. Arthur Miller. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Silver Burdett Press, 1990.

Miller, Arthur. Timebends: A Life. New York: Grove Press, 1987. Reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1995.

Schlueter, June, and James K. Flanagan. Arthur Miller. New York: Ungar, 1987.

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Arthur Miller Biography

“I reflect what my heart tells me from the society around me. We are living in a time when there is great uncertainty in this country… I am trying to delve to the bottom of this and come up with a positive answer, but I have had to go to hell to Broadway premiere of meet the devil. You can’t know what the worst is until you have seen the worst, and it is not for me to make easy answers and come forth before the American people and tell them everything is all right when I look in their eyes and I see them troubled.”

—Arthur Miller, in his testimony before the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee

Arthur Miller was born on October 17, 1915 and grew up in New York City’s Harlem. He enjoyed a comfortable childhood until his father’s business was lost during the Depression and the family faced financial hardship. This first-hand knowledge of the fragility of the American dream would become a recurring theme in his later work as a playwright.

Miller enrolled in the University of Michigan’s journalism program in 1934. Despite his limited exposure to the theater, he began writing plays and won the prestigious Avery Hopwood Award for two consecutive years. After earning a bachelor of arts degree in 1938 and marrying his college sweetheart, Mary Slattery, Miller struggled to establish himself as a playwright. As his early plays were rejected by producers, Miller worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and wrote radio scripts to support his family. With the production of All My Sons in 1947, Miller finally established himself. Directed by Elia Kazan, the play received immediate acclaim, running for 328 performances and winning the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and two Tony Awards. This success was quickly followed by the Broadway premiere of Death of a Salesman in 1949, again under the direction of Kazan. Although its “anti-American” themes sparked controversy, Death of a Salesman ran for 742 performances and won the Tony Award for Best Play, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award.

By the 1950s, anti-communist suspicion in the United States was everywhere, and Miller’s next two plays, an adaption of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and The Crucible , criticized McCarthyism and confronted themes of mass hysteria, irrational fear and political persecution. The Crucible premiered in 1953 with a staging by Jed Harris, as Miller’s friendship and close working relationship with director Elia Kazan had been severed after Kazan testified for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Although The Crucible initially received mixed reviews from critics and audiences, it won the Tony Award for Best Play.

Following a divorce from his first wife and remarriage to actress Marilyn Monroe in 1956, Miller would not write another play for nearly a decade. He was subpoenaed to appear before HUAC and was charged with contempt of Congress for his refusal to provide names of colleagues who participated in communist activities. Although Miller was never officially blacklisted and his conviction was overturned the following year, the experience affected him deeply. During this time, Miller wrote a screenplay adaption of his short story “The Misfits” to give Monroe the opportunity to play a serious role, but the film was largely unsuccessful. The couple divorced in 1961.

In 1962, Miller married photographer Inge Morath and the couple collaborated on several photo-journalistic projects. Miller also continued to concern himself with social and political issues: He actively spoke out against the Vietnam War; accepted the presidency of International PEN, an organization that defended the rights of politically oppressed writers; and served as a delegate to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Timebends , an autobiography, was published in 1987 to critical acclaim, and he collaborated on the 1996 screenplay adaption of The Crucible . Miller’s final play, Finish the Picture , was based on the difficult filming of The Misfits . (It premiered at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in 2004 under the direction of Robert Falls.)

Arthur Miller is recognized as one of the most important figures in 20th century American theater, as well as an activist who drew public attention to controversial political and social issues of his time. Frequent revivals of The Crucible and Death of a Salesman in both the United States and abroad, including such locations as Beijing and Moscow, are truly a testament to the plays’ enduring value and universal themes.

• “Arthur Miller.” Contemporaty Authors Online. Gale, 2006.
• Bigsby, Christopher, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller . Cambridge University Press, 1997.
• Miller, Arthur. Timebends: A Life . Penguin, 1995.

Content last updated: October 31, 2007

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Biography of Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller was one of the leading American playwrights of the twentieth century. He was born in October 1915 in New York City to a women's clothing manufacturer, who lost everything in the economic collapse of the 1930s. Living through young adulthood during the Great Depression, Miller was shaped by the poverty that surrounded him. The Depression demonstrated to the playwright the fragility and vulnerability of human existence in the modern era. After graduating from high school, Miller worked in a warehouse so that he could earn enough money to attend the University of Michigan, where he began to write plays.

Miller's first play to make it to Broadway, The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944), was a dismal failure, closing after only four performances. This early setback almost discouraged Miller from writing completely, but he gave himself one more try. Three years later, All My Sons won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award as the best play of 1947, launching Miller into theatrical stardom. All My Sons , a drama about a manufacturer of faulty war materials, was strongly influenced by the naturalist drama of Henrik Ibsen. Along with Death of a Salesman (his most enduring success), All My Sons and The Man Who Had All the Luck form a thematic trilogy of plays about love triangles involving fathers and sons. The drama of the family is at the core of all of Miller's major plays, but nowhere is it more prominent than in All My Sons and Death of a Salesman .

Death of a Salesman (1949) secured Miller's reputation as one of the nation's foremost playwrights. In this play, Miller mixes the tradition of social realism that informs most of his work with a more experimental structure that includes fluid leaps in time as the protagonist, Willy Loman, drifts into memories of his sons as teenagers. Loman represents an American archetype: a victim of his own delusions of grandeur and obsession with success, and haunted by a sense of failure.

Miller won a Tony Award for Death of a Salesman as well as a Pulitzer Prize. The play has been frequently revived in film, television, and stage versions that have included actors such as Dustin Hoffman, George C. Scott and, most recently, Brian Dennehy in the part of Willy Loman.

Miller followed Death of a Salesman with his most politically significant work, The Crucible (1953), a tale of the Salem witch trials that contains obvious analogies to the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings in 1950s America. The highly controversial nature of the politics of The Crucible , which lauds those who refuse to name names, led to the play's mixed response. In later years, however, it has become one of the most studied and performed plays of American theater.

Three years after The Crucible , in 1956, Miller found himself persecuted by the very force that he warned against, when he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Miller refused to name people he allegedly saw at a Communist writers' meeting a decade before, and he was convicted of contempt. He later won an appeal.

Also in 1956, Miller married actress Marilyn Monroe. The two divorced in 1961, one year before her death. That year Monroe appeared in her last film, The Misfits , which is based on an original screenplay by Miller. After divorcing Monroe, Miller wed Ingeborg Morath, to whom he remained married until his death in 2005. The pair had a son and a daughter.

Miller also wrote the plays A Memory of Two Mondays and the short A View from the Bridge , which were both staged in 1955. His other works include After the Fall (1964), a thinly veiled account of his marriage to Monroe, as well as The Price (1967), The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977), and The American Clock (1980). His most recent works include the plays The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993), and Broken Glass (1993), which won the Olivier Award for Best Play.

Although Miller did not write frequently for film, he did pen an adaptation for the 1996 film version of The Crucible starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder, which garnered him an Academy Award nomination. Miller's daughter Rebecca married Day-Lewis in 1996.

Study Guides on Works by Arthur Miller

All my sons arthur miller.

When the young playwright Arthur Miller began writing All My Sons, he was embarking on a project that would be either the beginning or the end of his career. His first and only play to be produced on Broadway, The Man Who Had All the Luck , was an...

• Study Guide
• Lesson Plan

The Crucible Arthur Miller

The Crucible is a fictional retelling of events in American history surrounding the Salem Witch Trials of the seventeenth century. Yet, is as much a product of the time in which Arthur Miller wrote it - the early 1950s - as it is description of...

Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman stems from both Arthur Miller's personal experiences and the theatrical traditions in which the playwright was schooled. The play recalls the traditions of Yiddish theater that focus on family as the crucial...

Focus Arthur Miller

Focus (1945) is the first novel of Jewish-born author and playwright Arthur Miller; it focuses on racism, specifically antisemitism, or racism/prejudice towards people of Jewish descent. It follows Newman, a personnel manager for a large New York...

A View From the Bridge Arthur Miller

A View from the Bridge is one of Arthur Miller’s most famous plays, renowned for its intensity of passion and echoes of Greek tragedy.

The work grew out of Miller’s fascination with Red Hook, a Brooklyn neighborhood only a few blocks away from...

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ARTHUR MILLER

American witness.

by John Lahr ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2022

An engaging summary of a celebrated and checkered career.

Highlights from the life and career of one of America’s most famous playwrights.

“Why are you a revolutionary?” Arthur Miller (1915-2005) asked himself in one of his notebooks. “Because the truth is revolutionary and the truth you shall live by.” In the latest installment of the publisher’s Jewish Lives series, Lahr, whose 2014 biography of Tennessee Williams won the National Book Critics Circle Award, shows the ways in which that truth-seeking spirit manifested itself in one of the most storied playwriting careers ever. Miller grew up in Jewish Harlem, and his father, Isidore Miller, was the owner of a financially successful clothing company before the Depression wiped out the family’s savings. His “unhappy” mother, Augusta, believed that “Arty” had a “special destiny,” but his high school grades were so bad that no college would accept him. He eventually attended the University of Michigan, where he would “soak up” Marxism, gain sympathy for the working class, and learn to incorporate politics and family life into landmarks of the American theater, including All My Sons and Death of a Salesman . Lahr takes readers through the highs and lows of his subject’s life: the antisemitism he faced; his break with director Elia Kazan over Kazan’s willingness to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee; and his three marriages, including a disastrous union with Marilyn Monroe. Lahr cites Miller’s autobiography, Timebends , so often that some readers may want to go directly to the original source. He does a good job, however, showing how Miller’s experiences informed plays such as The Golden Years , The Price , The Crucible , and the Pulitzer-winning Salesman . Lahr also excels in his analyses of Miller’s works, including his one novel, Focus , which showed how alienation and mindlessness were “part of the equation that results in anti-Semitism,” and plays such as 1964’s After the Fall , his first after his marriage to Monroe, a flawed work that is nonetheless “extraordinary as a map of Miller’s internal geography.”

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-300-23492-3

Page Count: 264

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORY | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | JEWISH | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Kenneth Tynan & edited by John Lahr

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New York Times Bestseller

by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.

Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.

Pub Date: July 12, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton photographed by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton ; photographed by Brandon Stanton

LOVE, PAMELA

by Pamela Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2023

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.

According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that ." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy , which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023

ISBN: 9780063226562

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

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Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller was born in 1915 in New York. He was of Polish-Jewish decent and the second of three children born to Isadore Miller from Galicia and Augusta, who was born in New York City, but whose parents were from Galicia, also. His father owned a successful clothing manufacturing business that went under with the Wall Street Crash of 1929. They were forced to move to Brooklyn where Arthur delivered bread in the morning to help with finances.

They were forced to move to Brooklyn where Arthur delivered bread in the morning to help with finances. Due to a high school football injury, Arthur was exempt from military service during World War Two. He attended college for journalism at the University of Michigan, then transferred to English when he began to write plays. Arthur was a theater purist and wouldn't write for the screen. Although, his plays have been translated into movies and television.

Arthur was the recipient of many awards for his writing, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for The Death of a Salesman, which also won the Tony Award for Best Author and the New York Drama Circle Critics Award. He wrote his first play while attending college, No Villain, of which he won the Avery Hopwood Award.

In 1956 Arthur divorced his wife of sixteen years, leaving his two children from that marriage also, to marry Marilyn Monroe. They have been having an affair for five years. He finally gave in to assisting in the filming of one of his plays when Monroe was cast in Misfits. In 1961 they divorced and nineteen months later she was dead of a drug over dose. This was also the last movie for Clark Gable and one of the last for Montgomery Cliff. In 1962 he married Inge Morath a photographer and was with her until her death in 2002.

In 1961 they divorced and nineteen months later she was dead of a drug over dose. This was also the last movie for Clark Gable and one of the last for Montgomery Cliff. In 1962 he married Inge Morath a photographer and was with her until her death in 2002.

In the early 1950's the House UnAmerican Activities Committee was on a witch hunt. They were persecuting Elia Kazan, making him name names of other Communist supporters. Although he was not included in Kazan's list, Arthur flew to see Kazan. Then Arthur wrote the play, The Crucible to highlight the actions of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Which brought him to their attention. They denied his passport and wouldn't let him travel to London for the viewing of the play. Kazan wrote On the Waterfront to defend his own actions.

In 1956 Arthur was called before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee when he asked for another passport. He agreed to appear if they wouldn't ask him to name names. Marilyn Monroe accompanied him, putting her own career at risk. They asked him to name names and he refused. They found him guilty of Contempt, then they fined and imprisoned him. The appeal turned the decision due to being misled by the HUAAC.

Arthur died at the age of eighty-nine in 2005, on the fifty-sixth anniversary of the Broadway debut of The Death of a Salesman. He was surrounded by family and friends and laid to rest in the Roxbury Center Cemetery in Roxbury, Connecticut.

Death of a Salesman

Summary   Arthur Miller

Written in 1948 in one day shortly after moving into his studio in Roxbury, Connecticut, Death of a Salesman became one of Arthur Miller's most famous works. The story of a middle-aged salesman who is facing a mid-life crisis, and on a downward slide to suicide. He is haunted by the ghosts of his past […]

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