Arthur Miller

American playwright

• Born: October 17, 1915
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: February 10, 2005
• Place of death: Roxbury, Connecticut

Considered one of the foremost dramatists in the United States, Miller penetrated the American consciousness and gained worldwide recognition for his probing dramas of social awareness.

Early Life

Arthur Miller, son of Jewish immigrants, was born in Manhattan in New York. His father, Isadore, ran a prosperous garment business, and his mother, Augusta Barnett, was at one time a schoolteacher. When Isadore’s firm began to fail in 1928, the Millers moved to Brooklyn, an area that would be the model for the settings of All My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949). Arthur Miller inherited a strong sense of mysticism from his mother that would inform his later work. As a young boy, Miller came to resent his father’s withdrawal from failure. The figure of the failed father would play a significant role in Miller’s plays.

The young Miller came of age during the Great Depression, and seeing once-prosperous people on the streets begging for work deeply affected him. To Miller, the Depression signified the failure of a system and the tragedy of a generation of people who would blame this failure on themselves. The Depression’s impact on aspects of personal success and failure would lead Miller to probe into individuals’ relations to their work and the price they had to pay for success or lack of it.

Like Biff Loman in Death of a Salesman , Miller was more an athlete than a scholar as he attended Abraham Lincoln High School, from which he was graduated in 1932. He read mostly adventure novels and some Charles Dickens. Unable to get into college, he worked for his father and became moved by the sad plight of salesmen. After a series of odd jobs, Miller worked in an auto parts warehouse, where he was able to save $500 for college on a $15-per-week job. He recreated this experience in A Memory of Two Mondays (1955). While working, Miller became an avid reader and was especially impressed with Fyodor Dostoevski’s Bratya Karamazovy (1879-1880; The Brothers Karamazov, 1912), a novel that focuses on a failed father, fraternal rivalry, and a trial motif, themes that would repeatedly occur in Miller’s works.

After much convincing, Miller finally got accepted into the University of Michigan, where he became interested in social causes and began to form his liberal philosophy. At first he majored in journalism, working also as a reporter and editor on the student newspaper. He later majored in English and studied playwriting under Kenneth Rowe. He won two Hopwood Awards, in 1936 for No Villain and in 1937 for Honor at Dawn. In 1938, he won the Theater Guild National Award for They Too Arise. Following the style of the 1930’s, Miller’s early plays focus on young idealists fighting to eliminate social injustice. After graduating from the university in 1938, he worked for the Federal Theater Project, writing radio scripts, and when the project was terminated by Congress, he worked for Brooklyn Navy Yard, continuing to write scripts. He had tried entering the armed forces during World War II but was disqualified because of a knee injury from playing high school football. In 1944, he tried to recreate the feelings of the ordinary soldier in his screenplay for The Story of G. I. Joe but was thwarted by motion-picture executives who wanted him to romanticize his work. That same year, he had his first Broadway production, The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944). This drama of a man dismayed by his incredible success was a flop.

Life’s Work

After this initial failure, Miller rose up to become one of the United States’ leading playwrights and gained an international reputation. In 1947, Miller achieved his first success with All My Sons , the tragedy of Joe Keller who, to save his business, sells defective airplane parts to the military and leaves his partner to bear the blame. He indirectly becomes responsible for the death of his own son, who condemns his father’s actions and flies a suicide mission. Faced with the guilt for many deaths, Keller kills himself.

In 1948 Miller bought a house near Roxbury, Connecticut, and built a wood shop and writer’s studio. For the rest of his life he divided his time, when not traveling, between Roxbury and New York City. He wrote Death of a Salesman in that studio in just six weeks. A year later, the play achieved unprecedented critical acclaim and established Miller as a significant American playwright. Willy Loman, a failing salesman, relives his past, trying to discover the reasons for his failure. Unable to accept his decline, he pressures his sons into far-fetched business schemes and commits suicide to leave them the legacy of his insurance. In 1949, Death of a Salesman won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The play ran for 742 performances. In 1966, the television production played to seventeen million people. In 1975, it was successfully produced at the Circle in the Square with George C. Scott in the lead; in 1984, it once more played Broadway, this time with Dustin Hoffman in the lead. In 1985, Hoffman was featured in a new television production of the play. Furthermore, Death of a Salesman has been acclaimed and produced around the world. In his book Salesman in Beijing (1984), Miller documents an unprecedented Chinese production. The play still appears in most college anthologies and continues to be taught as an American classic.

Disturbed by the repressive climate of the 1950’s Cold War, the scare tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the betrayal by his onetime liberal friends who cited names before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Miller wrote The Crucible (1953), which connected the witch hunts of seventeenth century Salem with the hunt for communists of the 1950’s. In The Crucible, Miller shows how an ordinary individual living in a repressive community gains tragic stature by sacrificing his life rather than betraying his conscience. The Crucible opened on Broadway in 1953 to a lukewarm reception but was later revived Off-Broadway with more success. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the screenplay for the French film version of The Crucible, Les Sorcieres de Salem (1955). In 1961, The Crucible was converted into an opera, and in 1967, it was adapted for television with George C. Scott in the lead role. In 1997, it was made into a motion picture with Miller writing the screenplay. According to Miller, The Crucible was his most frequently produced work both in the United States and abroad.

His next works were two one-act plays: A Memory of Two Mondays (1955) and A View from the Bridge (1955). An expanded version of A View from the Bridge (1956) told the story of Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman who is driven by incestuous desires for his niece to inform on his niece’s boyfriend and other illegal immigrants living with him.

During the mid-1950’s, Miller entered a troubled period of his life. After divorcing his first wife, Mary Grace Slattery, whom he had married in 1940, Miller married film star Marilyn Monroe and became involved in her turbulent career. He was also cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to name names before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Although acquitted on appeal, this ordeal took a financial and emotional toll on him, and at times the government refused to renew his passport so that he could travel abroad. After the acquittal, Miller wrote a screenplay based on his short story “The Misfits.” The film, a much-troubled production starring his wife, appeared in 1961. By then their turbulent marriage had unraveled completely, and despairing of helping Monroe escape alcohol and drugs, he divorced her. In 1962, he married photographer Ingeborg Morath. Nevertheless, Monroe’s death that same year profoundly saddened him.

After a nine-year hiatus from the American stage, Miller wrote After the Fall (1964) and Incident at Vichy (1964). Both plays dealt with the universal guilt associated with the genocide of the Jews. Critics reacted in anger to the former play because they believed that Miller had drawn a central character, Maggie, straight from his dead former wife, Monroe. Miller returned to the form of family drama with The Price (1968), a drama depicting the rivalry of two brothers. Continuing to experiment, Miller wrote The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), a comedy based on Genesis; The American Clock (1980), a montage view of the Depression focusing on the trials of one family; The Archbishop’s Ceiling (1984), a play about power and oppression in a European Communist country; and Danger: Memory! (1986), two short, symbolic dramas exploring the mysteries hidden in past actions.

In the 1990’s, Miller’s career surged again. The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991) captures the gaudy materialism and egotistical self-absorption of 1980’s America. As scenes from his life pass before him in his hospital room, an insurance magnate and bigamist lives for the unabated gratification of his pleasures as he struggles with the phantom of death. In The Last Yankee (1991), Miller examines the marital relationships of two women confined to a mental institution one who cannot adjust to her husband’s apparent failure to achieve the American Dream and the other isolated by the success of a husband who can give her only material comforts. In this play, Miller critiques the immigrant dream of unbridled success and issues a plea for self-acceptance. In Broken Glass (1994), Miller probes the indifference to the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews by exploring the psyche of a Jewish woman in New York who undergoes hysterical paralysis when confronted with both an impotent, demanding husband and a world on the brink of chaos. Mr. Peters’ Connections (1998) ponders the inner world of a retired and ailing airplane pilot sitting in a broken-down saloon watching the phantoms of his past inexplicably parade before him. In Mr. Peters’s inability to find continuity in the events of his life, Miller focuses on the alienation of modern humans in an ever-changing world. In the plays of the 1990’s, Miller continued to examine private relationships in light of social criticism.

Between 1997 and 1998, Miller saw the revival in New York of All My Sons, The American Clock, I Can’t Remember Anything (a part of Danger: Memory!), The Last Yankee, and A View from the Bridge, which won Broadway’s Tony Award for Best Revival. Miller continued producing new plays, and the continuous revivals of his dramas both onstage and on television and his burgeoning international reputation kept Miller in the forefront of American theater. Death of a Salesman also had a fifty-year anniversary revival in 1999. An untitled play originally written for his friend Václav Havel, the Czech playwright and president, was staged in New York, and his last play, Finishing the Picture, premiered in Chicago in late 2004.

During his sixty-year career, Miller’s plays earned eight Tony Awards and two Drama Critics Circle Awards. Additionally, he received the Olivier Award (1993, from the Society of London Theatre), William Inge Festival Award (1995) for distinguished achievement in American theater, Edward Albee Last Frontier Playwright Award (1996), John H. Finley Award for Exemplary Service to New York City (2001), Spain’s Principe de Asurias Prize for Literature (2002, reserved for literary masters), and the Jerusalem Prize (2003).

Miller, a serious dramatist who believed in drama’s ability to effect change, explored the social as well as the psychological aspects of his characters. For him, individual dilemmas could not be removed from their social contexts. In his dramas he attempted to go beyond simple protest pieces or self-absorbed psychological studies to deal with moral and ethical issues. He was interested in how ordinary individuals can live in unity and harmony with their fellow humans without sacrificing their individual dignity. Moreover, he believed that writers could band together to effect change, and with this in mind from 1965 until 1969 he served as president of PEN, an international organization of playwrights, poets, novelists, and essayists, traveling worldwide to promote it. With a similar end in mind, at the University of Michigan he established the Arthur Miller Award in 1985 and the Arthur Miller Award for Dramatic Writing in 1999.

Although labeled a realist, Miller experimented with a number of innovative dramatic techniques. Also, Miller’s poetic use of idiomatic speech and his subtle deployment of dramatic symbols showed that his drama had moved beyond photographic realism. Using a variety of approaches, Miller most often put characters in confrontation with their past actions so that they define themselves in terms of not only their social situation but also their moral convictions. Miller’s ability to probe the human psyche as well as to question the social fabric of the United States made him a towering presence in the American theater, a peer of Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams.

Miller published two novels, Focus (1945) and Homely Girl (1992), and in 1995 a collection of short stories. He wrote several books of nonfiction and an autobiography, Timebends (1995).

In 2002 Miller’s wife, Inge, died. The same year he began a relationship with Agnes Barley, a thirty-four-year-old artist, and in December, 2004, he announced that they would marry. However, on February 10, 2005, Miller died of congestive heart failure in his Roxbury home. Miller is survived by a son, Robert, and daughter, Jane, from his first marriage, and a daughter, Rebecca, from his last marriage. Broadway theaters darkened their lights in tribute to him.

Significance

Miller examined both the psychological and sociological makeup of his troubled characters. His heroes are common men who relentlessly pursue either their firm convictions or their misguided illusions. Using family relationships as a starting point, Miller’s plays confront contemporary moral dilemmas and focus on people’s responsibility to be true to themselves as well as their responsibility to be a part of the human race. In showing how individuals confront their past actions, Miller employed a variety of dramatic forms, including flashbacks, stream-of-consciousness monologues, direct narration, and dynamic symbols. His concern with the struggle to define oneself in a troubled world made him a popular American playwright, even though Americans often felt reproved by him, and also gained him worldwide attention.

Bibliography

Abbotson, Susan C. W. Student Companion to Arthur Miller. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. For high school students and general readers. Abbotson supplies a chapter of biographical information, a chapter about Miller’s literary heritage, and six chapters examining his major plays to provide background for interpretation, making the book a convenient, instructive source for newcomers to Miller’s work. There is also an extensive bibliography.

Bigsby, Christopher, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. A comprehensive examination of Miller’s work that includes not only his major works but also his fiction and cinema. Contains an exhaustive bibliographic essay and a chronology of Miller’s life.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Remembering Arthur Miller. London: Methuen, 2005. Following a biographical sketch by the editor are eighty-two remembrances and testimonials in Miller’s honor from playwrights, actors, writers, directors, reviewers, and other theater staff who knew him.

Brater, Enoch. Arthur Miller: A Playwright’s Life and Works. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005. Primarily a literary biography, this book introduces general readers to Miller’s main works to show how he melded political allegory, realism, and expressionism to treat themes of social turmoil and redemption. Contains seventy photographs of Miller and play productions.

Gottfried, Martin. Arthur Miller: His Life and Work. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2003. This full, formal biography draws on interviews with Miller’s friends and colleagues, correspondence, notebooks, and script annotations to shed light on how he created his plays. It also discusses his private life, public reputation, and theater career. Includes photographs of Miller and his plays, a list of his works, and a chronology of premiers of his productions.

Miller, Arthur. On Politics and the Art of Acting. New York: Viking, 2001. In this witty, acerbic essay that discusses politicians as actors, Miller finds that most presidents do a poor job of acting. The book provides an amusing short take on Miller’s political views.

Schlueter, June, and James K. Flanagan. Arthur Miller. New York: Ungar, 1987. Contains a detailed analysis of Miller’s major and minor plays, a concise biography that includes his political activity, a detailed chronology of his life and works, and a bibliography of his primary works, including radio plays and unpublished manuscripts.

Welland, Dennis. Arthur Miller: The Playwright. 3d ed. London: Methuen, 1985. A thorough analysis of Miller’s major work, including a detailed list of American and British premieres of Miller’s plays and films and a short bibliography.