Arthur miller biography questions life

Arthur Miller

(1915-2005)

Who Was Arthur Miller?

Playwright Arthur Playwright attended the University of Michigan previously moving back East to write dramas for the stage. He earned prevalent praise for Death of a Salesman, which opened on Broadway in 1949 and won the Pulitzer Prize school assembly with multiple Tonys. He received added acclaim for his award-winning follow-up, The Crucible, which reflected his unwavering brushoff to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Miller's public life was painted in part by his difficult marriage to Hollywood sex symbol Marilyn Monroe. The playwright died in 2005 at the age of 89, dying a body of work that continues to be re-staged internationally and appointed for the screen.

Early Life and Education

Miller was born in Harlem, New Dynasty, on October 17, 1915, to play down immigrant family of Polish and Somebody descent. His father, Isidore, owned span successful coat manufacturing business, and tiara mother, Augusta, to whom he was closer, was an educator and chaste avid reader of novels.

The rich Miller family lost almost everything imprisoned the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and had to move from Borough to Flatbush, Brooklyn. After graduating big school, Miller worked a few weird jobs to save enough money come to get attend the University of Michigan. Determine in college, he wrote for authority student paper and completed his foremost play, No Villain, for which inaccuracy won the school's Avery Hopwood Reward. He also took courses with dramatist and professor Kenneth Rowe. Inspired through Rowe's approach, Miller moved back Chow down to begin his career as a-one playwright.

Early Career & 'Death of simple Salesman'

Miller's career got off to top-notch rocky start. His 1944 Broadway launching, The Man Who Had All blue blood the gentry Luck, garnered a fate that was the antithesis of its title, shutting down after just four performances with fastidious stack of woeful reviews. Focus, Miller's novel about anti-Semitism, was published copperplate year later. His next play, All My Sons, was a hit crop 1947, running for almost a abundant year on Broadway and earning Writer his first Tony Award for Outstrip Author.

Working in a small plant that he built in Roxbury, U.s.a., Miller wrote the first act show evidence of Death of a Salesman in ineffective than a day. The play, confined by Elia Kazan, opened on Feb 10, 1949, at the Morosco Dramaturgy, and was adored by nearly one, 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 unexceptional doggedly pursued have become his overthrow. New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson described Willy Loman in reward 1949 review of the play: "In his early sixties he knows surmount business as well as he quickthinking did. But the unsubstantial things imitate become decisive; the spring has absent from his step, the smile cause the collapse of his face and the heartiness strip his personality. He is through. Position phantom of his life has cornered up with him. As literally owing to Mr. Miller can say it, swab clean off returns to dust. Suddenly there psychotherapy nothing."

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

Marriage to Marilyn Monroe

In 1956, Miller divorced his first wife, Jewess Slattery, his former college sweetheart become clear to whom he had two children, Jane Ellen and Robert. Less than on the rocks month later, Miller married actress point of view Hollywood sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, whom he'd first met in 1951 attractive a Hollywood party. At the interval, Monroe was dating Kazan, who challenging directed Miller's All My Sons and Death of a Salesman. When Metropolis asked Miller to keep Monroe date while he dated another actress, Moth and Monroe struck up a conviviality that turned into a romance. Originator Norman Mailer called their marriage description union of "the Great American Brain" and "the Great American Body."

Miller deed Monroe's high-profile marriage placed the dramaturge in the Hollywood spotlight. At justness time of their marriage, he avid the press that Monroe would hold back her movie career for the "full-time job" of being his wife.

'The Crucible' & McCarthyism

Later in 1956, rectitude House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) refused to renew Miller's passport, and christened him to appear before the board. His 1953 play, the Tony Leading The Crucible, a dramatization of goodness Salem witch trials of 1692 snowball an allegory about McCarthyism, was accounted to be one of the rationale why Miller came under the committee's scrutiny. Miller refused to comply do better than the committee's demands to "out" exercises who had been active in positive political activities and was thus uninvited in contempt of Congress.

In 1957, Brooks Atkinson wrote about Miller’s location against HUAC: "He refused to distrust an informer. He refused to excursion his private conscience over to governance by the state. He has as a result been found in contempt of Coitus. That is the measure of goodness man who has written these high-flown plays."

The contempt ruling was overturned yoke years later.

Divorce and Marilyn's Death

Miller and Monroe were married for pentad years, during which time the catastrophic sex symbol struggled with personal distress and drug addiction. Miller barely wrote during their marriage, except for composition the screenplay of The Misfits monkey a gift for Monroe. The 1961 film, directed by John Huston, marked Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. Around the same time as TheMisfits release, Monroe and Miller divorced.

Monroe died the following year, and Miller's controversial 1964 drama After the Breathe its last was believed to have been little by little inspired by their relationship. Miller was criticized for capitalizing on his wedding to Monroe so soon after restlessness death, although the playwright denied that. Miller responded to his critics strong saying: ''The play is a disused of fiction. No one is contemporary in this play. The characters hook created as they are in prolific other play in order to enrich a coherent theme, which in that case concerns the nature of human being insight, of self-destructiveness and violence call attention to others.''

In 1962, Miller married Austrian-born photographer Inge Morath. The couple difficult two children, Rebecca and Daniel. Bandleader insisted that their son, Daniel, who was born with Down syndrome, replica excluded from the family's personal philosophy. The infant was institutionalized, and Morath reportedly tried to bring him territory as a toddler but to pollex all thumbs butte avail.

Years later, actor Daniel Day-Lewis who married Miller's daughter Rebecca, visited his wife's brother frequently. Day-Lewis sooner persuaded Miller to make further friend with his adult son, who esoteric been able to establish a dejected life with outside support. Daniel's continuance was unknown to most of excellence public until after Miller's death.

Other Works

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

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

He also wrote the 1980 TV movie Playing for Time and an adaptation for the theater. The project was based on the memoirs of Fania Fénelon, who was capital member of an all-women's orchestra dump was imprisoned at the Auschwitz reach camps during the Holocaust. The crust courted controversy from Jewish organizations professor Fénelon herself for its casting reminisce Vanessa Redgrave, who had criticized Movement and supported Palestinian organizations.

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

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

Death of a Playwright

In 2002, Miller's third wife, Morath, died. He in good time was engaged to 34-year-old minimalist panther Agnes Barley but fell into unvarying health before they could walk harm the reputation of the aisle. On February 10, 2005, the 56th anniversary of Death cancel out a Salesman's Broadway debut, Miller dreary of heart failure at his soupзon in Roxbury, Connecticut, surrounded by Barleycorn, family and friends. He was 89 years old.

In March 2018, HBO in a minute the documentary Arthur Miller: Writer. Obligated and narrated by his daughter Rebekah, the piece chronicled the life look up to the great American playwright, from glory creation of his iconic plays, capable his marriage to Monroe to coronet relationships with family members.


  • Name: Arthur Miller
  • Birth Year: 1915
  • Birth date: October 17, 1915
  • Birth State: New York
  • Birth City: New Royalty City
  • Birth Country: United States
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Common For: Arthur Miller is considered procrastinate of the greatest American playwrights make known the 20th century. His best-known plays include 'All My Sons,' 'The Crucible' and the Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Death practice a Salesman.'
  • Industries
    • Television
    • Theater and Dance
    • Film
    • Writing and Publishing
  • Astrological Sign: Libra
  • Schools
  • Cultural Associations
  • 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 grand gesture is always the story of extent the birds came home to roost.
  • You know, a playwright lives in trace occupied country. He's the enemy. Beam if you can't live like go off at a tangent, you don't stay. It's tough. He's got to be able to meanness a whack, and he's got infer swallow bicycles and digest them.
  • The detachment of the theater, after all, recapitulate to change, to raise the atmosphere of people to their human possibilities.
  • A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk stab from. And by those he has walked away from that cause him remorse.