Arthur Miller

     Arthur Miller was born in Harlem, New York City; the family moved shortly afterwards to a six-storey building at 45110th Street between Lenox and Fifth Avenues. His father, Isidore Miller, was an illiterate Jewish immigrant from Poland. His succesfull ladies-wear manufacturer and shopkeeper was ruined in the depression. Augusta Barnett, Miller's mother, was born in New York, but her father came from the same Polish town as the Millers.

     All my Sons won the New York Drama Critics Circle award and two Tony Awards. Three years later produced All my Sons was about a factory owner who sells faulty aircraft parts during World War II. It won the New York Drama Critics Circle award and two Tony Awards. In 1944 Miller toured Army camps to collect background material for the screenplay The Story of Gijoe (1945). Miller's first novel, Focus (1945), was about anti-Semitism.
     Death of a Salesman (1949) brought Miller international fame, and become one of the major achievements of modern American theatre. It relates the tragic story of a salesman named Willy Loman, whose past and present are mingled in expressionistic scenes. The postwar economic boom has shaken up his life. He is eventually fired and he begins to hallucinate about significant events from his past. Linda, his wife, believes in the American Dream, but she also keeps her feet on the ground. Deciding that he is worth more dead than alive, Willy kills himself in his car – hoping that the insurance money will support his family and his son Biff could get a new start in his life. Critics have disagreed whether his suicide is an act of cowardice or a last sacrifice on the altar of the American Dream.
     In 1949 Miller was named an "Outstanding Father of the Year", which manifested his success as a famous writer. But the wheel of fortune was going down. In the 1950s Miller was subjected to a scrutiny by a committee of the United States Congress investigating Communist influence in the arts. The FBI read his play The Hook, about a militant union organizer, and he was denied a passport to attend the Brussels premiere of his play. The Crucible (1953). It was based on court records and historical personages of the Salem witch trials of 1692. In Salem one could be hanged because of ''the inflamed human imagination, the poetry of suggestion.'' The daughter of Salem's minister falls mysteriously ill. Reverend Samuel Parris is a widower, and there is very little good to be said for him. He believes he is persecuted wherever he goes. Rumours of witchcraft spread throughout the people of Salem. "The times, to their eyes, must have been out of joint, and to the common folk must have seemed as insoluble and complicated as do ours today." The minister accuses Abigail Williams of wrongdoing, but she transforms the accusation into plea for help: her soul has been bewitched. Young girls, led by Abigail, make accusations of witchcraft against townspeople whom they do not like. Abigail accuses Elizabeth Proctor, the wife of an upstanding farmer, whom she had once seduced. Elizabeth's husband John Proctor reveals his past lechery. Elizabeth, unaware, fails to confirm his testimony. To protect him she testifies falsely that her husband has not been intimate with Abigail. Proctor is accused of witchcraft and condemned to death.
     The Crucible, which received Antoinette Perry Award, was an allegory for the McCarthy era and mass hysteria. Although its first Broadway production flopped, it become one of Miller's most-produced play. Miller wrote The Crucible in the atmosphere in which the author saw "accepted the notion that conscience was no longer a private matter but one of state administration." In the play he expressed his faith in the ability of an individual to resist conformist pressures.
     In the late 1950s Miller wrote nothing for the theatre. His screenplay Misfits was written with a role for his wife. The film was directed by John Huston, starring Mongomery Clift, Clark Gable, and Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn was always late getting to the set and used heavily drugs. The marriage was already breaking, and Miller was feeling lonely. John Huston wrote in his book of memoir, An Open Book, (1980): "One evening I was about to drive away from the location – miles out in the desert – when I saw Arthur standing alone. Marilyn and her friends hadn't offered him a ride back; they'd just left him. If I hadn't happened to see him, he would have been stranded out there. My sympathies were more and more with him." Later Miller said that there "should have been more long shots to remind us constantly how isolated there people were, physically and morally." Miller's last play, Finishing the Picture, produced in 2004, depicted the making of Misfits.
     Miller was politically active throughout his life. In 1965 he was elected president of P.E.N., the international literary organization. At the 1968 Democratic Party Convention he was a delegate for Eugene McCarthy. In 1964 Miller returned to stage after a nine-year absence with the play After the Fall, a strongly autobiographical work, which dealt with the questions of guilt and innocence. The play also united Kazan and Miller, but their close friendship was over, destroyed by the blacklist. Many critics consider that Maggie, the self-destructive central character, was modelled on Monroe, though Miller denied this. A year after his divorce, Miller married the Austrian photographer Inge Morath (1923-2002), whom he had met during the filming of The Misfits. Miller co-operated with her on two books about China and Russia. After Inge Morath died, Miller plannd to marry Agnes Barley, a 34-year-old artist. In 1985 Miller went to Turkey with the playwright Harold Pinter. Their journey was arranged by PEN in conjunction with the Helsinki Watch Committee. One of their guides in Istanbul was Orhan Pamuk.
     In the 1990s Miller wrote such plays as The Ride Down Mount Morgan and The Last Yankee, but in an interview he stated that "It happens to be a very bad historical moment for playwriting, because the theater is getting more and more difficult to find actors for, since television pays so much and the movies even more than that. If you're young, you'll probably be writing about young people, and that's easier -- you can find young actors -- but you can't readily find mature actors
In 2002 Miller was honored with Spain's prestigious Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature, making him the first U.S. recipient of the award. Miller died of heart failure at home in Roxbury, Connecticut, on February 10, 2005.