Who is Arthur Miller?

"The American Dream is the largely unacknowledged

screen in front of which all American writing
plays itself out.”
Image courtesy of Wikipedia via the U.S. Department of State
 Accomplishments
 Great American playwright, novelist, and screenwriter

 Considered one of the 20th century’s three great

American dramatists – Tennessee Williams, Eugene
O’Neill

 Awards:
Pulitzer Prize Peabody Award
Tony Award Kennedy Lifetime
Emmy Award Achievement Award

 His work often questions “death and betrayal and

injustice and how we are to account for this little life of
ours”
 Background

 Arthur Asher Miller:

 Born – NYC, 1915
 Died – Roxbury, CT, 2005

 Worked series of odd jobs during Great Depression to

make ends meet & pay for college
 Graduated from University of Michigan in 1938
 Began writing plays while in school

 Worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and wrote radio

scripts during WWII, while struggling to write plays
and novels
 Professional Life
 First successful play, The Man Who Had All The Luck, hit
Broadway in 1944
 Established himself as an eminent playwright with All My Sons
(1947)
 Most celebrated play, Death of a Salesman (1949) won Miller
the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
 Followed by The Crucible (1953) for which he won a Tony award

 Other notable works: A View From The Bridge (1955), After the
Fall (1964), The Price (1968)
 Adapted both Death of a Salesman and The Crucible to film in
1985 and 1995, respectively
P Also famous for…
 Already a public person, Miller married Marilyn Monroe
in 1956 (his second wife)

 Tumultuous marriage, divorced

in 1961

 Faced high media scrutiny for

marrying the country’s most
beautiful woman
 Married again in 1962 to Inga Morath, with whom he
remained until her death in 2002
 Reception
 Following his success with All My Sons and Death of a
Salesman, Miller’s personal beliefs were shoved into
the limelight
 He revealed to be politically liberal-leaning, as
conveyed in his controversial subject matter
 A large target for the House of Un-American
Activities Committee during the Red Scare

Information found on:

- http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/miller/biography.html
- http://www.kennedy-center.org/explorer/artists/?
entity_id=3762&source_type=a-