Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American literature and cinema for over 61 years, writing a wide variety of plays, including celebrated plays such as The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, All My Sons, and Death of a Salesman, which are still studied[1] and performed[2] worldwide. Miller was often in the public eye, most famously for refusing to give evidence before the House Un-American Activities Committee, being the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama among other awards, and for marrying Marilyn Monroe. At the time of his death, Miller was considered one of the greatest American playwrights.
Arthur Miller was born to Jewish-American parents, Isidore and Augusta Miller,[3] in Manhattan, New York City, in 1915. His father owned a women's clothes/coat-manufacturing business, which failed in the Wall Street Crash of 1929[4] after which his family moved to humbler quarters in Brooklyn.[5]
Because of the effects of the Great Depression on his family, Miller had no money for college after graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School (New York).[5] After securing a place at the University of Michigan, he worked in a number of menial jobs to pay for his tuition.
At the University of Michigan, Miller first majored in journalism, where he became the reporter and night editor on the student paper, the Michigan Daily. It was during this time that he wrote his first work, No Villain.[6] After winning the Avery Hopwood Award for No Villain, Miller switched his major to English, where he met Professor Kenneth Rowe, who aided Miller in his early forays into playwrighting.[7] Miller retained strong ties to his alma mater throughout the rest of his life, establishing the university's Arthur Miller Award in 1985 and Arthur Miller Award for Dramatic Writing in 1999, and lending his name to the Arthur Miller Theatre in 2000.[8] In 1937, Miller wrote Honors at Dawn, which also received the Avery Hopwood Award.[6]
In 1938, Miller received his bachelor's degree in English. After graduation, he joined the Federal Theater Project, a New Deal agency established to provide jobs in the theater. He chose the theater project although he had an offer to work as a scriptwriter for 20th Century Fox.[6] However, Congress, worried about possible Communist infiltration, closed the project.[5] Miller began working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard while continuing to write radio plays, some of which were broadcast on CBS.[5][6]
On August 5, 1940, he married his college sweetheart, Mary Slattery, the Catholic daughter of an insurance salesman.[9] The couple had two children, Jane and Robert. Robert became a director, writer and producer whose was, among other things, producer of the 1996 movie version of The Crucible[10].
Miller was exempted from military service during World War II because of a high-school football injury to his left kneecap.
Because of the effects of the Great Depression on his family, Miller had no money for college after graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School (New York).[5] After securing a place at the University of Michigan, he worked in a number of menial jobs to pay for his tuition.
At the University of Michigan, Miller first majored in journalism, where he became the reporter and night editor on the student paper, the Michigan Daily. It was during this time that he wrote his first work, No Villain.[6] After winning the Avery Hopwood Award for No Villain, Miller switched his major to English, where he met Professor Kenneth Rowe, who aided Miller in his early forays into playwrighting.[7] Miller retained strong ties to his alma mater throughout the rest of his life, establishing the university's Arthur Miller Award in 1985 and Arthur Miller Award for Dramatic Writing in 1999, and lending his name to the Arthur Miller Theatre in 2000.[8] In 1937, Miller wrote Honors at Dawn, which also received the Avery Hopwood Award.[6]
In 1938, Miller received his bachelor's degree in English. After graduation, he joined the Federal Theater Project, a New Deal agency established to provide jobs in the theater. He chose the theater project although he had an offer to work as a scriptwriter for 20th Century Fox.[6] However, Congress, worried about possible Communist infiltration, closed the project.[5] Miller began working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard while continuing to write radio plays, some of which were broadcast on CBS.[5][6]
On August 5, 1940, he married his college sweetheart, Mary Slattery, the Catholic daughter of an insurance salesman.[9] The couple had two children, Jane and Robert. Robert became a director, writer and producer whose was, among other things, producer of the 1996 movie version of The Crucible[10].
Miller was exempted from military service during World War II because of a high-school football injury to his left kneecap.
In June of 1956 Miller divorced Mary Slattery, and on June 29, he married Marilyn Monroe.[9] Miller and Monroe had first met in 1951, when they had a brief affair,[9] and had remained in contact since then.[5]
Taking advantage of the publicity of Miller's marriage, HUAC subpoenaed him to appear before the committee shortly before the nuptials. Before appearing, Miller asked the committee not to ask him to name names, to which the chairman agreed.[21] When Miller attended the hearing, to which Monroe accompanied him, risking her own career,[9] he gave the committee a detailed account of his political activities. Reneging on the chairman's promise, the committee asked him to reveal to the names of friends and colleagues who had partaken in similar activities.[21] Miller refused to comply with the request, saying "I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him."[21] As a result a judge found Miller guilty of contempt of Congress in May 1957. Miller was fined $500, sentenced to thirty days in prison, blacklisted, and disallowed a U.S. passport.[3] In 1958 his conviction was overturned by the court of appeals, which ruled that Miller had been misled by the chairman of HUAC.[3]
After his conviction was overturned, Miller began work on The Misfits, which starred his wife. Miller said that the filming was one of the lowest points in his life,[9] and shortly before the film's premiere in 1961, the pair divorced.[6] A year later, Monroe died of an apparent drug overdose.
Miller married photographer Inge Morath on February 17, 1962, and the first of their two children, Rebecca, was born that September. Their son Daniel was born with Down Syndrome in November, 1966, and was consequently institutionalized and excluded from the Miller's personal life at Miller's insistence[22]. The couple remained together until Inge's death in 2002. Arthur Miller's son-in-law, actor Daniel Day-Lewis is said to have visited Daniel frequently, and to have persuaded Arthur Miller to reunite with his adult son.
Taking advantage of the publicity of Miller's marriage, HUAC subpoenaed him to appear before the committee shortly before the nuptials. Before appearing, Miller asked the committee not to ask him to name names, to which the chairman agreed.[21] When Miller attended the hearing, to which Monroe accompanied him, risking her own career,[9] he gave the committee a detailed account of his political activities. Reneging on the chairman's promise, the committee asked him to reveal to the names of friends and colleagues who had partaken in similar activities.[21] Miller refused to comply with the request, saying "I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him."[21] As a result a judge found Miller guilty of contempt of Congress in May 1957. Miller was fined $500, sentenced to thirty days in prison, blacklisted, and disallowed a U.S. passport.[3] In 1958 his conviction was overturned by the court of appeals, which ruled that Miller had been misled by the chairman of HUAC.[3]
After his conviction was overturned, Miller began work on The Misfits, which starred his wife. Miller said that the filming was one of the lowest points in his life,[9] and shortly before the film's premiere in 1961, the pair divorced.[6] A year later, Monroe died of an apparent drug overdose.
Miller married photographer Inge Morath on February 17, 1962, and the first of their two children, Rebecca, was born that September. Their son Daniel was born with Down Syndrome in November, 1966, and was consequently institutionalized and excluded from the Miller's personal life at Miller's insistence[22]. The couple remained together until Inge's death in 2002. Arthur Miller's son-in-law, actor Daniel Day-Lewis is said to have visited Daniel frequently, and to have persuaded Arthur Miller to reunite with his adult son.
In 1964 Miller's next play was produced. After the Fall is a deeply personal view of Miller's own experiences during his marriage to Monroe. The play reunited Miller with his former friend Kazan: they collaborated on both the script and the direction. After the Fall opened on January 23, 1964 at the ANTA Theatre in Washington Square Park amid a flurry of publicity and outrage at putting a Monroe-like character, called Maggie, on stage.[9] Also in the same year, Miller produced Incident at Vichy. In 1965, Miller was elected the first American president of International PEN, a position which he held for four years.[24] During this period Miller wrote the penetrating family drama, The Price, produced in 1968.[9] It was Miller's most successful play since Death of a Salesman.[25]
In 1969, Miller's works were banned in the Soviet Union after he campaigned for the freedom of dissident writers.[6] Throughout the 1970s, Miller spent much of his time experimenting with the theatre, producing one-act plays such as Fame and The Reason Why, and traveling with his wife, producing In The Country and Chinese Encounters with her. Both his 1972 comedy The Creation of the World and Other Business and its musical adaptation, Up from Paradise, were critical and commercial failures.[citation needed]
In 1983, Miller traveled to the People's Republic of China to produce and direct Death of a Salesman at the People's Art Theatre in Beijing. The play was a success in China[25] and in 1984, Salesman in Beijing, a book about Miller's experience in Beijing, was published. Around the same time, Death of a Salesman was made into a TV movie starring Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman. Shown on CBS, it attracted 25 million viewers.[6][26] In late 1987, Miller's autobiography, Timebends was published. Before his autobiography was published, it was well known that that Miller would not talk about Monroe in interviews; in Timebends Miller talks about his experiences with Monroe in detail.[9] During the early 1990s Miller wrote three new plays, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1992), and Broken Glass (1994). In 1996, a film of The Crucible starring Daniel Day Lewis and Winona Ryder opened. Miller spent much of 1996 working on the screenplay to the film.[6] Mr. Peters' Connections was staged off-Broadway in 1998, and Death of a Salesman was revived on Broadway in 1999 to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The play, once again, was a large critical success, winning a Tony Award for best revival of a play.[27] On May 1, 2002, Miller was awarded Spain's Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature as "the undisputed master of modern drama." Previous winners include Doris Lessing, Günter Grass and Carlos Fuentes. Later that year, Ingeborg Morath died of Lymphatic cancer[28][29] at the age of 78. The following year Miller won the Jerusalem Prize.[6] In December 2004, the 89-year-old Miller announced that he has been living with a 34-year-old artist Agnes Barley at his Connecticut farm since 2002, and that they intended to marry. Miller's final play, Finishing the Picture, opened at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, in the fall of 2004. He stated that the work was based on the experience of filming The Misfits.
Miller died at his home in Roxbury of congestive heart failure[30] on the evening of February 10, 2005 (the 56th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman) at the age of 89, surrounded by his family.
In 1969, Miller's works were banned in the Soviet Union after he campaigned for the freedom of dissident writers.[6] Throughout the 1970s, Miller spent much of his time experimenting with the theatre, producing one-act plays such as Fame and The Reason Why, and traveling with his wife, producing In The Country and Chinese Encounters with her. Both his 1972 comedy The Creation of the World and Other Business and its musical adaptation, Up from Paradise, were critical and commercial failures.[citation needed]
In 1983, Miller traveled to the People's Republic of China to produce and direct Death of a Salesman at the People's Art Theatre in Beijing. The play was a success in China[25] and in 1984, Salesman in Beijing, a book about Miller's experience in Beijing, was published. Around the same time, Death of a Salesman was made into a TV movie starring Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman. Shown on CBS, it attracted 25 million viewers.[6][26] In late 1987, Miller's autobiography, Timebends was published. Before his autobiography was published, it was well known that that Miller would not talk about Monroe in interviews; in Timebends Miller talks about his experiences with Monroe in detail.[9] During the early 1990s Miller wrote three new plays, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1992), and Broken Glass (1994). In 1996, a film of The Crucible starring Daniel Day Lewis and Winona Ryder opened. Miller spent much of 1996 working on the screenplay to the film.[6] Mr. Peters' Connections was staged off-Broadway in 1998, and Death of a Salesman was revived on Broadway in 1999 to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The play, once again, was a large critical success, winning a Tony Award for best revival of a play.[27] On May 1, 2002, Miller was awarded Spain's Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature as "the undisputed master of modern drama." Previous winners include Doris Lessing, Günter Grass and Carlos Fuentes. Later that year, Ingeborg Morath died of Lymphatic cancer[28][29] at the age of 78. The following year Miller won the Jerusalem Prize.[6] In December 2004, the 89-year-old Miller announced that he has been living with a 34-year-old artist Agnes Barley at his Connecticut farm since 2002, and that they intended to marry. Miller's final play, Finishing the Picture, opened at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, in the fall of 2004. He stated that the work was based on the experience of filming The Misfits.
Miller died at his home in Roxbury of congestive heart failure[30] on the evening of February 10, 2005 (the 56th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman) at the age of 89, surrounded by his family.
Miller's career as a writer spanned over seven decades, and at the time of his death in 2005, Miller was considered to be one of the greatest dramatists of the twentieth century, among the likes of Harold Pinter, Eugene O'Neill, Luigi Pirandello, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertolt Brecht, and Tennessee Williams.[14] After his death, many respected actors, directors, and producers paid tribute to Miller,[31] some calling him the last great practitioner of the American stage,[32] and Broadway theaters darkened their lights in a show of respect.[33] Miller's alma mater, the University of Michigan opened the Arthur Miller Theatre in March, 2007. Per his express wish, it is the only theater in the world that bears Miller's name.
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Arthur Miller amerikai drámairó (teljes nevén Arthur Asher Miller) New York-ban (New York állam) született 1915 októberében. 2005, február 10-én halt meg vidéki farmján (Roxbury, Connecticut). Műveiben a realista irodalmi irányzatot követte, írói céljaként az amerikai munkásosztály helyzetének bemutatását tűzte maga elé. Leginkább Az ügynök halála és a Salemi boszorkányok című színdarabjai, és Marilyn Monroe-val kötött házassága (1956) tette ismertté.
Miller szülei lengyel zsidó bevándorlók voltak. A család New York város Manhattan kerületében telepedett le. Apja ruhagyára az amerikai gazdasági válság éveiben (Depresszió, 1929–1930) tönkrement.
1936-ban megjelent Miller első, irodalmi díjat nyert drámája, Honors at Dawn. 1940-ben újságírói diplomát szerzett a Michigan-i Egyetemen. Ebben az évben vette feleségül a katolikus Mary Slatteryt, akitől két gyermeke született. A II. világháború idején felmentették a katonai szolgálat alól egy régebbi, futball közben szerzett sérülése miatt.
1947-ben Édes fiaim (All My Sons) című darabja azonnali sikert aratott a New York-i Broadway-n. 1949-ben Az ügynök halála (Death of a Salesman) megnyerte a Pulitzer-díjat, három Tony-díjat, és a New York-i Drámakritikusok Körének díját. A színdarabot lefordították több mint egy tucat nyelvre. Következő művét, a Salemi Boszorkányokat (The Crucible) (1953) januárjában kezdték szintén nagy sikerrel játszani a Broadwayen. 1956 júniusában Miller elvált első feleségétől, és június végén összeházasodott Marilyn Monroe színészővel, aki a kedvéért áttért a zsidó vallásra. A politikai üldözések idején (McCarthy korszak, 1950-es évek) meg kellett jelennie az Amerikaellenes tevékenységet vizsgáló bizottság előtt Elia Kazan amerikai író és filmrendező feljelentése miatt, mely szerint Miller kommunista gyűlésekre járt. Az árulás korszakában Miller megtagadta a McCarthy-féle bizottság követeléseit: nem volt hajlandó liberálisan gondolkó kortársait beárulni. 1957május 31-én Millert bűnösnek találták törvénysértés címén („Contempt of Congress”), azonban 1958 augusztusában felmentették a vád alól. Ugyanebben az évben kiadta összegyűjtött műveit.
1961 januárjában elvált Monroe-tól, és egy évvel később feleségül vett egy Inge Morath nevezetű, osztrák származású fotográfust. Két gyermekük közül a fiú, Daniel Down-kórral született. Egy intézetben helyezték el, ahol apja sosem látogatta meg. Miller 1987-es emlékirataiban sem említi beteg fiát. Lányuk Rebecca Miller filmrendező.
1985-ben Miller Harold Pinter angol író társaságában Törökországba utazott, hogy átvegye az amerikai nagykövetség kitüntetését. Miután útitársát kiutasították az országból, mert felemelte szavát a politikai kínzások ellen, Miller is elhagyta Törökországot.
2002 januárjában Inge Morath meghalt. Május elsején Miller megkapta a spanyol "Principe de Asturias" irodalmi díjat, „a modern dráma vitathatatlan nagymestere” címén.
2004 decemberében a 89 éves Miller együtt élt a 34 éves Agnes Barley-vel, azzal a szándékkal, hogy összeházasodnak. Erre azonban már nem került sor. Arthur Miller 2005. február 10-én szívbénulás következtében elhunyt.
1936-ban megjelent Miller első, irodalmi díjat nyert drámája, Honors at Dawn. 1940-ben újságírói diplomát szerzett a Michigan-i Egyetemen. Ebben az évben vette feleségül a katolikus Mary Slatteryt, akitől két gyermeke született. A II. világháború idején felmentették a katonai szolgálat alól egy régebbi, futball közben szerzett sérülése miatt.
1947-ben Édes fiaim (All My Sons) című darabja azonnali sikert aratott a New York-i Broadway-n. 1949-ben Az ügynök halála (Death of a Salesman) megnyerte a Pulitzer-díjat, három Tony-díjat, és a New York-i Drámakritikusok Körének díját. A színdarabot lefordították több mint egy tucat nyelvre. Következő művét, a Salemi Boszorkányokat (The Crucible) (1953) januárjában kezdték szintén nagy sikerrel játszani a Broadwayen. 1956 júniusában Miller elvált első feleségétől, és június végén összeházasodott Marilyn Monroe színészővel, aki a kedvéért áttért a zsidó vallásra. A politikai üldözések idején (McCarthy korszak, 1950-es évek) meg kellett jelennie az Amerikaellenes tevékenységet vizsgáló bizottság előtt Elia Kazan amerikai író és filmrendező feljelentése miatt, mely szerint Miller kommunista gyűlésekre járt. Az árulás korszakában Miller megtagadta a McCarthy-féle bizottság követeléseit: nem volt hajlandó liberálisan gondolkó kortársait beárulni. 1957május 31-én Millert bűnösnek találták törvénysértés címén („Contempt of Congress”), azonban 1958 augusztusában felmentették a vád alól. Ugyanebben az évben kiadta összegyűjtött műveit.
1961 januárjában elvált Monroe-tól, és egy évvel később feleségül vett egy Inge Morath nevezetű, osztrák származású fotográfust. Két gyermekük közül a fiú, Daniel Down-kórral született. Egy intézetben helyezték el, ahol apja sosem látogatta meg. Miller 1987-es emlékirataiban sem említi beteg fiát. Lányuk Rebecca Miller filmrendező.
1985-ben Miller Harold Pinter angol író társaságában Törökországba utazott, hogy átvegye az amerikai nagykövetség kitüntetését. Miután útitársát kiutasították az országból, mert felemelte szavát a politikai kínzások ellen, Miller is elhagyta Törökországot.
2002 januárjában Inge Morath meghalt. Május elsején Miller megkapta a spanyol "Principe de Asturias" irodalmi díjat, „a modern dráma vitathatatlan nagymestere” címén.
2004 decemberében a 89 éves Miller együtt élt a 34 éves Agnes Barley-vel, azzal a szándékkal, hogy összeházasodnak. Erre azonban már nem került sor. Arthur Miller 2005. február 10-én szívbénulás következtében elhunyt.
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