Download Arthur Miller Background Study:

Arthur Miller Background Study:
Miller’s Early Life
 Arthur Miller was born on Oct. 17, 1915, in New York City.
 His father ran a small coat-manufacturing business; during
the Depression it failed.
 In 1932, after graduating from high school, Miller went to
work in an auto-parts warehouse.
The College Years
 Two years later he enrolled in the University of Michigan.
 Before graduating in 1938, he won two Avery Hopwood
awards for playwriting.
After College
 Miller returned to New York City to a variety of jobs, writing
for the Federal Theater Project, the Columbia Workshop, and
the Cavalcade of America.
 Because of an old football injury, he was rejected for military
service, but he toured Army camps to collect material for a
movie, The Story of GI Joe, based on a book by Ernie Pyle.
 In 1944, the Broadway production of his The Man Who Had All
the Luck opened and closed almost simultaneously, though it
won a Theater Guild Award.
 In 1945 his novel, Focus, a attack against anti-Semitism,
appeared.
His Theatre Work
 With the opening of All My Sons on Broadway (1947), Miller's
theatrical career burgeoned.
 The tragedy won three prizes and fascinated audiences across
the country.
 Then Death of a Salesman (1949) brought Miller a Pulitzer
Prize, international fame, and an estimated income of $2
million.
 His third Broadway play, The Crucible, opened in 1953.
Miller Against the Government
 In these three plays Miller's subject was moral disintegration.
 His shifting from contemporary life in Salesman to the Salem
witch hunt of 1692 in The Crucible hardly disguised the fact
that he had in mind Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations
of Communist subversion in the United States and the
subsequent persecutions and hysteria.
 When Miller was called before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities in June 1956, he argued, "My conscience
will not permit me to use the name of another person and
bring trouble to him." He was convicted of contempt of
Congress; the conviction was reversed in 1958.
Miller’s Awards
 Despite the absence of any major success since the mid-
1960s, Miller seems secure in his reputation as a major figure
in American drama.
 He has won the Emmy, Tony, and Peabody awards, and in
1984 received the John F. Kennedy Award for Lifetime
Achievement.
 Critics have hailed his blending of vernacular language, social
and psychological realism, and moral insight.
Miller’s Personal Life
 On August 5, 1940, he married his college sweetheart, Mary
Slattery, the Catholic daughter of an insurance salesman.
 The couple had two children, Jane and Robert.
The Marilyn Monroe Years
 In June, 1956, Miller left his first wife Mary Slattery, and on
June 29, he married Marilyn Monroe.
 Miller and Monroe had first met in April 1951, when they
had a brief affair.
 In 1961, her heavy use of drugs led to their divorce.
 Almost two years later, Monroe died of an apparent drug
overdose.
Miller’s Third Wife
 Miller married photographer Inge Morath on February 17,
1962.
 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 Millers' personal life at Arthur's
insistence.
 The couple remained together until Inge's death in 2002.
Death of a Playwright
 Miller died of heart failure after a battle against cancer,
pneumonia and congestive heart disease at his home in
Roxbury, Connecticut.
 He had been in hospice care at his sister's apartment in New
York since his release from hospital the previous month.
 He died on the evening of February 10, 2005 (the 56th
anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman),
aged 89.
Miller’s Legacy
 Miller's career as a writer spanned over seven decades, and at
the time of his death, Miller was considered to be one of the
greatest dramatists of the twentieth century.
 After his death, many respected actors, directors, and
producers paid tribute to Miller, some calling him the last
great practitioner of the American stage, and Broadway
theatres darkened their lights in a show of respect.
 Miller's alma mater, the University of Michigan opened the
Arthur Miller Theatre in March, 2007. Per his express wish,
it is the only theatre in the world that bears Miller's name.