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Arthur Miller

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  Arthur Aster Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in New York City, NY. His father, Isidore Miller, was a ladies coat manufaturer, and his mother a school teacher, and the family was relatively well off. Arthur attended Public School #24 in Harlem from 1920 to 1928, and in 1923 saw his first play, a melodrama at the Schubert Theatre. In 1929 his fathers business failed, and he moved the family to Brooklyn. After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1932, Miller quit city college after two weeks.

  After graduation, Miller worked as a stock clerk for two and a half years in order to pay for his first year at the University of Michigan. He was the only Jew working in the auto parts wherehouse, and it was here that he had his first experience with anti-semitism. In college he first majored in journalism, earning financial aid by his salary as night editor of the Michigan Daily Newspaper. In 1936 He wrote his first play, No Villian, and won the Hopwood Award in drama. He then transferred to an english major. He took his first playwriting class with Professor Kenneth T. Rowe, and re-wrote No Villian, changing the name to They Too Arise. The new draft won a major award from the Bureau of New Plays and was produced in Ann Arobor and Detriot. His next play, Honors at Dawn, recieved the Hopwood Award as well. In 1938 The Great Disobedience recieved second place in the Hopwood Contest. They Too Arise was once again revised, and the title changed to The Grass Still Grows for production in New York City. Miller graduated from college in 1938 with a BA in English.

  Later in 1938, Miller joined the Federal theatre Project in New York City to write play and radio scripts, after turning down a better paying offer as a scriptwriter for Twentieth Century Fox in Hollywood. The Project closed before his first play was produced, so he worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and wrote radio scripts heard on the Columbia Workshop and the Calvacade of America. In 1939 he wrote Listen My Children with Norman Rosten, and in 1940 he married his first of three wives, Mary Grace Slattery. Also in 1940, he wrote The Golden Years, and traveled to North Carolina to collect dialect speech for the folk division of the Library of Congress.

 In 1941 Miller wrote several radio plays, and in 1944 his daughter, Jane, was born. He wrote his first book in 1944, Situation Normal, about his experience researching army camps for a film that was never written. His play The Man Who Had All the Luck closed on broadway after just six performances, but it did recieve the Theatre Guild National Award. In 1945 he wrote a novel titled Focus, on anti-semitism. After his first failure on Broadway, Miller decided he would write one more play. If it was not succesful, he would give up.

 And in 1947 his dream came true. Arthur Millers play All My Sons opened on Broadway and was a success. Miller was firmly established as an American playwright. All My Sons recieved the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the Donaldson award. His son Robert was born, and Miller took a job at a city factory assembeling berr boxes in order to stay in touch with his audience. He gave his first interview to John K. Hutchens for The New York Times, and researched the longshoreman Pete Panto. Panto's story would later be formed into a screenplay, The Hook. In 1948 Miller built himself studio in Conneticut, where he would later write Death of a Salesman. He visited Italy and discovered the background for the Carbone family. In 1949 Death of a Salesman premiered and recieved the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Antoinette Perry Award, the Donaldson Award, and the Theatre Club Award, among others.

  In 1950 Miller met Marilyn Monroe for the first time. His screenplay The Hook failed to reach production because of the first pressures from the House of Un-American Activities Committee. In response to this pressure, Miller spent time is Salem researching for his next play, The Crucible, which was intended as a satire on the hunt for communists in America. The play premiered in 1953, and promptly won the Antoinette Perry and Donaldson Awards. Under increasing pressure from the HUAC, Miller premiered the one-act A View From the Bridge along with A Memory of Two Mondays. The HUAC denied him a passport to see The Crucible open in Belgium, and the committe pressured city officials to withdraw permission for Miller to make a film he had been planning about New York juvenile delinquency.

  In 1956 Miller's life took a personal turn when he moved to Nevada for six weeks in order to divorce his wife, Mary Slattery. While there he collected material for a short story, The Misfits. After the divorce was final he married Marilyn Monroe, and was also subpoenaed to appear before the HUAC, which convicted him of comtempt. Miller proceeded with his life, publishing Arthur Miller's Collected Plays and recieving an honorary Doctor of Human Latters from his alma mater. In 1958 the US Court of Appeals overturned Miller's conviction, and Miller was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, who awarded him a gold medal. In 1961 his marriage to Monroe ended, and his mother died.

  In 1962 Marilyn Monroe died, and Miller was married for the last time to Inge Morath. Their daughter Rebecca was born, and Miller's first childrens book, Jane's Blanket, was published. In 1965 Miller was elected president of International P.E.N. and went to a conference in Yugoslavia. He was very involved in P.E.N. and in 1967 he visited Moscow to persuade Soviet writers to join the organization. In 1968 The Price premiered, and Miller attended the Democratic national Convention as the delegate from Roxbury. In 1969 Russia was published, Miller's first book along with his wife's photographs. He also retired as the president of P.E.N.

  In 1970 Miller's one acts Fame and The Reason Why were produced. Miller's works were banned in the Soviet Union because of his work to free dissident writers. A year later The Portable Arthur Miller was published. Miller again attended the Democratic National Convention in 1972, and in 1977 In the Country was published, with photographs from Inge Morath.

  In 1978 the Belgian National Theatre did a 25th anniversary production of The Crucible, and this time Miller could attend. In 1981 the second volume of Arthur Miller's Collected Plays was published. In 1983 Miller recieved Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime achievment, and tried his hand at directing Death of a Salesman at The People's Art Theatre in Beijing, China. In 1985 the play premiered on television with Dustin Hoffman and recieved rave reviews. Miller attended a conference in Turkey for International P.E.N., and was a delegate at a meeting of Soviet and Amerian writers in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he tried to convince the Soviets to stop persecuting writers. In 1986 he was one of 15 writers and scientists invited to the Soviet Union to conference with Mikhail Gorbachov and discuss Soviet politics.

 From 1987 and on Miller has experienced one literary success after another. He has continued to publish plays, including his latest piece Broken Glass, which premiered in 1994 and won the 1995 Oliver. He has recieved numerous awards, and many of his plays have been converted into movies very succesfully. In 1987, Miller published his autobiography Timebends: A Life, in which he recalls his childhood in Brooklyn, the political turmoil of the 1950's, and the later half of the century.

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