| Arthur Miller |
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Arthur Asher Miller was born on October 17th 1915 in New York City into a Jewish family. His father Isidore was a ladies-wear manufacturer and shopkeeper who was ruined in the depression. His mother Augusta was a housewife and schoolteacher. He had a brother – Kermit – and a sister – Joan – who was an actress and has appeared in her brother’s plays. From 1920 to 1928 Miller attended Public School #24 in Harlem. He saw his first play in 1923 at Shubert Theatre. When being in Abraham Lincoln High School (near Coney Island in Brooklyn) from 1930 to 1933 he was a talented athlete (played on the football team) but a mediocre student. Miller was rejected from the universities and so, after graduating in 1933, he registered for night school at City College but quit after two weeks. After this disappointment he worked at a car parts warehouse were he experienced anti-Semitism the first time, because he was the only Jew there. In fall 1934 he entered the University of Michigan to study journalism and drama. Here he was reporter and night editor on the student paper “The Michigan Daily”. During spring break in 1936 (his sophomore year) he wrote “No Villain” in six days. His play won the “Avery Hopwood Award”. In 1938 Miller received his bachelor’s degree in English and returned to New York. There he joined the Federal Theater Project to write radio plays and scripts. For this job he turned down a much better paying offer to work as a scriptwriter for Twentieth Century Fox in Hollywood. In 1940 he married his college sweetheart Mary Grace Slattery with whom he had two children (Jane *1944, and Robert *1947) and was exempted from military service during World War II because of a football injury. In 1944 his play “The man who had all the luck” premiered on Broadway but was closed after six performances. In 1947 He won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Donaldson Award with “All my sons” Miller and because of that rose to prominence. His play “Death of a Salesman” won in 1949 the Pulitzer prize, three Tony Awards and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. This was the first time a play won all three awards! In 1951 he met Marilyn Monroe for the first time and “Death of a Salesman” was filmed for Columbia Pictures. In 1956 he divorced his wife and married on June 29th Marilyn Monroe. On May 31st, 1957, Miller was found guilty of contempt of Congress (Missachtung des Kongresses) for refusing to reveal the names of member of a literary circle suspected of Communist affiliation (Mitgliedschaft). The U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the conviction August 7th, 1958. In 1961 he divorced Monroe who he had left for Inge Morath. In the same year his mother died and in September his daughter Rebecca was born. In 1962 he married Morath, his son Daniel was born and Monroe died. His son Daniel was born with the Down Syndrome and so Miller placed him in an institution in Roxbury, Connecticut, and never visited him. In his autobiography “Timebends” from 1987 he doesn’t even mention Daniel! His daughter Rebecca is today a screenwriter, actress and director. In the year 1966 his father died. On January 30th 2002, his wife Inge Morath died. On May 1st in that year, he was awarded Spain’s “Principe de Asturias” (Prize for Literature) for being “the undisputed master of modern drama”. Being 89 years old, in December 2004, Miller announced, that he had been living with 34 year old artist Agnes Barley since 2002 and that he was planning on marrying her. Within hours of his death, his daughter kicked Barley out of the house, because she didn’t accept the relationship. On February 10th Arthur Miller dies of heart failure in his Connecticut home. During his life, Miller achieved great success. He was very famous all the time and his plays were on Broadway, radio and television. He received many awards – even in his later years – and his plays were acted after many years and they reached a broad audience. When “Death of a Salesman” with Dustin Hoffman aired on CBS in 1985, 25 million people watched it. Miller was also politically active and socially very engaged but paradoxically he let his handicapped son down. His lifework is very broad and was important for “playwriting history”. von Sonja Lutter |
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