Arthur Miller

Literature / Great Playwrights

Brief biography of Arthur Miller

Life and works of American playwright and screenwriter, Arthur Miller, one of America’s leading playwrights. Death of a Salesman is regarded as his greatest play.

Arthur Miller, one of the most prominent and popular American playwrights and screenwriters, wrote some of the 20^th century’s most important and famous plays for the American theater and film productions. His best known plays include  Death of a Salesman, All My Sons and The Crucible.  

Miller was a Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama. Married to the famous actress, Marilyn Monroe (1956 to 1961), he was popular from the late 1940s until the early 1960s, during which he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee.  

Early Life of Arthur Miller

Arthur A. Miller was born on October 17, 1915 in New York City. Just before the Great Depression his father’s business shut down, reducing the family to near poverty. This change in fortune strongly influenced Miller as seen in many of his plays depicting families destroyed because they live by the rules of a society that says money is the most important thing.

Initially, Miller was more interested in sports than literature, but all that changed when he read The Brothers Karamazov by Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky.  Miller decided to become a writer and enrolled at the University of Michigan to study journalism. 

Miller’s Plays All My Sons, The Death of a Salesman and The Crucible

Miller’s first successful play, All My Sons (1947), was performed when he was 32 years old. The story is about a factory owner who sells faulty aircraft parts during the Second World War. The play clearly shows Miller’s belief that the desire for money in American society encourages people to act immorally.  This play has been influenced by Henrik Ibsen’s The Master Builder.  

Death of a Salesman, regarded Miller’s greatest play, was produced two years later after All My Sons. It won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1949. The story is about a man who kills himself when he realizes he will never be considered a success.  

His 1953 play, The Crucible, is based on the 17^th-century Salem witch trials, actually an attack on the anti-communist trials held during the McCarthy Era. He also wrote the screenplay for Marilyn Monroe’s last movie, The Misfits.  

Miller's description in writing for the stage:

"I am in the ultimate place of vision - you can't back me up any further.

Everything is inevitable, down to the last comma". 

Legacy of Playwright Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller died on February 10, 2005. His plays have always been delicately structured, mainly focused on the major concerns of post-war America and the lives of the American people of the time.  His works, not necessarily just a pre-occupation of guilt, show more importantly, that in order to redeem the past, it should first be remembered.     

Miller was the most popular American playwright since his predecessor, Eugene O’Neill. His three greatest plays, Death of a Salesman, All My Sons and The Crucible, have remained popular.    

Works by Arthur Miller: 

All My Sons, 1947

Death of a Salesman, 1949

The Crucible, 1953

A View from the Bridge, 1955

Incident at Vichy, 1964

After the Fall, 1964

The American Clock, 1980

The Last Yankee, 1990

Broken Glass, 1994

Plain Girl, 1995

Photo Credit:

Arthur Miller. Public Domain

Resources:

Goring, Rosemary, Ed. Larousse Dictionary of Writers.  New York: Larousse, 1994

Oxford Who's Who in the 20^th Century.  Oxford: OUP, 1999

Payne, Tom. The A-Z of Great Writers.  London: Carlton, 1997

Note: I originally wrote this piece for Suite101.com, June 28, 2010. It is being republished in short version for Inspired Pen Web. 

(c) October 17, 2019. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.