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. 

Tennessee Williams

Literature / Writer's Datebook: March 26

Brief biography of American playwright, novelist and poet Tennessee Williams. 

American writer Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier (Tennessee) Williams), is famous for the plays A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Glass Menagerie, among others. He is considered one of the best playwrights in the United States since the Second World War.

He wrote powerful and involved dramas that mainly deal sensitively with emotionally damaged people trying to survive in a hostile environment. He used the pieces of his stormy life to create some of the most memorable characters on the stage. 

Early Life of Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams was born on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi. His family lived with his grandfather where he was brought up. When he was twelve, the family moved to St. Louis. Tennessee and his sister were not happy and did not adjust to the city life. They were made fun of for their poverty and Southern accents.

Edward Albee

Literature / Writers Datebook: March 12

 

 

Brief biography and works of American dramatist Edward Albee, famous for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?   

 

 

 

Edward Albee is best known for his association with the movement of the 1950s and early 1960s, known as the theater of the absurd. Aside from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, his other famous plays are The American Dream, The Zoo Story and The Sandbox.  

 

Early Life of Edward Albee

Born in Washington, D.C. on March 12, 1928, Albee was abandoned as a baby by his parents and adopted by a wealthy couple who owned a theatre chain. Despite the lavish environment he grew up with, he was unhappy. He attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut for a year.

Aged 20, Albee left home and settled in Greenwich Village, New York City. He took on various jobs. During this time, he also began to meet other authors, including Thornton Wilder and W.H. Auden. It was Wilder who suggested that he try his hand at plays.

 

The Playwright

Albee wrote his first play, The Zoo Story, when he was 30. He wrote it for just three weeks. The play failed to attract attention in New York, however, Albee's roommate sent a copy of it to a friend in Europe, where it had its premiere in 1959.

 

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 

Albee's first full-length three-act play was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, produced when Albee was 34. Claimed to be his greatest success, it won him international fame and several awards. Like many Albee's plays, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? centers on family relationships, in particular, the complex relationship between a history professor and his wife. The famous author Virginia Woolf has nothing to do with the play.

 

Honors and Awards

Among other honours, Albee has won three Pulitzer Prizes – for A Delicate Balance in 1967, Seascape in 1975 and Three Tall Women in 1994.

 

Major Works by Edward Albee

The Zoo Story, 1959

The Sandbox, 1959

The American Dream, 1960

The Death of Bessie Smith, 1960

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1962

The Ballad of the Sad Café, 1963, adapted from Carson McCullers novela

Tiny Alice, 1964

Malcolm, 1965, adapted from James Purdy's novel

A Delicate Balance, 1966

Breakfast at Tiffany's 1966

Box-Mao-Box, 1968

Seascape, 1975

The Lady from Dubuque, 1977-1979

Lolita, 1981, adapted from the novel by Vladimir Nabokov

The Man Who Had Three Arms, 1981

Marriage Play, 1986-1987

Three Tall Women, 1994

The Play About the Baby, 1996

The Goat or Who is Sylvia?, 2002

Peter & Jerry, 2004

 

Photo Credit:

Edward Albee. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain. Photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1961.

Resources: 

American Academy of Achievement. 

Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Edinburgh: Chambers, Harrap Publishers, 2002

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

Edward Albee. en.wikipedia.org 

(c) March 2009. Updated March 12, 2024. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.