Wednesday, July 21, 2010

+ Writer's Wednesday: Arthur Miller +

Today's Writer's Wednesday is the amazing Arthur Miller! The one who captured the American Dream so well and formed a masterpiece.

Arthur Asher Miller was born October 17th 1915 in New York City. He was the second of three children. As a teenager he would deliver bread every mourning before school to help his family out after the Wall Street Crash of 1929. He graduated in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School and picked up several jobs to pay for his college tuition at the University of Michigan. He first majored in Journalism and worked as a reporter and night editor for the student paper The Michigan Daily. Around this time he worked on his work No Villain. Miller switched to majoring in English and won the Avery Hopwood Award for it. He won the award again in 1937 when he wrote Honors at Dawn. In '38 he received a BA in English, after graduation he joined the federal theater project - an agency established to provide jobs in the theater. He began working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard while continuing to write radio plays, some of which were broadcast on CBS.

On August 5, 1940, he married his college sweetheart, Mary Slattery - The Catholic daughter of an insurance salesman. They had two children, Jane and Robert. Robert, a writer and film director produced the 1996 movie version of The Crucible.

During 1940 he wrote The Man Who Had all the Luck, it closed however, after four performances and disasterous reviews. In '41 he won the first Tony Award for Best Author and he was established as a playwright. '48 he built a small studio in Roxbury, Conneticut. There, in less than a day, he wrote Act I of Death of a Salesman. Six weeks later it was completed, one of the classics of world theater. It won the Tony Award for Best Author, New York Drama Circle Critics' Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was the first play to win all three major awards and was performed 742 times.

After speaking with Kazan about his testimony, Miller travelled to Salem, MA to research the witch trials of 1962. Then wrote The Crucible, an allegorical play in which Miller likened the situation with the House Un-American Activities Committee to the witch hunt in Salem.

In June 1956, Arthur Miller left his first wife. Then on June 29th he married Marilyn Monroe. He'd first met her in April 1951, when they had a brief affair, and remained in contact since.

He was a playwright and Essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include award-winning plays. His most popular plays were All my Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible.

Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the 40s, 50s, and 60s, a period which he testified before the House Un-American Activites Committee, received the Pulitzer prize for Drama, and was married to Marilyn Monroe.

Miller died on February 10th, 2005 in Roxbury Conneticut.

3 comments:

  1. "Mind awake, a lip, a piece of paper to make, do not never practices, will be useless." yay translations.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Some twists and turns of life can be some growth, so no matter good or poor, all growing, successful help edge, should be grateful"

    ReplyDelete