Arthur Miller

Biography

Born in Harlem, New York in 1915, Arthur Miller attended the University of Michigan before moving back East to write dramas for the stage. His first critical and popular success was Death of a Salesman, which opened on Broadway in 1949 and won the Pulitzer Prize along with multiple Tonys. He received more acclaim for his award-winning followup The Crucible, which reflected his unwavering refusal to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Miller's public life was painted in part by his rocky marriage to Hollywood sex symbol Marilyn Monroe. The playwright died in 2005 at the age of 89, leaving a body of work that continues to be re-staged internationally and adapted for the screen.

Early Life and Education
Arthur Miller was born in Harlem, New York on October 17, 1915 to an immigrant family of Polish and Jewish descent. His father, Isidore, owned a successful coat manufacturing business, and his mother, Augusta, to whom he was closer, was an educator and an avid reader of novels. 

The affluent Miller family lost almost everything in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and had to move from Manhattan to Flatbush, Brooklyn. After graduating high school, Miller worked a few odd jobs to save enough money to attend the University of Michigan. While in college, he wrote for the student paper and completed his first play, No Villain, for which he won the school's Avery Hopwood Award. He also took courses with playwright and professor Kenneth Rowe. Inspired by Rowe's approach, Miller moved back East to begin his career as a playwright.

Early Career 
Working in a small studio that he built in Roxbury, Connecticut, Miller wrote the first act of Death of Salesman in less than a day. The play, directed by Elia Kazan, opened on February 10, 1949 at the Morosco Theatre, and was adored by nearly everyone, becoming an iconic stage work. 

Salesman won Miller the highest accolades in the theater world: the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Tony for Best Play. (The work, in fact, swept all of the six Tony categories in which it was nominated, including for Best Direction and Best Author.) 

Marriage 
In 1956, Miller divorced his first wife, Mary Slattery, his former college sweetheart with whom he had two children, Jane Ellen and Robert. Less than a month later, Miller married actress and Hollywood sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, whom he'd first met in 1951 at a Hollywood party. At the time, Monroe was dating Elia Kazan, who had directed Miller's All My Sons and Death of a Salesman. When Kazan asked Miller to keep Monroe company while he dated another actress, Miller and Monroe struck up a friendship that turned into a romance.  Author Norman Mailer called their marriage the union of "the Great American Brain" and "the Great American Body."

In 1962, Miller married Austrian-born photographer Inge Morath. The couple had two children, Rebecca and Daniel. Miller insisted that their son, Daniel, who was born with Down syndrome, be excluded from the family's personal life. The infant was institutionalized, and Morath reportedly tried to bring him home as a toddler but to no avail. Years later, actor Daniel Day-Lewis who married Miller's daughter Rebecca, visited his wife's brother frequently. Day-Lewis eventually persuaded Miller to make further contact with his adult son, who had been able to establish a happy life with outside support. Daniel's existence was unknown to most of the public until after Miller's death. 

Works
Miller's other plays include A View From the Bridge (1955), Incident at Vichy (1964), The Price (1968), The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), The American Clock (1980) and Broken Glass (1994). 

In his later career, Miller continued to explore societal and personal issues that probed the American psyche, though critical and commercial responses to the work didn't garner the acclaim of his earlier productions. 

He also wrote the 1980 TV movie Playing for Time and an adaptation for the theater. The project was based on the autobiography of Fania Fénelon, who was a member of an all-women's orchestra that was imprisoned at the Auschwitz death camps during the Holocaust. The film courted controversy from Jewish organizations and Fénelon herself for its casting of Vanessa Redgrave, who had criticized Zionism and supported Palestinian organizations.

In addition to his plays, Miller collaborated with Morath on books including In the Country (1977) and 'Salesman' in Beijing (1984). In 1987, Miller published his autobiography Timebends: A Life. In his autobiography, he wrote that when he was young he “imagined that with the possible exception of a doctor saving a life, writing a worthy play was the most important thing a human being could do.” 

Miller's plays have become American classics that continue to speak to new generations of audiences. Death of a Salesman has had numerous screen adaptations, including a 1985 TV version that starred Dustin Hoffman, who also starred in the previous year's Broadway revival. In 1996, a film adaptation of The Crucible hit theaters, starring Winona Ryder, Joan Allen and Day-Lewis. Miller penned the screenplay, which earned him the sole Academy Award nomination of his career.