Arthur Miller

Lore & Background

Miller was born at 45 West 110th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York, in 1915, the second of three children of Augusta and Isidore Miller, into a Jewish family of Polish-Jewish descent. His father owned a women's clothing manufacturing business employing 400 people, but the family lost almost everything in the Wall Street crash of 1929 and moved to Midwood, Brooklyn; they later moved to Gravesend, Brooklyn around 1932. As a teenager, Miller delivered bread every morning before school to help the family. After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1932, he worked menial jobs to pay for college tuition at the University of Michigan, where he first majored in journalism and wrote for the student newspaper, then switched to English and won the Avery Hopwood Award for his first play, No Villain. He graduated in 1938 and later worked as a psychiatric aide and copywriter before serving as a visiting lecturer at the University of Michigan and other institutions.

Miller's career took off with All My Sons in 1947, which earned him his first Tony Award for Best Author. In 1948, he built a small studio in Roxbury, Connecticut, and wrote Act I of Death of a Salesman in less than a day, completing the rest in six weeks. The play premiered on Broadway on February 10, 1949, winning a Tony Award for Best Author, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. While it was a monumental achievement, it was not the first play to win all three—A Streetcar Named Desire had previously won the Pulitzer and Drama Critics' Circle Award in 1948. During the late 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, Miller was often in the public eye, testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and marrying Marilyn Monroe. His friendship with director Elia Kazan ended after Kazan named Miller and others before HUAC in 1952; Miller responded by writing A View from the Bridge, a play about a longshoreman who outs his co-workers.

Reader's Guide

Arthur Miller's significance lies in his enduring contributions to 20th-century American theater, particularly through plays that explore moral responsibility, family dynamics, and societal pressures. Death of a Salesman is widely regarded as one of the best American plays of the 20th century, and The Crucible, though initially only somewhat successful, became his most frequently produced work worldwide, often interpreted as an allegory for the McCarthy-era HUAC hearings. Miller's own confrontation with HUAC in 1956, where he was subpoenaed after applying for a passport renewal, highlighted his willingness to resist naming names, a stance that shaped his public persona. His legacy includes the establishment of the Arthur Miller Award in 1985 and the Arthur Miller Award for Dramatic Writing in 1999 at the University of Michigan, as well as the naming of the Arthur Miller Theatre in 2000. He received numerous later honors, including the St. Louis Literary Award in 1980, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 1999, the Praemium Imperiale prize in 2001, the Prince of Asturias Award in 2002, and the Jerusalem Prize in 2003. Miller's work continues to be studied and performed globally, cementing his place as a central figure in American drama.

Did You Know?

• Miller was exempted from military service during World War II because of a high school football injury to his left kneecap.
• He wrote Act I of Death of a Salesman in less than a day, completing the rest of the play within six weeks.
• Miller's play The Crucible was adapted into an opera by Robert Ward in 1961.
• He established the Arthur Miller Award at the University of Michigan in 1985 and the Arthur Miller Award for Dramatic Writing in 1999.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult." — Arthur Miller "I know that my works are a credit to this nation and I dare say they will endure longer than the McCarran Act." — Arthur Miller "The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost." — Arthur Miller "The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism." — Arthur Miller