The playwright was born in Harlem, on 17 October 1915, and grew up during the American Depression, the economic crisis of the 1930s when many enterprises were bankrupted. The economic climate affected his own family when his father's clothing business experienced financial difficulties. Arthur Miller's father, an all but illiterate immigrant from Poland, employed nearly a thousand workers to make women's coats. Arthur Miller himself worked briefly as a salesman, and his experience as a schoolboy of working in a car parts warehouse for a miserly sum is one which clearly echoed in his plays. Through this succession of small jobs he earned his way to university. Many of Arthur Miller's plays focus on aspects of the Jewish experience, although Arthur Miller's own Jewish background does not seem to feature greatly in his plays. The economic crash of the Depression put great strain on relationships in the Miller family.
On graduating from university having studied journalism, Arthur Miller began to write plays. On leaving university Miller briefly joined the Federal Theatre, a nation-wide organisation designed to give work to unemployed writers, actors, directors, and designers. Among other works he submitted was a play called "The Golden Years", which was finally produced, for the first time, in a radio and television version, nearly fifty years later. Thereafter he wrote radio plays, mostly for Du Pont's drama series Cavalcade of America, while also working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a school injury ruling him out of the military.
His first Broadway play, "The Man Who Had All the Luck" (1944), closed after four days. Though, nearly fifty years later, the Bristol Old Vic in Britain successfully produced the same play. His response was to return to the novel. "Focus", a work about anti-Semitism in America, proved remarkably successful. He nonetheless returned to the theatre with "All My Sons", a play written during wartime but produced in 1947 and it ran for 328 performances. It was an immediate success. "Death of a Salesman" was performed in 1949, ran for much longer and won the Pulitzer prize. With this success, Arthur Miller was established as a playwright. In 1953 he wrote "The Crucible", a story of the persecution of witches in the early America of 1692. The plot is a thinly disguised treatment of contemporary events. Senator Joseph McCarthy was the leading force in a campaign during the 1950s to bring to light any Communists who existed in America. The unfairness of the interrogations is cleverly revealed. In 1957 Arthur Miller was brought before the Congressional Committee which investigated "unamerican activities" or Communism, and he refused to name anyone who has expressed left-wing sympathies. He was convicted of contempt of Congress. He admitted to having flirted with Communist ideas, but he did not believe that these ideas threatened the integrity of creative artists. The press respected him for his cool and dignified manner under interrogation. The conviction for contempt was reversed the following year by the Supreme Court.
It was at this point that Arthur Miller married Marilyn Monroe, whom he was to divorce four years later. In 1962 Arthur Miller married his present wife Ingeborg Morath, a photographer. Arthur Miller's career has continued and his stature as one of America's playwrights has been consolidated and "Death of a salesman" became for many his most memorable work.
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