Arthur Asher Miller's Life and Accomplishments

Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist. Born on October 17, 1915, in Harlem, Arthur was the second of three children of Isidore and Augusta Miller. He was often in the public eye, during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. During this period he also testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, received Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and was married to Marilyn Monroe.

He was a far-famed and an important figure in the American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All my sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953) and A view from the bridge (one-act, 1955; revised two-act, 1956), as well as the film The Misfits (1961).

In 2002, he received the Prince of Asturias Award and in 2003 the Jerusalem Prize.

In order to help his family, during his teen ages, Miller delivered bread every morning before school. In 1932, he graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School, yet he had to pay for his college tuition so he worked at several menial jobs.

Miller started his studies at the University of Michigan, from where he graduated in journalism and worked as a reporter and night editor for the student paper, the Michigan Daily. During this time, he wrote his first play, No Villain. Miller switched his major to English, and subsequently won the Avery Hopwood Award for No Villain. With this award Miller became renowned subsequently, he begun to consider that he could have a career as a playwright.

Miller decided to enroll in a playwriting seminar where he met Kenneth Rowe, a very influential professor who instructed him in his early forays into playwriting.

Miller wrote Honors at Down, in 1937, with which he received the Avery Hopwood A...

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...reat practitioner of the American stage, and Broadway theatres darkened their lights in a show of respect. Miller's alma mater, the University of Michigan opened the Arthur Miller Theatre in March 2007. As per his express wish, it is the only theatre in the world that bears Miller's name.

Others saw Miller as morally compromised or boring. Some considered Miller's artistic accomplishments meager.

Christopher Bigsby wrote Arthur Miller: The Definitive Biography based on boxes of papers Miller made available to him before his death in 2005. The book was published in November 2008, and is reported to reveal unpublished works in which Miller "bitterly attack[ed] the injustices of American racism long before it was taken up by the civil rights movement".

Miller's papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin.