Arthur Miller American playwright Date of Birth: 19.10.1915 Country: USA

Biography of Arthur Miller

American playwright Arthur Miller is considered one of the most famous playwrights of modern times. His career flourished during the Cold War era, which meant that Soviet audiences were not familiar with Miller's plays and films based on his scripts. Instead, he was primarily known to them as Marilyn Monroe's last husband. Like many American celebrities, Arthur Miller is descended from immigrants - his family moved to the United States from Austria (according to other sources, from Poland). Arthur, the second of three children of Isidora and August Miller, was born on October 17, 1915, in Harlem, one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York. However, over the years, Arthur Miller, as the owner of a sewing factory, became successful - the family moved to prestigious housing in Manhattan, acquired a bungalow on Long Island, and a car with a personal driver. However, all of this was lost during the 1929 crisis. Arthur helped his family by delivering bread before school and diligently studied to receive a good education. In 1938, Arthur Miller graduated from the University of Michigan and began working at the Brooklyn docks, where his family was living at the time. At the same time, he dreamed of literary fame, wrote materials for radio broadcasts, and started collaborating with theaters. Even in his student years, Arthur wrote his first play "No Villain," which he then revised several times under different titles ("They Too Arise," "Grass Still Grows," "Honors at Dawn"). Miller's early works, also staged, include the plays "The Great Disobedience" (1938) and "Listen, My Children" (1939). In 1940, Miller married Mary Grace Slattery, and they later had two children. After the start of World War II, Miller became a war correspondent - due to a childhood knee injury, he was not drafted into the army. The material he collected during this time later formed the basis for the film "The Story of GI Joe." During this time, Arthur Miller wrote several more plays, one of which, "All My Sons" (1947), about a successful industrialist who succeeds through deceit, is still being performed in many theaters. But the real triumph for the playwright came with the play "Death of a Salesman," which he wrote in just six weeks. From 1949 to 1950, there were 742 performances of this work, and in the future, productions featuring famous actors such as Dustin Hoffman, Brian Dennehy, Christopher Lloyd, and others were revived four times. These productions were repeatedly nominated for the Tony Award, and the playwright himself was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The film adaptation of the same name, released in 1950, was nominated for an Oscar and received four Golden Globe Awards. Subsequently, "Death of a Salesman" was adapted under various titles in different countries, including the USSR ("You Can't Cross the Bridge," 1960). Arthur Miller became a celebrity in artistic circles. This was not hindered even by the legal proceedings against his play "The Crucible" (1953), which was seen as a critique of McCarthyism, especially since subsequent productions of this play received Tony Awards and others. It was also during this time that the playwright began a close relationship with Marilyn Monroe. At that time, the movie star was in the process of divorcing her second husband, baseball player Joe DiMaggio. Miller's divorce took several months, and on June 29, 1956, the couple entered into an official marriage, followed by a Jewish wedding ceremony two days later. Family life for celebrities is rarely cloudless. Marilyn, who referred to all her husbands as "daddy," believed that she had finally found a wise father figure. Arthur saw that beneath Marilyn's glamour hid the "saddest girl in the world," Norma Jean. The movie star enthusiastically engaged in housekeeping, studied history and literature, but all attempts by the couple to lead a secluded life were shattered by the persistence of the press and paparazzi. The situation was worsened by Marilyn's unsuccessful pregnancy, after which she began to abuse sedatives. Specifically for his wife, who wanted to break free from the imposed screen image, Miller wrote the screenplay for the film "The Misfits," which was released in 1961, but the first attempt to play a serious role for Marilyn Monroe turned out to be a failure. The collapse of the family was inevitable, and in 1961, they divorced. A year later, the playwright married photographer Ingeborg Morath. At the time of Marilyn Monroe's death, Ingeborg was in the last month of her pregnancy, and Miller refused to attend the funeral of his ex-wife. Miller and Morath's daughter, Rebecca, married the famous actor Daniel Day-Lewis, and their son, Daniel, has Down syndrome. Arthur Miller continued to be a successful playwright and screenwriter, with his last play "Finishing the Picture" written in 2005. He lived a long life and passed away in 2005 from heart failure.