Arthur Miller: His Life and Work

513 Pages·2013·3.42 MB·English

by  Gottfried Martin

ARTHUR MILLER mech 7/9/04 10:44 PM Page 1
Arthur Miller
His Life and Work
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“A detailed and harrowing portrait....Excellent.” H-
--NEW YORK POST i-M
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Arthur Miller has been delivering powerful drama to the stage L
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for decades with such masterpieces as DEATH OF A SALESMAN,
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THE CRUCIBLE, and A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE. Yet remarkably, no e-
one has until now told the full story of Miller’s own r
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extraordinary life--a rich life, much of it shrouded from a
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public view. d-
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To achieve this groundbreaking portrait of the artist and the W-
o
man, the award-winning drama critic and biographer Martin -
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Gottfried masterfully draws on interviews, on Miller’s life- k-
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long correspondence, and on the annotated scripts and note-
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books that reveal Miller’s creative process in stunning
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detail. From Miller’s childhood and adolescence in
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Depression-era New York to his heroic defiance of the House
Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy years to
his unlikely pairing with Marilyn Monroe, here is a highly
acclaimed book that is “an illuminating and profound picture”
(PUBLISHERS WEEKLY).
M
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MARTIN GOTTFRIED, winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for r
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dramatic criticism, is the author of SONDHEIM and ALL HIS
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JAZZ, among other books. He lives in New York City and n

Amagansett, New York.
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$18.00US/$25.50CAN THEATER/BIOGRAPHY Martin Gottfried
Da Capo Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group Cover design by Cooley Design Lab "Ambitious, opinionated, exciting..."--SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
www.dacapopress.com Cover photograph © Bettmann/CORBIS
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A RT H U R
M I L L E R
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ALSO BY MARTIN GOTTFRIED
A Theater Divided
Opening Nights
Broadway Musicals
Jed Harris:The Curse of Genius
More Broadway Musicals
Sondheim
In Person:The Great Entertainers
All His Jazz:
The Life and Death of Bob Fosse
Nobody’s Fool:The Lives of Danny Kaye
George Burns and the One Hundred Year Dash
Balancing Act:
The Authorized Biography of Angela Lansbury
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A R T H U R
M I L L E R
His Life and Work
MARTIN GOTTFRIED
DA CAPO PRESS
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
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All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval
system,or transmitted,in any form or by any means,electronic,mechanical,photo-
copying,recording,or otherwise,without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America.
Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
First Da Capo Press edition 2003
ISBN 0-306-81214-2
Text design by Jeff Williams
Set in 10.5-point Berling by the Perseus Books Group
Published by Da Capo Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
http://www.dacapopress.com
Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S.by
corporations,institutions,and other organizations.For more information,please contact
the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group,11 Cambridge Center,
Cambridge,MA 02142,or call [phone] or [phone],or e-mail
[email protected].
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Contents
Introduction ix
Genesis of a Master
1.Escape 3
2.Epiphany 21
3.Epic 43
4.Debut 63
Prime of Life
5.Hit 87
6.Inspiration 111
7.Salesman 133
8.Movies 157
9.Betrayal 179
10.Crucible 203
11.The Little Red 227
12.A Bridge 249
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viii Contents
Middle Age and Crisis
13.The Committee 273
14.Movie Star 299
15.Misfits 325
Endurance, Survival
16.The Fall 351
17.Price 375
18.Outcast 401
19.Survivor 423
List of Works 447
Chronology of Premiere Productions 449
Notes 451
Bibliography 463
Acknowledgments 465
Index 467
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Introduction
The biography of a writer might seem to be an ironic enterprise,for like many
creative people,writers tend to feel that their work—being artfully controlled
self-expression—is biography enough and they have no need of another writer
to finish the job.Arthur Miller’s notion of a biography was a book about his
plays.This is perhaps understandable but makes little sense as life history.An
artist’s work might be his or her most expressive self,even most beautiful self,
but it is not the only self and certainly is not the whole self.
Still, this may be the reason why few writers publish autobiographies,
although Miller himself did.He might well have been better off letting the
plays speak for him.The book,called Timebends,does not present him as the
warmest or most self-effacing of men.Then again people who are as smart,
talented and acclaimed as Arthur Miller are not likely to be endearing but
rather immodest,even arrogant and perhaps inevitably self-centered.These
qualities have nothing to do with the value of their work and indeed such
complexity often makes them more interesting as biographical subjects.
More important is the fact of their work, especially if it is of some conse-
quence and value,and Arthur Miller’s plays are much more than that.
It is on account of these works’ consequence and value that this biogra-
phy was written,and also because of the shameful disrespect that has been
heaped upon this master playwright.Seldom has an artist been so abused in
his homeland while being esteemed the world over. “If he comes into a
rehearsal room,” the British director David Thacker said,“the actors really
do believe that they are in the presence of somebody who is as great as
Chekhov or Ibsen.”Time has already proved the staying power of some of
his plays. If he had written only Death of a Salesman, it would have been
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