Arthur Miller
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist best-known for Death of a Salesman.
1956 - 1964
In June 1956 Miller divorced Mary Slattery, and on June 29, he married Marilyn Monroe. Miller and Monroe had first met in April of 1951, when they had a brief affair, and had remained in contact since then.
In 1955 a one-act version of Miller's verse drama, A View From The Bridge, opened on Broadway in a joint bill with one of Miller's lesser-known plays, A Memory of Two Mondays. The following year, Miller returned to A View from the Bridge, revising it into a two-act prose version, which Peter Brook produced in London.[6]
Taking advantage of the publicity of Miller's marriage, HUAC subpoenaed him to appear before the committee shortly before the nuptials. Before appearing, Miller asked the committee not to ask him to name names, to which the chairman agreed.
When Miller attended the hearing, to which Monroe accompanied him, risking her own career, he gave the committee a detailed account of his political activities. Reneging on the chairman's promise, the committee asked him to reveal to the names of friends and colleagues who had partaken in similar activities. Miller refused to comply with the request, saying "I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him." As a result a judge found Miller guilty of contempt of Congress in May 1957. Miller was fined $500, sentenced to thirty days in prison, blacklisted, and disallowed a U.S. passport. In 1958 his conviction was overturned by the court of appeals, which ruled that Miller had been misled by the chairman of HUAC.
For a period in his life, Arthur Miller changed his name to Jonathan Lovelett as to keep his identity protected from the public. He published under this pen name for a short while in a small newspaper. The serialization of his works became very popular so he decided to change his name back to Arthur Miller.
After his conviction was overturned, Miller began work on The Misfits, which starred his wife. Miller said that the filming was one of the lowest points in his life, and shortly before the film's premiere in 1961, the pair divorced. Nineteen months later, Monroe died of an apparent drug overdose.
