Arthur Miller: Biography

Arthur Miller was an American playwright who rose to fame in the 1940s for winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and later, for marrying Marilyn Monroe.

Miller grew up in a wealthy Jewish family in New York but they fell upon hard times with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 during the playwright’s teenage years. Thereafter, he did menial jobs to help out his family and graduated to become a copywriter and an academic. He was a member of the League of American Writers which included several communists and travelers.

Miller was introduced to “the dynamics of play construction” by Professor Kenneth Rowe, who became very influential in Miller’s writings and also became a close confidante. Interestingly, Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in less than a day, in a studio apartment he had recently built in Connecticut.

Whilst his career flourished, he had several occasions for trouble in his personal life. Miller’s first marriage left him with two children and a divorce. He had an affair with popular Hollywood film star Marilyn Monroe in the early 1950s and married her; however, their relationship lasted only five years, ending during the filming of one of Miller’s screenplays, The Misfits.

At the time of his death in 2005, Miller was recognized as one of the greatest playwrights of the twentieth century. He was only thirty-four years old when he wrote Death of a Salesman, which launched his career and rise to fame.