ARTHUR MILLER
Source: Weales, Gerald. Death of a Salesman Text and Criticism. New York: The Viking Press, 1967.
October 17, 1915 Arthur Aster Miller was born in New York City. 1920-28: Attends Public School #24 in Harlem.
1923: Sees first play--a melodrama at the Schubert Theater. 1928: Bar-mitzvah at the Avenue M temple. 1929: Father's business fails and family move to Brooklyn.
1932: Graduates from Abraham Lincoln High School. Registers for night school at City College, but quits after two weeks.
1932: Various jobs, including singing on a local radio station and truck driving. 1932-34: Clerked in an auto-parts warehouse, where he was the only Jew employed and had his first real, personal experiences of American Anti-Semitism.
1934-35: University of Michigan, studying journalism. Reporter and night editor on student paper, The Michigan Daily. 1936: Writes No Villain in six days and receives Hopwood Award in Drama. Transfers to an English major.
1937: Rewrite of No Villain, titled, They Too Arise, receives a major award. Heads east to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain during their Civil War, and decides not to go.
1938: Graduates with a B.A. in English. Joins the Federal Theater Project in New York City to write radio plays and scripts. Turns down a much better paying offer to work as a scriptwriter for Twentieth Century Fox, in Hollywood.
1940: Marries Mary Grace Slattery. Writes The Golden Years. Travels to North Carolina to collect dialect speech for the folk division of the Library of Congress.
1947: All My Sons premiers and receives the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the Donaldson Award. Son, Robert, is born. Goes to work for a short time in an inner city factory assembling beer boxes for minimum wage to stay in touch with his audience.
1948: Writes Death of a Salesman. 1949: Death of a Salesman premiers and receives the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Antoinette Perry Award, the Donaldson Award, and the Theater Club Award, among others. Attends the pro-Soviet Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel .
1950: Meets Marilyn Monroe for the first time. The Hook fails to reach production due to pressure from HUAC. 1951: Inge Morath comes to America. 1951-52 US Tour of Death of a Salesman.
1952: Visits the Historical Society "Witch Museum" in Salem, to research for The Crucible. 1953: The Crucible premiers and receives the Antoinette Perry Award, and the Donaldson Award. Asked to attend the Belgian premier of The Crucible, but unable to attend as denied passport by the US.
1955: HUAC pressured city officials to withdraw permission for Miller to make a film he'd been planning about New York juvenile delinquency. 1956: Lives in Nevada for six weeks in order to divorce Mary Slattery and gets the material for The Misfits. Marries Marilyn Monroe. Subpoenaed to appear before HUAC.
1957: Arthur Miller's Collected Plays published. Convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee. 1958: United States Court of Appeals overturns his contempt conviction.
1961: Divorces Marilyn Monroe. Misfits (film) premiers. Mother, Augusta Miller dies. 1962: Marries Inge Morath. Marilyn Monroe dies. 1963: Daughter, Rebecca, is born. Jane's Blanket (children's book) published.
1981: The second volume of Arthur Miller's Collected Plays published. 1983: Directs Death of a Salesman at the People's Art Theater in Beijing, the People's Republic of China. 1984: Miller receives Kennedy Center Honors for his lifetime achievement.
1985: Death of a Salesman with Dustin Hoffman airs on CBS to an audience of 25 million. 1986: One of fifteen writers and scientists invited to the Soviet Union to conference with Mikhail Gorbachov and discuss Soviet policies.
1987: Publishes Timebends: A Life (autobiography), which appeared as a Book -of the-Month Club popular selection. 1990: Television production of An Enemy of the People, on PBS. 1991: Receives Mellon Bank Award for lifetime achievement in the humanities. 1992: Homely Girl is published (novella).
1993: Television production of The American Clock, on TNT. 1995: Tributes to the playwright on the occasion of his eightieth birthday are held in England and America. 1996: Receives the Edward Albee Last Frontier Playwright Award.
1997: The Crucible (film with Daniel Day Lewis) opens. 1999: Death of a Salesman revived on Broadway for the play's 50th anniversary, and wins Tony for Best Revival of a Play.
2000: Echoes Down the Corridor is published (collected essays from 1944-2000). 2001: Miller is awarded a NEH Fellowship and the John H. Finley Award for Exemplary Service to New York City. On Politics and the Art of Acting is published (essay).
2002: New York City revivals of The Man Who Had All the Luck and The Crucible. Inge Morath dies.