The son of a salesman, Miller came of age during the Great Depression. While attending the University of Michigan, he began writing plays, two of which won awards and gained some attention. Completing his studies, the budding author accepted a job with the Federal Theatre Project where he wrote radio scripts and plays. In 1944, his first professional play, The Man Who Had All the Luck was produced and the following year, a novel, Focus, was published. But it took another three years before Miller gained real acclaim. All My Sons (1947), a powerful drama about a son who learns his father cheated on the manufacturing of war materiel, earned him the New York Drama Critics Circle Award as Best Play. Two years later, what is considered his masterwork, Death of a Salesman, was produced. A character study of a failed traveling salesman, the play won both a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony® Award.
Miller's career thereafter, however, was marred by controversy. His 1953 award-winning play The Crucible was widely perceived to be an attack on the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Miller was called before HUAC in 1954. When he refused to name names and cooperate, he was cited for contempt of Congress, a conviction overturned on appeal. The playwright continued to produce popular successes like A View From the Bridge. He further made headlines with his 1956 marriage to sex goddess Marilyn Monroe. During his marriage to the screen siren, Miller wrote his first produced screenplay, THE MISFITS (1961). Directed by John Huston and starring Monroe, Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable, the end result was an unsatisfying Western. He and Monroe were divorced the same year.
Miller's next plays, a thinly-veiled portrait of Monroe in After the Fall and Incident at Vichy (both 1964) met with mixed audience and critical acceptance, but his reputation was further enhanced with The Price (1968), a three-character drama that co-starred his sister, actress Joan Copeland (b. 1922). His reworking of the Book of Genesis, The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972) was a failure and marked the last new Miller play on Broadway for over two decades. A reworked, musicalized version of the latter, Up From Paradise, premiered in 1974, but it too met with a decidedly unfavorable reception. His subsequent plays have divided critics and audiences. Miller made a return to screenwriting with the muddled EVERYBODY WINS (1990). In 1994, he returned to Broadway with Broken Glass, a drama that examined a troubled marriage and the wife's identification with Jewish oppression under the Nazis.
While many of Miller's plays have been filmed, only THE CRUCIBLE (1996) had a screenplay credited to the author. He has had better success on the small screen beginning with his 1971 adaptation of "The Price" (NBC). Perhaps his best remembered teleplay was for the controversial "Playing for Time" (CBS, 1980). Set in Auschwitz, the story focused on a group of women who formed an orchestra and played for their captives. The primary focus of controversy was in the casting of Vanessa Redgrave as the leading character. Few could fault Miller's writing and he earned an Emmy® for his efforts. In 1985, Dustin Hoffman reprised his stage portrayal of Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman" (CBS), with a script by Miller. Two years later, the author also wrote the teleplay for the PBS production of "All My Sons". He has also adapted his plays "Clara" (A&E, 1991) and "Broken Glass" (PBS, 1996) as well as lending his distinctive voice (as General Sherman) to Ken Burns' "The Civil War" (PBS, 1990).
Miller's first wife (1940 to 1956) was Mary Slattery, his college sweetheart. He was married to photographer Inge Morath, with whom he collaborated on several books, from 1962 until her death in 2002. Their daughter Rebecca is an actress and director and is married to actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
Nominated for Achievement in Writing (Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published) 1996: THE CRUCIBLE
1 nomination