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By Jerilyn Watson
Broadcast: March 6, 2005
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VOICE ONE:
I’m Barbara Klein.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Steve Ember with People in America in VOA Special English. Today we tell about Arthur Miller. Many theater critics believe he was one of the greatest American playwrights of the twentieth century.
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VOICE ONE:
Several plays by Arthur Miller will probably be performed for many years to come. That is because critics say Miller was able to dramatize the emotional pain that average people suffer in their daily lives.
A critic once described Miller as an activist for the common man. He demonstrates this well in one of his most famous plays, “Death of a Salesman.” The main character is a man whose dreams of success in business have died.
But Miller’s interest in the average man did not stop him from exploring major problems of society. In “The Crucible”, for example, he shows what happens when unreasonable dislike and fear cause people to accuse innocent people of horrible crimes.
Some other of his best-known plays include “All My Sons”, “A View from the Bridge” and “After the Fall.”
VOICE TWO:
Arthur Miller was born in New York City in nineteen fifteen. He died in two thousand five at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. For sixty years, he created one dramatic work after another. Miller won many awards for his plays. Among them were a Pulitzer Prize, New York Drama Critics’ Circle prizes and Tony awards. In nineteen eighty-four, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. honored him for his lifetime work in drama.
VOICE TWO (CONT):
Miller also created stories for movies. For example, he wrote “The Misfits” for actress Marilyn Monroe. Miller’s television drama, “Playing for Time”, told of an orchestra of prisoners at the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz, during World War Two. Miller was also a political activist for human rights. But it was drama performed in the theater that Miller loved most.
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VOICE ONE:
Arthur Miller grew up in New York. His father, Isidore Miller, manufactured clothing and operated a store. But the father lost his money in the great economic Depression in the nineteen thirties. The family had to move from a costly apartment in Manhattan to a small house in Brooklyn.
During the Depression, Arthur worked at many jobs to earn money for college. In nineteen thirty-four, he began studying English at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Miller won an award for writing plays while at school.
VOICE TWO:
Miller returned home to New York after completing his studies. He married his college girlfriend, Mary Slattery. They had two children before later ending their marriage.
In nineteen forty-four, Arthur Miller’s first major play was performed on Broadway. It was called “The Man Who Had All the Luck.” However, the play did not bring him good luck. It had only four performances. But his second Broadway play, “All My Sons”, was a major success It won several awards in nineteen forty-seven.
“All My Sons” tells of a manufacturer who produces faulty parts for airplanes used in World War Two. One of his sons dies as the result of the father’s crime. In the play, Miller examines the relationship between the pressure to succeed and personal responsibility.
