Authur Miller
Authur MillerWith the Death of a Salesman during the winter of 1949 on Broadway, Arthur Miller began to live as a playwright who has since been called one of this century\'s three great American dramatists. He has also written other powerful, often mind-altering plays: The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, A Memory of Two Mondays, After the Fall, Incident at Vichy, and The Price. And who could forget the film The Misfits and the dramatic special Playing for Time. Death of a Salesman was not Arthur Miller\'s first success on Broadway. Two years before, when All My Sons opened at the Coronet Theater, Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times wrote: \"The theater has acquired a genuine new talent.\" The play also won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Donaldson Award (voted upon by Billboard subscribers). Since the debut of All My Sons he has noted: \"The success of a play, especially one\'s first success, is somewhat like pushing against a door which is suddenly opened that was always securely shut until then. For myself, the experience was invigorating. It suddenly seemed that the audience was a mass of blood relations, and I sensed a warmth in the world that had not been there before. It made it possible to dream of daring more and risking more.\" He did however push the limits when he released his controversial piece Death of a Salesman. And, he gained even more acclaim. Soon he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. He was quickly catapulted into the realm of the great, living, American playwrights; and once was compared to Ibsen and the Greek tragedians. After his graduation from Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, young Miller worked as a stock clerk in an automobile parts warehouse for two and a half years until he had enough money to pay for his first year at the University of Michigan. He finished college with the financial aid of the National Youth Administration supplemented by his salary as night editor on the Michigan Daily newspaper. Before his graduation with a BA degree in 1938, he had written a number of plays, winning a $500 Avery Hopwood Award in 1936 and a $1,200 Theater Guild National Award in 1938 for an effort entitled The Grass Still Grows. Then, having returned to New York in 1938, he joined the Federal Theater Project. But, before his first play had been produced, the...
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