57 Fun Facts About Arthur Miller

In which Manhattan neighbourhood was Arthur Miller born in 1915?

Harlem: his father's thriving clothing business was later wiped out in the Depression.

Arthur Miller spent his teenage years in which borough, later the home of Willy Loman?

Brooklyn: before turning to plays, the teenage Miller started out as a singer, crooning pop songs on the radio.

Where did Miller study, winning the Avery Hopwood Award for his first play, No Villain?

The University of Michigan: to afford it, he worked in an auto-parts warehouse after high school.

What kept Arthur Miller out of military service in World War II?

A football injury: turned down for service, he worked at a navy yard during the war and wrote radio plays.

Which Miller play lasted four Broadway performances in 1944?

The Man Who Had All the Luck: its fate was the opposite of its title, but his next play, All My Sons, became his first hit.

Arthur Miller told reporters that Marilyn Monroe would make fewer films to take on what 'full-time job'?

Being his wife: he said she'd make just one film every 18 months or so, yet the marriage lasted only five years.

In All My Sons, what does Larry's final letter say he meant to do?

Crash his plane on purpose: shamed by his father's crime, he wrote he would go missing, and once the letter is read aloud Joe Keller shoots himself.

Which Henrik Ibsen play did Arthur Miller adapt for Broadway?

An Enemy of the People: its hero, a doctor, warns that his town's new baths are poisoned, and the townspeople turn on him for it.

What does a night storm break at the start of Arthur Miller's All My Sons?

A memorial tree: it was planted for the Kellers' son Larry, missing in the war, yet his mother still insists he is coming home.

In Death of a Salesman, what does teenage Biff catch his father doing on a sales trip?

Seeing another woman: finding her in Willy's hotel room shattered Biff's faith, and he gave up on summer school and college.

In Death of a Salesman, what does Willy Loman hope his death will give Biff?

Insurance money: out of love for his son, Willy drives off to his death so the payout can help Biff start a business.

Who created the role of Willy Loman in the original Broadway production?

Lee J. Cobb: after first resisting HUAC, he named names before the committee in 1953 to save his career.

Who won a Tony as Biff in the original Death of a Salesman?

Arthur Kennedy: yet when Hollywood filmed the play in 1951, Biff went to the actor who had played him in London.

In Death of a Salesman, who insists that 'attention must be paid' to Willy?

Linda: she makes the plea to her sons while knowing that Willy has been trying to kill himself.

Which relative of Arthur Miller, a salesman who bragged about his own sons, inspired Willy Loman?

His uncle: whenever the young Miller visited, Manny Newman hinted that his nephew's whole life would probably come to nothing.

Death of a Salesman's subtitle ends 'in Two Acts and a' what?

Requiem: the closing scene is Willy's funeral, which he pictured packed with admirers, yet only family and a few neighbours come.

In Death of a Salesman, what is Charley's son Bernard about to do?

Argue before the Supreme Court: Willy once told his sons the studious Bernard's good grades would count for little in business.

What does Biff Loman steal from Bill Oliver's office?

Fountain pen: Oliver had just turned down his plea for a business loan, and Biff took the pen on impulse.

What is the name of the restaurant where Willy, Biff and Happy meet for their disastrous dinner?

Frank's Chop House: before Biff can deliver his bad news there, Willy blurts out that he has been fired.

Who played Willy Loman in the 1985 television film of Death of a Salesman?

Dustin Hoffman: instead of a larger-than-life Willy, he played the small man of Miller's original lines.

Which actor starred as Willy Loman in the 1999 Broadway revival marking the play's 50th anniversary?

Brian Dennehy: the ex-Marine had claimed he was wounded in Vietnam, but he later admitted he never served there and apologized.

In 1983 Miller went abroad to direct Death of a Salesman at the People's Art Theatre in which city?

Beijing: he directed a Chinese cast in the American play and kept a daily diary of it, published as Salesman in Beijing.

Why does John Proctor tear up his confession?

Protect his name: rather than let the paper be posted on the church door, he goes to the gallows.

What does Abigail Williams do near the end of Arthur Miller's The Crucible?

Runs off with Parris's savings: she vanishes as unrest against the trials spreads to nearby towns.

In The Crucible, what does Elizabeth Proctor, who John says never lies, do in court?

Denies the affair: her lie to shield him wrecks his proof that Abigail is a fraud, and he is soon arrested.

In The Crucible, what does Reverend Parris discover the girls and his slave Tituba doing in the forest?

Dancing: Parris's daughter Betty then falls into a stupor, and rumours of witchcraft sweep the village.

In The Crucible, what does the court find inside the poppet Mary Warren gave to Elizabeth Proctor?

A needle: Abigail had accused Elizabeth of stabbing her with one through witchcraft, so the doll gets Elizabeth hauled off to jail.

In The Crucible, what does Deputy Governor Danforth reveal to John Proctor about Elizabeth in Act Three?

She is pregnant: Danforth hopes sparing her will make John drop his case, but John pushes on with Mary Warren's testimony.

Which composer turned The Crucible into an opera in 1961?

Robert Ward: Miller helped choose him to set the play, which went on to win the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Who played John Proctor in the 1996 film of The Crucible, for which Miller wrote the screenplay?

Daniel Day-Lewis: he went on to marry the playwright's daughter, the filmmaker Rebecca Miller.

Which director's HUAC testimony in 1952 ended a close friendship with Miller for a decade?

Elia Kazan: each man then answered the other through his work, Kazan on film and Miller with A View from the Bridge.

Eddie Carbone, the tragic protagonist of A View from the Bridge, works as what?

A longshoreman: when Eddie 'teaches' Rodolpho to box and hurts him, Marco silently answers by raising a chair above his head.

A View from the Bridge is set in which New York neighbourhood?

Red Hook: there, Eddie suddenly kisses Rodolpho, his niece's suitor, in a desperate attempt to brand him as gay.

In A View from the Bridge, whom does Eddie Carbone secretly tip off about his wife's cousins?

The Immigration Bureau: the neighbours shun him as an informer, and Marco kills him with Eddie's own knife.

In 1957 Miller was found guilty of what offence after refusing to name names to HUAC?

Contempt of Congress: he faced up to a year in jail, but an appeals court later overturned the conviction.

Refusing HUAC in 1956, Miller said he could not use another person's name to do what?

Bring trouble on him: he freely admitted his own past support for Communist-front causes, yet he would not name anyone else.

Headlines mocked Miller's marriage to Marilyn Monroe by calling him what?

Egghead: yet Monroe stood by him when he was called before HUAC that year, risking her own career.

Where did Arthur Miller go for a quick divorce in 1956?

Reno, Nevada: within weeks of ending his 15-year first marriage there, he wed Marilyn Monroe.

Who directed The Misfits, the 1961 film Miller wrote for Marilyn Monroe?

John Huston: the troubled shoot saw the marriage collapse, and Miller and Monroe divorced around the time of the film's release.

The Misfits was released on 1 February 1961, which would have been the 60th birthday of which of its stars?

Clark Gable: he never saw the release, dying soon after filming wrapped.

In The Misfits, Roslyn is horrified to learn the rounded-up mustangs are destined for what?

The film was set around Reno, where Roslyn had gone for a six-week residency divorce.

Miller's third wife, Inge Morath, belonged to which agency?

Magnum Photos: she started there as an editor before Robert Capa invited her to join as a photographer.

What is the name of the Monroe-like character in Miller's 1964 play After the Fall?

Maggie: bringing a Monroe-like figure on stage so soon after Monroe's death set off an outcry against Miller.

In Miller's Incident at Vichy, what are the detained men awaiting?

Racial inspection: some insist it must be a routine document check, while a doctor among them urges resistance.

Miller's 1968 play The Price, about two estranged brothers, turns on the sale of what?

Furniture: selling their late father's things reopens old wounds, since Victor gave up college to support him while his brother became a rich surgeon.

Miller became the first American president of which writers' organisation in 1965?

PEN International: barely a decade after the State Department had refused him a passport, he was leading the world's writers.

In 1969, which Eastern European country did Arthur Miller visit to show support for its writers?

Czechoslovakia: in the wake of the Prague Spring, he went there to meet the dissident playwright Václav Havel.

Miller's 1945 novel Focus deals with antisemitism triggered by the protagonist getting what?

A new pair of eyeglasses: mistaken for a Jew, the once-prejudiced hero leaves his job and ends up working for a Jewish-owned firm.

In Miller's play Broken Glass, what strikes Sylvia Gellburg after she reads about Kristallnacht?

Paralysis: her doctor suspects the cause is in her mind, and it leads him into her troubled marriage to a man denying his Jewishness.

What was the title of Miller's 1987 autobiography?

Timebends: for years Miller refused to discuss Marilyn Monroe in interviews, yet in the book he wrote about her at length.

How did Broadway mark Arthur Miller's death in February 2005?

Its theatres dimmed their lights: a fitting salute, though in his last decades he had become obsessed with Broadway's decline.

Who portrayed Arthur Miller in the 2022 Netflix film Blonde?

Adrien Brody: the film bills him only as 'the Playwright' and shows him turning his wife's life into material, much as Miller really did.

Arthur Miller died at his Connecticut home in February 2005 of what?

Heart failure: his sister had turned her New York apartment into a hospice for him, but he wanted to be home, and near the end he was taken there.

What was the title of Miller's final play, which opened at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in 2004?

It was reportedly drawn from the filming of The Misfits, though Miller insisted the characters were fictional.

Late in life, Arthur Miller planned to marry which 34-year-old minimalist painter?

Agnes Barley: illness overtook him before they could marry, but she was at his side with family and friends when he died.

At the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Arthur Miller was a delegate backing which candidate?

Eugene McCarthy: the antiwar senator lost the nomination at that convention to Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

Miller's 1944 book Situation Normal grew out of researching the dispatches of which war correspondent?

Ernie Pyle: Miller toured army camps gathering material for a film based on Pyle's reporting, and his notes from the tour became the book.