Playwright Arthur Miller's assistant says he has died at age 89.
ROXBURY, Conn. (AP) -- Arthur Miller, the Pulitzer prize-winning playwright whose most famous fictional creation, Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman," came to symbolize the American Dream gone awry, has died, his assistant said Friday. He was 89.
Miller died Thursday evening, said his assistant, Julia Bolus.
Miller was 89.
His best-known works include "The Crucible" and "Death of a Salesman."
Miller was once married to actress Marilyn Monroe.
Sad to hear it.
I wonder how many of the Obits are going to use "Death of a Salesman" in the title.
A Conference in New York
In March 1949, New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel played host to one of the strangest gatherings in American history. Less than four years after Allied troops had liberated Hitler's concentration camps, 800 prominent literary and artistic figures congregated in the Waldorf to call for peace at any price with Stalin, whose own gulag had just been restocked with victims of his latest purge. Americans, including Lillian Hellman, Aaron Copland, Arthur Miller, and a young Norman Mailer, joined with European and Soviet delegates to repudiate "US warmongering." Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich told the delegates that "a small clique of hatemongers" was preparing a global conflagration; he urged progressive artists to struggle against the new "Fascists'' who were seeking world domination. American panelists echoed the Russian composer's fear of a new conflict. Playwright Clifford Odets denounced the ``enemies of Man'' and claimed the United States had been agitated into ``a state of holy terror'' by fraudulent reports of Soviet aggression; composer Copland declared "the present policies of the American Government will lead inevitably into a third world war."
The Waldorf conference marked another step in the Communist Information Bureau's (Cominform) campaign to shape Western opinion. A series of Soviet-sponsored cultural conferences beginning in September 1948 called for world peace and denounced the policies of the Truman administration. The conference at the Waldorf-Astoria, however, was the first to convene in a Western country and, not coincidentally, was also the first to meet organized and articulate opposition.
The Cominform could hardly have picked a riskier place than New York City to stage a Stalinist peace conference. New York's large ethnic neighborhoods were filled with refugees from Communism, and its campuses and numerous cultural and political journals employed hundreds of politically left-leaning men and women who had fought in the ideological struggles over Stalinism that divided American labor unions, college faculties, and cultural organizations before World War II.
Stealing the Show
A handful of liberal and socialist writers, led by philosophy professor Sydney Hook, saw their chance to steal a little of the publicity expected for the Waldorf peace conference. A fierce ex-Communist himself, Hook was then teaching at New York University and editing a socialist magazine called The New Leader. Ten years earlier he and his mentor John Dewey had founded a controversial group called the Committee for Cultural Freedom, which attacked both Communism and Nazism. He now organized a similar committee to harass the peace conference in the Waldorf-Astoria.
R.I.P. I was hoping he would make it to 90. A true living legend. Saul Bellow can still do it though.
The first time I saw Death of a Salesman was on Television staring Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich. It blew me away.
LOL....I didn't know he was alive....I HAD to read "Death of a Salesman" in my Junior year in High School.....all I remember is how DEPRESSING it was.....kinda like most of the top rated movies and books today always are....and WHY I don't read/see them!
Well, now we know who Deep Throat was.
Expect the WaPo Woodward/Bernstein press conference any time.
Interesting - saw clips of him last night on one of those A&E American Justice shows. In the 70's he befriended some teenage kid that had been accused of murdering his mother. The Reilly case or something like that.
He was a remarkable person....and now...how did it go?...I'm quoting from memory..."He's out there with a shoeshine and a smile...a salesman gotta dream...." I apologize if I am way off.
Arthur Miller is....Deep Throat!
I LOVED "The Misfits".
Still one of my fav old movies. (Based on a short story Miller wrote, I think he wrote the screenplay as well)
Speaking of playwrights........
Death of the Death of a Salesman.
His daughter Rebecca is married to Daniel Day-Lewis.
A prophet of the "capitalism stinks" generation that was inflicted upon us a decade or two after "Death of a Salesman" and "The Crucible" were first performed.
Consistent with his liberal humanism and Godlessness (you'll find his name on the Celebrity Atheists List ), his works were surly, pessimistic tales which left a bad taste in the mouth. I had "The Crucible" rammed down my throat in high school. One was obliged to "tutt, tutt" and nod knowingly with the liberal Literature teacher as he pontificated on the evils of Joe McCarthy and the "rabid right" in general. Just as much an example of mindless "groupthink" as the witch hunts which Miller railed against.
Thankfully, his later offerings received little attention and he became more of a celebrity curiosity for the nostalgic due to his marriage to Marilyn Monroe.
Liberal America will miss him.