Death of a Salesman playwright, Arthur Miller, dies

[Batgirl]

Arthur Miller, the playwright of Death of a Salesman, has died aged 89.

The Pulitzer prize-winning playwright, who was once married to the late Marilyn Monroe, had been suffering from a series of illnesses including cancer, pneumonia, and a heart condition.


Miller accepts his Lifetime Achievement Award at a Tony Awards ceremony

His play, Death of a Salesman, featuring his most famous fictional creation, Willy Loman, came to symbolise the American Dream gone awry.

Miller died yesterday evening, his assistant, Julia Bolus, said. She did not give a cause of death.

His plays, with their strong emphasis on family, morality and personal responsibility, spoke to the growing fragmentation of American society.

"A lot of my work goes to the centre of where we belong - if there is any root to life - because nowadays the family is broken up, and people don't live in the same place for very long," Miller said in a 1988 interview.

"Dislocation, maybe, is part of our uneasiness. It implants the feeling that nothing is really permanent."

Miller's career was marked by early success. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Death of a Salesman in 1949, when he was just 33-years-old.

His marriage to screen star Marilyn Monroe in 1956 further catapulted the playwright to fame.

In a 1992 interview with a French newspaper, he called her "highly self-destructive" and said that during their marriage, "all my energy and attention were devoted to trying to help her solve her problems. Unfortunately, I didn't have much success."

The story of a man destroyed by his stubborn belief in the glory of American capitalism and the redemptive power of success, was made into a film and staged all over the world.

Miller said: "Originally, it was a literal play about a literal salesman, but it has become a bit of a myth, not only here but in many other parts of the world."

Other Miller plays included The Crucible, a play about mass hysteria during the Salem witch trials that was inspired by the repressive political environment of McCarthyism. It is the most frequently performed of his work.

Telegraph

[AmericanGirl]

I had no idea he was still alive... God rest his soul