MILLER AT MICHIGAN
A native of New York City, Arthur Miller worked at a variety of jobs—including truck driver, radio singer, and auto-parts clerk—to earn money for college after graduating from Brooklyn's Abraham Lincoln High School in 1932.
“My first affection for the University of Michigan was due, simply, to their accepting me,” Miller wrote in a 1953 article in Holiday Magazine. "They had already turned me down twice because my academic record (I had flunked algebra three times in high school) was so low as to be practically invisible, but the dean reversed himself….I wrote that since working for two years I had turned into a much more serious fellow. He said he would give me a try, but I had better make some grades. I could not conceive of a dean at Columbia or Harvard doing that.”
Miller arrived in Ann Arbor in 1934 by bus, with the $500 he had saved, and “fell in love with the place.” He attended U-M with financial assistance from the National Youth Administration, which paid him $15 a month to feed mice in a cancer research lab. He also washed dishes for his meals and worked as night editor of the Michigan Daily.
“When I was at Ann Arbor I felt I was at home,” he wrote. “I loved the place, too, because it was just big enough to give one the feeling that his relative excellence or mediocrity had real meaning, and yet not so big as to drown one in numbers.”
In addition to classwork and writing, Miller was also active in student life, including his participation in “The Laboratory Workshop Committee” in 1937. This group submitted a petition in January 1938 to the University for a workshop “for the study of the Theatre Arts.”
He graduated in 1938 with a degree in English.
Years later, Miller said he had been attracted to U-M because “tuition was cheap—about $60, I think—and I’d heard they gave Hopwood awards to student writers. For a 19-year-old who knew he wanted to write, even though I didn’t know what I’d write, the fact that the University gave a dollar prize meant they took writing seriously here.” Miller eventually won two of the prestigious Hopwoods.
“For me [the U-M] was very welcoming and I found it a very good environment for mixing with a lot of people I normally wouldn’t have met,” he wrote 15 years after graduation. “It was my idea of what a university should be. It was…the testing ground for all my prejudices, my beliefs and my ignorance, and it helped to lay out the boundaries of my life.”
As Miller became a world-renowned playwright, he continued to visit his alma mater often, scheduling trips when students would be on campus because he enjoyed meeting with them. “With us, it was always the students he had in mind,” Former Music School Dean Karen Wolff remembers.
At a symposium to honor his 85th birthday, in 2000, the playwright spoke via satellite hookup in “A Conversation with Arthur Miller,” in which he talked about his experiences at the University and the challenges and rewards of being a writer.
Arthur Miller died February 10, 2005, at his Roxbury, Connecticut home.
“Lunch and Learn” with Professor Enoch Brater at the 18th Annual Jewish Book Festival
Please join Miller scholar and U-M professor Enoch Brater for a Lunch and Learn at the Jewish Book Festival of the JCC of Washtenaw County on
2935 Birch Hollow Drive Ann Arbor, MI 48108
Professor Brater will be speaking and answering questions about his latest work, Arthur Miller: A Playwright’s Life and Works, which traces Miller’s career from his prizewinning student days at the University of Michigan, through the phenomenal success of his 1949 drama, Death of a Salesman, to his doomed marriage to Marilyn Monroe, and beyond.
The lecture is free.
Lunch is available for $7.00 per person, served at 12pm.
Please RSVP to the JCC at (734) 971-0990.
Ann Arbor Civic Theatre (A2AC) will present Arthur Miller’s classic and timely family drama, All My Sons, on November 10–13.
Towsley Auditorium
Washtenaw Community College
4800 East Huron River Drive
Ann Arbor, MI
Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 2pm. Tickets are $20 for adults and $17 for students and seniors Friday through Sunday, and $13 for all tickets on Thursday.
Tickets are available at the A2CT office at 322 West Ann Street, by calling the office at 734-971-2228, online at the A2AC website, or at the door. Additional information is available by visiting the A2AC website.
A Timeline
October 17, 1915
Arthur Asher Miller born in Manhattan, to Isidore and Augusta Miller.
1923
Sees his first play, a melodrama at the Schubert Theater.
1928
Bar mitzvah, a synagogue on Avenue M in Brooklyn.
1934
Miller arrives in Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan as a journalism major.
1936
Wins the Hopwood Award for his play No Villain, which he wrote in six days.
1937
Wins a second Hopwood, for his play Honors at Dawn.
1938
Arthur Miller graduates from the U-M with a B.A. in English.
1940
Miller marries fellow U-M graduate Mary Slattery. They eventually have two children, Jane and Robert.
1944
Miller’s Broadway debut, The Man Who Had All the Luck (the play closed after 6 performances).
Situation Normal—a book about the problems of GIs returning from the war—is published.
1945
Novel Focus, about anti-Semitism in America, is published.
1947
All My Sons premieres, and receives the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Donaldson Award.
1948
With the success of All My Sons, Miller moves to Connecticut and begins work on Death of a Salesman.
1949
Death of a Salesman opens, and wins Pulitzer Prize, New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, Antoinette Perry Award, Donaldson Award, and Theater Club Award.
1953
The Crucible premieres and wins Antoinette Perry and Donaldson awards.
Miller directs for the first time: a Delaware summer theater production of All My Sons.
1956
Miller announces his marriage to movie star Marilyn Monroe.
1957
Arthur Miller’s Collected Plays is published.
Miller is convicted of contempt of Congress for refusal to name names at House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings.
“The Misfits,” a short story, is published in Esquire.
1958
Miller’s contempt conviction is overturned by the US Court of Appeals.
Miller is elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
1959
The Misfits is filmed.
1960
Miller and Monroe divorce.
1962
Miller marries third wife Inge Morath, a photographer. They will have two children, Rebecca and Daniel.
1964
A return to the theater with After the Fall.
1965
Miller is named president of the international writers’ organization PEN.
1968
Serves as a delegate to the National Democratic Party Convention in Chicago.
Finishes The Price, his most successful play since Salesman.
1970
One-act plays Fame (produced for TV) and The Reason Why are completed.
Miller’s works are banned in the Soviet Union because of his work to free dissident writers.
1974
Up from Paradise premieres at the University of Michigan.
1978
The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller is published.
1980
Playing for Time, an adaption of The Musicians of Auschwitz, premieres on CBS-TV.
1985
Death of a Salesman, starring Dustin Hoffman, airs on CBS to an audience of 25 million.
1987
Timebends: A Life is published.
1995
Miller receives William Inge Festival Award for distinguished achievment in American theater.
1997
A film version of The Crucible, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, and Paul Scofield, opens.
1999
Death of a Salesman is revived on Broadway for the play’s 50th anniversary.
2003
Miller is awarded the Jerusalem Prize.
2005
Miller dies of heart failure at his home on February 10.
Thanks to the Arthur Miller Society, and the Miller Files website for assistance on this timeline. Any errors should be reported to the webmaster at mc-web@umich.edu.
Other Resources
Read the Arthur Miller interview from U-M’s Leaders and Best Magazine.
The Bentley Historical Library has a collection of Arthur Miller photographs, papers, and letters. For more information, please visit their website, or email bentley.ref@umich.edu for more information.
The Special Collections Library at the University of Michigan Libraries is open to researchers and Miller scholars. Original copies of letters and other correspondence, and original works are some of the items in their Miller collection. Please email the Library at special.collections@umich.edu for more information.
Read the University Record interview: Arthur Miller at Michigan 2000.
Visit the The Arthur Miller Files website, a U-M student project.
Learn about the special Arthur Miller issue from the Michigan Quarterly Review.
NEW!
Arthur Miller’s America
by Enoch Brater
buy online from University of Michigan Press
Arthur Miller: A Playwright’s Life and Works
by Enoch Brater
Available in bookstores, or order online
The Arthur Miller Society is a non-profit society whose primary aim is to promote the study of Arthur Miller and his work. Please visit their website for more information, the Society newsletter, teaching resources, and more.