Arthur Miller

In The American Clock (1980) Miller created a series of dramatic vignettes about the Great Depression based on Hard Times (1970) by American writer Studs Terkel. His short stories were collected in I Don't Need You Any More (1967) and Homely Girl, A Life, and Other Stories (1995). Miller’s observations on drama, including his own plays, appeared in The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller (1978; 2nd edition, 1994).

Miller’s autobiography, Timebends: A Life, was published in 1987. In this lengthy memoir, Miller traced in scrupulous detail the genesis of each of his plays from his own domestic and political history and portrayed himself as a social and political spokesman for his generation. He also broke his public silence about his troubled marriage to motion-picture star Marilyn Monroe, from 1956 to 1961. Miller wrote the screenplay The Misfits (1961) for Monroe. His drama After the Fall (1964) is a semiautobiographical play based on his unhappy marriage. A year after his divorce from Monroe, Miller married photographer Inge Morath.

Miller’s creativity continued into his 70s and 80s, although he never repeated his earlier success. In The Ride Down Mount Morgan (1991), a somewhat surreal drama, a man in a hospital bed revisits his bigamous marriages. Broken Glass (1994), a play about Jewish identity, is set in Brooklyn in 1938, shortly after Kristallnacht. Resurrection Blues (2002) is a satire on a media-saturated world. With his last play, Finishing the Picture (2004), about a director stymied by an unstable movie star, Miller seemed to revisit his own past.