biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1915– )
|
| biography:
| Playwright, born in New York City, New York, USA. He graduated from the University of Michigan (1938), where he won a prize for playwriting. After serving in the US Army in World War 2, he enjoyed his first success with a novel, Focus (1945). His first play, The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944), was a flop, but All My Sons (1947) won the New York Drama Critic Circle Award. Two years later, Death of a Salesman won both the Drama Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize; the play, considered his most enduring work and an American classic, depicts the corrosive effects of self-deception on an ordinary man and his family. An Enemy of the People (1950) was a new translation of the Ibsen play. The Crucible 1953) told of the witch trials in Salem and was seen as a metaphor for his views on contemporary McCarthyite red-baiting. Later plays include A View from the Bridge (1955) and After the Fall (1964), widely assumed to be based on his marriage to Marilyn Monroe (1956–60). He wrote an original screenplay, The Misfits (1961), which starred Monroe. His later works, including The American Clock (1980), met with little enthusiasm in the USA, but he continued to enjoy a wide following in the UK, and his plays are performed in translations throughout the world. |
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