About+the+Author

=About the Author= Arthur Miller is considered to be one of America's greatest playwrights. He is best known for plays that put character's in situations where their morals and views of the world are tested. Miller was born in Brooklyn in 1915. He studied journalism and theater at the University of Michigan. As a playwright, he had his first success in 1947 with //All My Sons.// His greatest success was [|Death of a Salesman] two years later in 1949. But as the 1950s began, tensions between the United States and The Soviet Union led to the [|Cold War]. In the U.S. this caused many people to fear that communists sympathetic to the Soviets were trying to infiltrate our county. In congress, the House Un-American Activities Committee began to hold hearings where they asked people in the entertainment industry to identify people they knew who were communist. Miller said that after a friend was forced to testify before the committe he decided to write //The Crucible.// Just a few years later, Miller was called before the committe and asked to name people he knew to be communists. He refused and was convicted of contempt of congress. This charge was later overturned. Miller continued to write plays into his 80s. He died in 2005. Fellow playwright [|Edward Albee]said of him, "Arthur never compromised. He never sold out, he never did anything just for that awful word entertainment. His understanding was that something that was entertaining was filled with ideas."

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