Arthur Miller 1915-2005

Richard Luscombe, of The Scotsman:

ARTHUR Miller, one of the 20th century’s greatest playwrights best known for Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, has died aged 89 after a battle against cancer and heart disease. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author was also in the spotlight for his turbulent five-year marriage to the actress Marilyn Monroe, who died of a drugs overdose in 1962, a year after they divorced. Miller died late on Thursday of heart failure at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, surrounded by his family and his 34-year-old girlfriend, the artist Agnes Barley, according to his assistant, Julia Bolus. He had been receiving hospice care in New York for several weeks as he battled a variety of ailments. His last request was to be taken home to the 18th-Century farmhouse he bought with Monroe, whom he once described as "the love of my life but the saddest woman I ever met".

In keeping with Broadway tradition, theatre lights were dimmed last night in tribute to the three-times married writer considered by many to be the greatest playwright of the last century. "He represented the top ten of American playwrights," said the director and producer Douglas Urbanski. "Everybody else started at number 11."

Miller’s plays, often dark and moralistic in tone, transformed American theatre in the years immediately following the Second World War, an era dominated by anti-Communist paranoia and unrest among the working population...

I'm sorry to hear he's gone but,
1.Making it to 89 is a pretty good go of it,
2. I would be a frigging delirious 89 yr old if I had a 34 yr old girlfriend, even if her name was Agnes.
3. "Everybody else started at number 11?" He was a great writer, and deserved the acclaim he got, but come on. Someone should tell Mr. Urbanski about that Eugene O'Neill feller. I think he wrote a play or two.

I also wonder what Miller thought of our current era of paranoia and unrest. Anyway, goodbye Arthur Miller, and thank you for your life and work.