The archives of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller, which shed light on seven decades of his works, will be going on display at the University of Texas.
The Harry Ransom Center humanities library paid $2.7million for records beginning with 1936’s No Villain, which Miller wrote while at the University of Michigan, to Finishing the Picture, produced months before his 2005 death, a university spokesman said Wednesday.
Also included are drafts of his two (arguably) most well-known plays: the Pulitzer Prize-winning Death of a Salesman and The Crucible.
Documents from his four-year marriage to Hollywood starlet Marilyn Monroe will also be featured, including an unpublished letter he wrote detailing why he did not attend her funeral.
The University of Texas at Austin has paid $2.7million for the archives of Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Arthur Miller, who is pictured with his second wife, Marilyn Monroe, in an undated photo
The archives span his body of work from 1936’s No Villain to Finishing the Picture, produced months before his 2005 death. Also on display will be unpublished essay and letters. Miller is pictured with Monroe in 1956, the year they married
On display will be a letter he wrote detailing why he did not attend Monroe’s funeral. Monroe died of a suspected drug overdose in 1962, a year after the couple divorced
‘Instead of jetting to the funeral to get my picture taken I decided to stay home and let the public mourners finish their mockery. Not that everyone there will be false, but enough. Most of them there destroyed her, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, per The London Times.
Miller donated early play manuscripts and working notebooks to the center in the 1960s.
The new archive contains multiple versions of his scripts and set designs, marketing materials, reviews and awards for productions of Miller’s plays. There are also drafts of Miller’s speeches and essays.
Miller’s friend Christopher Bigsby told The London Times that Miller wanted his full archive collection to be displayed at the state school but said the author’s heirs were tempted by a competing offer from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Miller’s daughter, Rebecca, attended the Ivy League university.
‘Arthur Miller is one of our country’s finest playwrights, one who gave dramatic form to themes that are central to our still-evolving American story,’ Ransom Center Director Stephen Enniss told KVUE.
In the letter (not pictured) he wrote: ‘Instead of jetting to the funeral to get my picture taken I decided to stay home and let the public mourners finish their mockery. Not that everyone there will be false, but enough. Most of them there destroyed her, ladies and gentlemen’
Death of a Salesman, about a suicidal traveling salesman, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1949. Miller was 33 years old
Miller’s 1953 play, The Crucible, chronicles the Salem Witch Trials. Pictured are some of the research tools Miller used to write his play, which he later adapted into a film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder
Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915 and went on to attend the University of Michigan, where he majored in English.
In 1949, He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama at age 33 for Death of a Salesman, a suicidal traveling salesman. The tragedy also won the Tony Award for Best Play.
The Crucible, which presents an account of the infamous Salem Witch Trials, came in 1953.
The play was later adapted by Miller himself into 1996 film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder.
The award-winning playwright was married three times: to Mary Slattery, Marilyn Monroe, and Inge Morath.
His first two marriages ended in divorce. Morath died in 2002, three years before he died at the age of 89.
This photo taken by Miller’s third wife, Inge Morath, shows Miller during a visit to the Capitol Theater in Beijing, China. Miller and Morath were married from 1962 until 2002, when she died. He died in 2005
Pictured are some of files that will be on display at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
Pictured is the Tony Award for Best Play awarded to Miller for Death of a Salesman. The award is part of his archives
He had engaged in an affair with Monroe while married to Slattery and divorced the latter and married the former in the same year – 1956.
His marriage to the blonde bombshell, for whom he was her third husband, lasted for five years.
The pairing of a scandalous actress and an intellectual caused something of a stir in the media.
Variety, for example, summed up their marriage: ‘Egghead Weds Hourglass.’
The couple divorced in 1961 and the following year Monroe, 36, died of a suspected drug overdose.
The Harry Ransom Center also holds collections from authors David Foster Wallace and Norman Mailer and playwrights Tennessee Williams and David Mamet.
The Center also has one of the few Gutenberg Bibles in existence today.
Pictured is a typescript draft page from The Price from around 1967. The play was produced the following year