Arthur Miller died.

[AllenLowe]

His adaptation of Enemy of the People was a complete perversion and misunderstanding of Ibsen - I like the Crucible, but it was based on a fundamentally inept parallel with the McCarthy era - as Eric Bentley has pointed out, while there were, indeed, no witches in Salem, there were Communists in the US. Which is not, before you jump to any conclusions, a justification of McCarthyism - it is just to point out that Miller did not have the vision to come up with an allegory that made actual sense. On the other hand it is his best play. Death of a Salesman has power, but it is, finally, a cloying domestic drama. After the Fall, as I said, is a mess and intellectually dishonest, poorly written and full of post-Marilyn apology and rationale. There are some other bad ones: View from the Bridge, The Price (which does have some good writing), Incident at Vichy. He also wrote some appallingly bad short stories. His ouvre is not a distinguished one.

Edited February 13, 2005 by AllenLowe

[Dan Gould]

I have to say that I fall in with the group who are questioning Hank Jones' story. The dates just don't make sense. I'd be curious about the context of the conversation with Allen. Were you talking to Hank about Monroe? About her singing Happy Birthday to JFK? About Arthur Miller? What triggered Hank's memory?

Its certainly possible Miller hit Monroe, but it doesn't seem logical that it happened after the birthday performance.

As far as Miller's career goes, count me as one who regards Death of a Salesman as a masterwork. The CBS broadcast of the play with Hoffman as Willy and Malkovitch as the son was stunning.

[AllenLowe]

here's a recount - I am sitting with Hank in a restaraunt in NYC, ca. 1977, interviewing him. This is from memory, and I honestly do not remember how it came up, but here it is (and Jones confirmed this story on a later occassion):

"Athur Miller was not nice to Marilyn Monroe. I played the piano when she sang happy birthday to President Kennedy in Madison Square Garden. Afterwards the three of us were in an elevator, myself, Monroe and Arthur Miller. She was very drunk and he slapped her. Hard."

Hank is in his 50's, far from senile or delusional. As an added detail Al Haig was sitting with us when he made the comment, and Haig and I talked about it a few times afterwards. I really see no way that Jones can be mistaken about this. And it's not really all that shocking or surprising that Miller might continue to have contact with Monroe after the divorce or feel proprietary. That's show biz, as they say, and that's a not untypical male attitude -

what likely triggered it was, married or not, her flirting witht he president - and their were real rumors about Monroes's affair with JFK -

Edited February 15, 2005 by AllenLowe

[BERIGAN]

I know there are some decent biographies on MM, it might be worth digging into them to see if they mention what man was with her that night...doing some googling on the web several days ago, I came across at least one article mentioning that Joe DiMaggio had hit her on at least one occasion. He was certainly in and out of her life after their divorce as well.

A woman abused as a child often seems to attract abusive men throughout their lives, sadly enough.