June 21 - Arthur Miller Refuses to Name Communists

This Day in History: 21 June 2020

 

21 June 1956

 

64 years ago, today, playwright Arthur Miller defied the House Committee on Un-American Activities by refusing to name suspected communists. This committee's goal was to uproot communists hidden in America, and so began to target left-wingers in Hollywood, and liberals in the State Department. Miller's rebellion against the HUAC and general McCarthyism, won him a conviction for contempt of the court. However, this was later reversed by the Supreme Court. Before this, his passport had already been denied when he had attempted to travel to Brussels to attend the premiere of his play, 'The Crucible', that was centred around the Salem witch-trials as an allegory of the hysteria and trials of McCarthyism.

 

Before he was a playwright, Miller was born to a well-off German-Jewish family, that suffered harshly during the Wall Street Crash of 1929. His student plays mainly consisted of studies of Jewish families like his own, and his first literary success was 'Focus', a novel written in 1945 centred around anti-Semitism. However, his first hit Broadway play, 'All My Sons', was written two years later. In 1956, Miller married the film icon, Marilyn Monroe, whose marriage would last until 1961, a year before Monroe passed away. After marrying his third wife, and continuing to write more successful plays, Miller died in 2005 at the age of 89, after suffering from congestive heart failure.

 

Want to find out more about Arthur Miller and the HUAC? Click here for more information on their interaction, or here for more about Arthur Miller's life.