Arthur Miller's America: Theater and Culture in a Time of Change

A Conversation with Arthur Miller: October 26, 2000

Enoch Brater A Conversation with Arthur Miller October 26, 2000 Enoch Brater: Let’s begin with Ann Arbor.Why did you come to study at the University of Michigan? Why didn’t someone like you go to City College in New York, which would have been a very logical path in the middle of the Depression? Arthur Miller:Well, I did go to City College for about three weeks in the evening; I was working during the daytime. But I couldn’t stay awake, so I decided I’d work for a few years and make enough money to go to school in the daytime. I was a little better at staying awake in the daytime.Anyway, coming to Michigan was partly because at that time it was probably the only university in the United States that had an active interest in creative writing.At least I knew of no other.There was that, and there was also that the tuition was so cheap, and money was difficult to come by. So those are the reasons. EB: Did your family think it was odd that you were coming all the way to the Midwest, leaving NewYork and all that world behind you? AM: I looked at it as a kind of adventure. I thought of it as the Wild West. I was amazed that in Detroit they had the same cars we had in New York! For a young guy, it was a great adventure. People didn’t jump into airplanes in those days and fly off to some place. Moving around was a good deal more difficult. EB:When you were a student here, how often did you get back to New York? AM: I got back during the Christmas vacation, and that was about it. I usually had to work during the spring vacation, and in fact that’s when I wrote my first play. So I got back once each year. EB: Tell us about the Michigan Daily. Why did you stop writing for the Daily? AM: Well, because I started to win prizes for my plays, and I wanted to spend more time writing plays.I lost my impulse to do journalism be244 cause I tended to want to make the stories better,and that left fact behind a good deal of the time. I found I wasn’t really made to be a reporter .The only thing about journalism was they had a payroll, and that wasn’t the case in the theater.You were completely on your own there and could easily starve to death,but I decided to pursue the theater because I loved it. EB: What drew you to Professor Rowe’s class, the Kenneth Rowe who was an important person in your life at Michigan? How did you get connected with him? AM: I had a wonderful teacher named EricWalter who later became the dean of the university, and Professor Walter directed me toward Kenneth Rowe. In fact, it was actually in Walter’s essay class that I wrote my first play. It was only later that I went to Professor Rowe. It was a great event in my life because Rowe, while I’m sure he wanted to teach me a lot, taught me really only one thing, and that was that I could hold the stage with dialogue. He acquainted me with the history of the theater and with the development of various forms, and it was a quick way of getting educated. EB: Let’s talk a little bit about the plays that you started writing once A Conversation with Arthur Miller 245 Arthur Miller speaking via satellite hookup at the University of Michigan, Rackham Auditorium. (Courtesy U-M Photo Services) you left Michigan.What were you writing just before The Man Who Had All the Luck was done on Broadway in 1944? AM: I wrote the Hopwood plays; there were, I think, three plays.Then when I got out of school, I wrote a tragedy of the conquest of Mexico by Cortez and the fascinating story of Montezuma [The Golden Years]. Of course, I was ignorant of what was going on in Broadway and commercial theater—mind you, there was no non-commercial theater at that time.You either made it on Broadway or you didn’t make it at all.And I wrote this tragedy which had,I don’t know, probably...