Playwright Arthur Miller Dies

One of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, Arthur Miller, has passed away at the age of 89 in his home in Roxbury, Connecticutt. He had battled cancer, pneumonia and a heart condition for several years. While he may be best known to film fans as Marilyn Monroe's third husband, Miller was also the author of such seminal plays as Death of A Salesman (which won him the Pullitzer Prize in 1949), All My Sons, A View From The Bridge and The Crucible. The latter was a fierce indictment of the McCarthyite witch hunts, and ironically Miller himself was later brought before McCarthy and asked to name communist sympathisers in the US. He refused to do so, and was held in contempt as a result. Miller also wrote novels, short stories and essays, an autobiography, Timebends, and the screenplays to The Misfits (1961), starring Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, and The Crucible (1996), starring Daniel Day Lewis and Joan Allen. His plays have been turned in to numerous television dramas and films, as well as appearing on the big screen. Perhaps the best-known, apart from the films above, was the 1985 television movie of Death of A Salesman, starring Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich. Married to his college sweetheart, with whom he had two children, but the couple divorced in 1956. Shortly afterwards, he was propelled into the realm of pop culture when he married Marilyn Monroe in 1956, a marriage that lasted five years until 1961. In 1962 he remarried, to photographer Inge Morath, until her death in 2002. Their daughter Rebecca is a film director, actress and writer. Miller is survived by his daughters Rebecca and Jane Ellen, and his son Robert.