So I’m a huge fan of “Before Famous People Were Famous” stories.
You know, like how Stephen King eked out a living washing maggotty bedsheets before “Carrie” sold and made a kajillion dollars.
Or how Tom Cruise was enrolled a seminary and was planning on becoming a priest (which would have been so weird and awesome I just might have had to become Catholic in that alternate universe…)
Ashton Kutcher was enrolled in a biochemical engineering program (this is real, but it feels made up), Ice Cube completed a degree in architectural drafting ( also real, but feels, if possible, even more made up), Steve Martin was a magician at Disneyland (which is so adorable it made me forgive him for his remakes of “Cheaper By The Dozen” and “Pink Panther,” but not the sequels) and Hugh Jackman was a clown (Can we nominate him for Ahimsa’s Everybody Nose Clown Troupe’s Cute and Famous Patron Saint?)
So we do this all the time with famous people, but we never have tabloid-style fun with famous plays! We either treat classic plays with this snivelling, suck-uppy, gross fawning reverence or we get all fidgety and bored like we’re elementary school kids on a bus and we’ve just run out annoying songs to sing. This is so sad, so, so, so sad, because some of the most famous plays and theatrical events have some of the most fascinating backstories. They didn’t just come out of creative womb all pretty, special and famous. There were hurdles to jump, mountains to climb, problems to solve, then resolve once the first solving didn’t work out, and sometimes there was even more solving required!
This is all to say there was so much DRAMA!
Pun totally intended, but in an ironic way so I can still cling to vestige of coolness.
So without further ado, let’s get to our first play.
Death of a Salesman, guys.
As if we could start with anything else.
So here’s the set-up. This is Arthur Miller.
Sneaky cute, right? Now I totally have a crush.
So it’s 1948 and wow-you’re-actually-hot Arthur Miller has just hit it out of the park with his mega-smash “All My Sons” which premiered on the Big White Way the previous year to commercial and critical supernova success.
So Arthur Miller ( I still can’t get over how cute he is in these glasses!) is like “Awesome, I want to write another crazy-amazing play and have everyone in the American theater community dance around me like I’m the Golden Calf of the Israelites.”
So he goes off and builds himself a little Writing Hermit House in Nowhere, Connecticut (okay, really it’s Roxbury, Connecticut, but same difference, right?) and proceeds to write the first act of “Death of a Salesman” in what was essentially an afternoon.
AN AFTERNOON!
This makes me want to marry him even more than I already did.
Within six weeks he had completed the play.
This makes me want to marry him just as much as I already did.
So I-hope-he-doesn’t-know-how-cute-he-is-because-that-would-make-him-maybe-not-as-cute Arthur Miller’s all “Banging. I got a play.”
Right, he doesn’t actually say “Banging” because this would be anachronistic. He probably said something like “Terrific, fellas!” or “Well, that’s just swell!” but the fact remains that Miller wrote “Death of a Salesman” in a month and a half and if that is not banging, then I don’t even know what is.
So of course, after the play is all written and pretty, Miller next proceeds to show his new play, “Death of a Salesman” to his agent.
This is where I really wish this blog had that disastrous “Da Da DUHHHH!” sound effect.
Miller’s agent vetoes the play. He says it will never sell. He says that people won’t get it. He tells if-only-I-had-been-born-seventy-years-earlier-maybe-he-could-have-been-my-husband Arthur Miller to completely rewrite the play.
I think it would be worth reminding everyone at this point that this is “Death of a Salesman” we are talking about here.
Everyone reminded?
Cool!
On we go.
So Arthur Miller tries to rewrite “Salesman”. He really, really tries.
He turns in a new draft to his agent, who is happier with “Death of a Salesman, Take Two.” But Arthur is not happier. He is miserable-er. Way, way, way miserable-er. He really believed in that first draft of “Salesman.” God gave him the gift of a first act in a day. Heaven smiled down on him and let him crank out a play in a flipping month and a half. Now he’s throwing this gift of inspiration away because some putzy agent doesn’t get it and said agent is getting away with acting like a mouthpiece for the rest of the world.
This is when Arthur Miller has his “Dark Night of the Soul.” This is a screenwriting term for that part in movies where all hope is lost and the main character looks outside the window and it’s raining and/or takes long, depressing walks around in a park during a montage set to the music of a morose female country singer or, interchangeably, sad Scandinavian pop.
But then Arthur Miller rallies (come on, it’s Arthur!!!!) and decides to show his original draft of “Salesman” to other people.
People like Elia Kazan, who is most famous for directing the films “On The Waterfront” and “Streetcar Named Desire” and selling-out-all-of-his-friends-who-ever-attended-one-communist-party-meeting-because-communism-sounds-cool- in-theory-and-also-there-was-nothing-better-to-do-that-night to Senator McCarthy and his scary Senate subcommittee hearings, which Arthur Miller later allegorically chronicled in his “Crucible.”
See, theater history, you guys, it’s all coming together!
Anyway, back in the late forties, before Kazan turns bad and is still kicking it like Anakin Skywalker, Kazan and Miller are really good friends. So good that Kazan directed Miller’s previous smash “All My Sons” and so good that he is all about directing “Death of a Salesman” AS IS! First draft, take one, le original!
“Death of a Salesman” goes onto win the Tony for Best Author, the New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Note that this is the first play to ever win all three awards (Of course it is, it’s by Arrthhurrr….)
“Salesman” is also today considered one of The Best American Plays Ever by Almost Everybody, and The Best American Play Ever by a lot of people in that Almost Everybody.
So what does this story teach us?
1.) Being true to your heart and sticking by your guns can result in you writing the most famous and best play ever as opposed to…not!
2.) If one of your friend’s is going to turn out to be a Great American Traitor, be friends with that person before they turn bad, and then write an allegorical play about Puritans and witchcraft that will turn out to be another most famous and best play ever and will be performed by every American high school theatre department there ever was.
3.) You shouldn’t feel bad about having any of the following a.) a receding hairline, b.) a big nose, c.) really big glasses, and d.) ears that stick out. Or even a combination of these traits. Or even all of them! Because you could still turn out to be super sneaky cute like my-husband-that-could-have-been Arthur Miller.
Later this week, another super-secret-mystery “Classic Plays- They’re Just Like Us!”
Oh, who am I kidding, it’s totally going to be “Waiting For Godot.”
Since there’s not fun theme song or bloopers to end with, here are some more hottie pictures of Arthur Miller!
Yes, you’re still cute.
You can not take a bad picture!
You are just sitting at your desk being thoughtful and smart and it is pretty much impossible for me to love you more.
