All My Sons
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All My Sons
Written by
Arthur Miller
Characters
Joe Keller
Kate Keller
Chris Keller
Ann Deever
George Deever
Frank Lubey
Lydia Lubey
Jim Bayliss
Sue Bayliss
Bert
Original language
English
Setting
The Keller's yard in late August, 1946
IBDB profile
All My Sons is a 1947 play by Arthur Miller.[1] The play was twice adapted for film; in 1948, and again in 1986.
The play, which opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1947 and ran for 328 performances, was awarded the 1947 Tony Award for Best Authored Play.[2] It was directed by Elia Kazan (to whom it is dedicated) and won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, beating Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. It starred Ed Begley, Beth Miller, Arthur Kennedy, and Karl Malden and won both the Tony Award for Best Play and the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play.
Contents
[hide]
· 1 Background
· 2 Characters
· 2.1 Unseen characters
· 3 Synopsis
· 3.1 Act I
· 3.2 Act II
· 3.3 Act III
· 4 Timeline of events in the play
· 5 Links to Greek tragedy
· 6 Themes
· 6.1 Responsibility, Society and the Generation Gap
· 6.2 American Dream
· 6.3 Wartime Profiteering
· 6.4 Death
· 7 Arthur Miller quotation on All My Sons
· 8 1948 film
· 9 1986 film
· 10 Other adaptations
· 11 2008 Broadway production
· 12 References
· 13 See also
· 14 External links
[edit] Background
Miller wrote All My Sons after his first play The Man Who Had All the Luck had been a complete failure on Broadway lasting only four performances. Miller wrote All My Sons as a final attempt at writing a commercially successful play - if the play failed to find an audience Miller had vowed to "find some other line of work."[1]
All My Sons is based upon a true story, which Arthur Miller's then mother-in-law pointed out in an Ohio newspaper. The story described how a woman informed on her father who had sold faulty parts to the U.S. military during World War II.
Henrik Ibsen's influence on Miller is evidenced from the Ibsen play The Wild Duck, where Miller took the idea of two partners in a business where one is forced to take moral and legal responsibility for the other. This is mirrored in All My Sons. He also borrowed the idea of a character’s idealism being the source of a problem.[3]
The criticism of the American Dream, which lies at the heart of All My Sons was one reason why Arthur Miller was called to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the 1950s, when America was gripped by anti-communist hysteria. Miller sent a copy of the play to Elia Kazan who directed the original stage version of All My Sons. Kazan was a former member of the Communist Party who shared Miller's left-wing views. However, their relationship was destroyed when Kazan gave names of suspected Communists to the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare.[1]
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