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Arthur Miller considered Elia Kazan a close friend and collaborator, but when Kazan named names to HUAC, Miller broke with him and wrote The Crucible, a parable about anti-communist hysteria set amidst the Salem Witch Trials. But despite the committee’s sensitivity to criticism, HUAC didn’t subpoena Miller until he became engaged to Marilyn Monroe, then the biggest star and sex symbol of her day. Miller and Kazan would remain estranged for a decade, until the latter directed a play written by the former which, while drawing headlines for its depiction of Monroe, also seemed to parallel their falling out over HUAC.
Show notes:
Here is a list of published sources that the entire season draws from:
The Red and the Blacklist: An Intimate Memoir of a Hollywood Expatriate by Norma Barzman
Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical by Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo
Trumbo: A biography of the Oscar-winning screenwriter who broke the Hollywood blacklist by Bruce Cook
When Hollywood Was Right: How Movie Stars, Studio Moguls, and Big Business Remade American Politics by Donald T. Critchlow
Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten by Edward Dmytryk
City of Nets by Otto Friedrich
Hollywood Radical, Or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist by Bernard Gordon
I Said Yes to Everything by Lee Grant
Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War by J. Hoberman
Naming Names by Victor S. Navasky
West of Eden: An American Place by Jean Stein
The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-60 by Larry Ceplair
Sources specific to this episode:
Arthur Miller: 1915-1962 by Christopher Bigsby
Elia Kazan: A Life by Elia Kazan
Unfriendly Witnesses: Gender, Theater, and Film in the McCarthy Era by Milly Barranger
After the Fall by Arthur Miller
Timebends by Arthur Miller
Elia Kazan: A Biography by Richard Schickel
Marilyn Monroe: A Biography by Donald Spoto
Arthur Miller, “Ibsen’s Message For Today’s World,” New York Times, Dec. 24, 1950.
Sam Zoloto, “Kazan and Miller Sever Stage Union,” New York Times, July 28, 1952.
Credits:
This episode was narrated, written and produced by Karina Longworth. Our production and research assistant is Lindsey D. Schoenholtz. Our editor is Henry Molofsky. Our logo was designed by Teddy Blanks.