Arthur Miller is more important than just his best known plays "Death of a Salesman" (which I never cared a whole lot for...not sure why) and "The Crucible" (that mandatory early high school play, how obvious can we be in comparing the witch hunts of Salem to the witch hunts of McCarthy?). It seems to me that he represents in many ways a canonical 1900s man---put himself through college working as a loader and shipping clerk, his first play failed on Broadway, he was married to Marilyn Monroe ("To have survived, she would have had to be either more cynical or even further from reality than she was," he wrote. "Instead, she was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes.") for five years, never stopped writing, and traveled the world seeing his plays performed and meeting people. What more could one ask for? Marilyn, though she was a self-destructive nut, success with art, a long life, humble upbringing, everything that we're told is part of an American success story. AFP announcement. BBC Obit.