Arthur Miller Tapes Reveal Monroe Marriage Regret
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- Arthur Miller's previously unpublished conversations with biographer Christopher Bigsby, recorded from the mid-1970s until shortly before Miller's 2005 death, are published Thursday by Cambridge University Press as "The Arthur Miller Tapes: A Life in His Own Words."
- In the tapes, Miller said he realized within months of his 1956 marriage to Marilyn Monroe that it was a mistake, describing her as having "literally no inner resources" and wanting "a father, lover, friend and agent" who would "never criticise her for anything."
- Miller said he spent the four years of their marriage "doing nothing basically" apart from writing The Misfits, and that he would have ended the marriage regardless because "it would have killed me. I couldn't work anymore."
- Miller described feeling "death was always on her [Monroe's] shoulder" and said he once brought doctors to save her after she "swallowed enough stuff [drugs] to kill her" — concluding that her 1962 barbiturate overdose at age 36 had seemed inevitable.
- The tapes reveal Monroe suffered a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy, with the couple seeking fertility treatment without success; Miller questioned whether a child would have worked, calling it potentially "an additional problem."
- Miller said the success of Death of a Salesman in 1949 contributed to the breakdown of his first marriage to Mary Slattery, admitting fame "is a form of power which is sexual" and that "my horizon suddenly opened up into all kinds of other ways of expressing my dominance."
- Miller linked McCarthyism directly to The Crucible, saying the "irrational sensation of overhanging fear" made it impossible to address the era "in contemporary terms" — so he set the play during the Salem witch trials to gain critical distance.
Why it matters: The tapes offer rare primary-source access to Miller's unfiltered thinking on the personal forces behind his major works — McCarthyism, fame, and Monroe. For scholars and theaters still staging Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, Bigsby's transcription of 30 years of conversation reframes how those plays connect to Miller's biography, including his admission that Salesman's success broke his first marriage.
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