Arthur Asher Miller was born in 1915 and died February 10, 2005.
Perhaps his most famous play is Death of a Salesmen (1949); however, his lesser known plays--The Crucible (1953) and View from the Bridge (1955)--
created an interesting critical stir as well. Specifically, The Crucible parodied the hearings before the House Un-American
Activities Committee by comparing them to the 1692 Salem witch trials. 
As Miller explains: "Practically everyone I knew, all survivors of the Great Depression of course as well as World War II, was somewhere within the conventions of the political left of center; one or two were Communist Party members, some were sort of fellow travelers, as I suppose I was, and most had had one or another brush with Marxist ideas or organizations. I have never been able to believe in the reality of these people being actual or putative traitors anymore than I could be, yet others like them were being fired from teaching or other jobs in governments and large corporations. The unreality of it all never left me. We were living in an art form, a metaphor that had no long history but, incredibly enough, suddently gripped the country. So I suppose that in one sense The Crucible was an attempt to make life real again, palpable and structured--a work of art created in order to interpret an anterior work of art that was called reality but was not" (Arthur Miller, "The Crucible in History," Echoes Down the Corridor, edited by Steven R. Centola (New York: Viking, 2000), 277).
Shortly after The Crucible, Miller would complete A View from the Bridge, the tale of Pete Panto. In Miller's words: "I discovered that Panto, a young longshoreman, had risen from the ranks to challenge corrupt leadership of the union and that the common idea was that he had been murdered. I would ultimately write a movie about him and the abortive movement that he started, but it would never see the screen for reasons that are another story for another time" ("Suspended in Time," Echoes Down the Corridor, 189). "The Hook," the title of the screenplay, failed to make it past the Hollywood union representatives, especially considering "The Hook's" realistic treatment of the corruption of the waterfront unions. A View from the Bridge, Miller's one-act play, continued to face issues in American theatre and it did not do well.
However, Belgium did not have such qualms and invited Miller to attend the first European performance. Before he could go to Belgium for the premiere or accompany his soon-to-be-wife, Marilyn Monroe, to England for her filming of The Prince and the Showgirl, he needed to renew his expired passport. As Miller explains, "the news of my forthcoming marriage to Marilyn Monroe was too tempting to be passed up. That it had some connection with my being supoeneaed was confirmed when Chairman Walter of HUAC sent word to Joseph Ruah, my lawyer, that he would be inclined to cancel my hearing altogether if Miss Monroe would consent to have a picture taken with him" ("The Crucible in History," p. 281). That said, Monroe was also apparently considered a threat to America and had been under surveillance by the FBI since 1955 (click here to see Monroe's FBI File).
In 1956 and 1957, Miller was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee for hearings concerning the "Unauthorized Use of U.S. Passports." When he refused to name the names of writers believed to hold Communist sympathies, he was convicted of contempt of Congress. Miller's testimony is available in PDF or XML format.
The following year, the United States Court of Appeals overturned the conviction.
Arthur Miller was one of many members of the intelligentia and entertainment industry who was brought before HUAC. Washington University holds numerous documents from this period of American history and offers a wealth of information for those doing research on 1950s American literature and film studies.
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