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After the Fall

Today on Tablet

by
Marc Tracy
January 12, 2012

The image of Arthur Miller as the good anti-Communist liberal is misguided. According to Ron Capshaw’s polemic today in Tablet Magazine, in the late 1940s the great playwright (and final husband of Marilyn Monroe) traveled with the Communist fellows as a pseudonymous theater critic in the pages of New Masses when the Party was in a reformist phase; later, when orthodoxy came back into vogue, Miller followed that line, too.

Incidentally, an author under discussion in Capshaw’s essay who, unlike Miller, actually protested the party line, was the screenwriter and fiction writer Albert Maltz. He was later named one of the Hollywood Ten. He was also my cousin.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.