“An unbearably dull play”
In 1936, while still in college, Arthur Miller (1915–2005) penned his first play, No Villian, which won the prestigious Hopwood Prize. The following year, Miller created a rewrite of the play entitled They Too Arise, which earned him a $1,250 prize from New York’s Theatre Guild. Miller submitted the script to the FTP for consideration, and the play readers’ reports were almost wholly negative: “an unbearably dull play” states the play reader report shown here. The FTP gave one performance of the play on October 23, 1937, at a Jewish Community Center in Detroit. In 1938, after graduating from college, Miller joined the FTP as a writer of radio plays and scripts. He stayed with the program until it came to its end, in spite of a more lucrative job offer from Twentieth Century-Fox in Hollywood.
In 1936, while still in college, Arthur Miller (1915–2005) penned his first play, <em>No Villian</em>, which won the prestigious Hopwood Prize. The following year, Miller created a rewrite of the play entitled <em>They Too Arise</em>, which earned him a $1,250 prize from New York’s Theatre Guild. Miller submitted the script to the FTP for consideration, and the play readers’ reports were almost wholly negative: “an unbearably dull play” states the play reader report shown here. The FTP gave one performance of the play on October 23, 1937, at a Jewish Community Center in Detroit. In 1938, after graduating from college, Miller joined the FTP as a writer of radio plays and scripts. He stayed with the program until it came to its end, in spite of a more lucrative job offer from Twentieth Century-Fox in Hollywood.