Arthur Miller's Other Legacy: Stalin's Little Helper

Human Events, Mar 21, 2005 by Ryskind, Allan H

What the Liberal Obits Missed

"Arthur Miller, Moral Voice of American Stage, Dies at 89." The New York Times' adulatory front-page obituary was typical. Indeed, within hours of Miller's passing February 10, the famed playwright was receiving rousing reviews for his prodigious literary output that won him a Pulitzer, four Tony awards and a flock of other honors.

The man who had once married Marilyn Monroe was lavishly celebrated for several important dramas, including All My Sons (1947), Death of A Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953) and A View From the Bridge (1955). He had achieved icon status among liberals just for having written The Crucible, his allegorical tale ripping Joe McCarthy, and been saluted again for his refusal to "name names," i.e., Communists he had met in various Red gatherings, before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA). Few folks have secured a more marvelous media send off from their earthly moorings.

What has been obscured is Miller's role as willing Soviet pawn. Miller's plays not only savaged America's free-enterprise system, but also were lovingly staged in Communist countries. In a broadcast over Radio Hanoi (Aug. 22, 1972), Jane Fonda told of her euphoria when she "saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play, 'All My Sons'" Hanoi Jane said she found it "very moving" that Vietnamese artists were so forgiving that they were "translating and performing American plays while U.S. imperialists are bombing their country."

Fonda didn't have a clue. Ho Chi Minh's ideological warriors were staging Miller's drama because they saw it as "agitprop" against America. The protagonist is a corrupt American manufacturer who causes American pilots to die when he deliberately sells faulty equipment to the U.S. Armed Forces. First produced in 1947, it was given a vigorous thumbs-up by the Communist Daily Worker, which hailed Miller as a "leading figure" in a new generation of playwrights. It has been much admired in Red circles ever since. Death of A Salesman, another terrific punch tossed at the American way of life, became a favorite of the left as well.

Lengthy Red Record

Miller also used his writing talents to zing disillusioned Communists, such as his long-time friend and collaborator, Elia Kazan. Kazan had not only turned against the Soviet Union but had also testified against some of his ex-comrades before HCUA. Miller got even with such "turncoats" and "informers" in both The Crucible and A View From the Bridge. The Miller obituaries also failed to report another important part of his legacy: his substantial support of Joe Stalin's fifth column operations here in America, those Soviet-eontrolled Red fronts.

When finally forced to face his own crimson past before the public, Miller chose to seriously mislead. In his famous June 1956 appearance before HCUA, he vowed-to the eternal cheers of the left-that he would never inform on Red conspirators he had known. But he also proclaimed he would be "perfectly frank with you [committee members] in anything relating to my activities."

Miller kept his first promise, but conspicuously crawfished on the second. Even the crumbs of "admissions" he coughed up had to be pried out of him by HCUA's pit-bull staff director. Richard Arens.

Did Miller, for instance, sign a 1947 statement, released by the notoriously Red-controlled Civil Rights Congress, giving a carte blanche defense of the Communist Party? Several lawmakers thought the party, as a wholly owned and directed Stalin subsidiary, should be outlawed, though others, for valid reasons, disagreed. But Miller, along with numerous CP co-signers, decided to coat the party with whitewash, insisting there was "nothing in their [the party's] program, record or activities, in war or in peace" to justify any "repressive legislation." (Committing espionage and subversion and taking orders from Stalin, apparently, amounted to "nothing.")

When Miller fumbled over whether he'd been a signatory, Arens pushed under his nose the Daily Worker of April 16, 1947. The CP's flagship publication, said Arens, indicates "that 100 prominent Americans had issued this statement, including a person described here as Arthur Miller. I lay that before you and ask you if that refreshes your recollection."

Cornered, Miller conceded (sort of): "I see my name here," so "I will not deny I signed it." (But he wouldn't admit it either.)

Arens then directed Miller toward a similar defense of the party that appeared in a May 20, 1947, advertisement in the Washington Post. The ad's sponsor: the same, subversive Civil Rights Congress. Miller suffered another spasm of amnesia, but did allow once more: "I see my name here. I would not deny I might have signed it."

Arens then pushed on another front: "Did you sign a statement in protest of the prosecution of Gerhart Eisler?" Miller: "I don't recall that, sir." So Arens disgorged a 1947 Civil Rights Congress press release protesting the "persecution" of the "German anti-Fascist refugee, Gerhart Eisler." "I recall this," Miller piped up, his memory at last refreshed, but Arens then put forth a more interesting query: "Did you know at the time you signed that statement protesting the persecution of Gerhart Eisler that he was a top-ranking agent of the Kremlin in this country, and that, among other things for which he was being pursued by our government, was passport fraud?"