Death of a Salesman (1951 film)
| Death of a Salesman | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | László Benedek |
| Produced by | Stanley Kramer |
| Screenplay by | Stanley Roberts |
| Story by | Arthur Miller (playwright) |
| Starring |
Fredric March Mildred Dunnock Kevin McCarthy Cameron Mitchell |
| Music by | Alex North |
| Cinematography | Franz Planer |
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Production
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Release date
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Running time
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115 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1.2 million (US rental) |
Death of a Salesman is a 1951 film adapted from the play of the same name by Arthur Miller. It was directed by László Benedek and written for the screen by Stanley Roberts. The film received many honors, including four Golden Globe Awards, the Volpi Cup and five Academy Award nominations. Alex North, who wrote the music for the Broadway production, was one of the five Academy Award nominees for the film's musical score.
Willy Loman has led a life consisting of sixty years of failure. Loman's wife supports him, but he soon begins to lose his grip on reality and slips between the past and the present, frantically trying to find where he went wrong.
The cast consisted mainly of the Broadway cast, with the addition of Kevin McCarthy from the original London Cast. However, Fredric March replaced Broadway actor Lee J. Cobb after concerns with Cobb's alleged past left-wing political associations arose.
Just before the film was about to come out, Arthur Miller threatened to sue Columbia Studios over the short which was to appear before Death of a Salesman. This short film, Career of a Salesman, showed what the producers believed was a more typical American salesman, and was an attempt to defuse possible accusations that Death of a Salesman was an anti-American film. Eventually, Columbia agreed to remove the ten-minute short from the film's theatrical run.
Miller saw Career of a Salesman as an attack upon his work, proclaiming "Why the hell did you make the picture if you're so ashamed of it? Why should anybody not get up and walk out of the theatre if Death of a Salesman is so outmoded and pointless?" He argued against the portrayal of the salesman profession as "a wonderful profession, that people thrived on it, and there were no problems at all". Eventually, the very attitude that led Columbia to commission the intro led to the failure of Death of a Salesman: people and businessmen in a 1950s political climate tried to distance themselves from a film depicting American failure in the 1950s.
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