This play and its various performances provides examples of the following tropes: Cobb 1985, with Dustin Hoffman), The BBC (1966, with Rod Steiger 1996, with Warren Mitchell), and Showtime (2000, with Brian Dennehy). and made-for-TV versions on CBS (1966, with Lee J. Cobb and Arthur Kennedy, the original Biff the role instead went to his counterpart in the original West End cast, Kevin McCarthy. Nonetheless, several screen adaptations have been made, including a 1951 theatrical film starring Fredric March note The original Broadway cast reprised their roles except for Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman, Death of a Salesman is a very stagy play, since it's from Willy's dreamy, hallucination-and-flashback-ridden perspective. The play follows the family's attempts to make one last grab at the American Dream.įirst produced on Broadway in 1949 with Lee J.

Biff is his equally washed-up son, once a high school sports hero with a bright future, now a perennially unemployed loser. Willy Loman is an aging, washed-up salesman obsessed with the concept of greatness and convinced that being liked and respected is the most important thing in life. In doing so, he wrote what is often considered the greatest American play. Miller intended to write a play with said hero's shoes filled by an everyman. Once upon a time, playwright Arthur Miller set out to disprove one of the fundamental theories about the Tragic Hero - specifically, that they must be royalty, nobility, or some other type of great man who has far to fall and much to lose.

Death of a salesman movie script