Advertisement

ALL MY WORDS

Share

Arthur Miller hated the 1948 movie of his play “All My Sons,” the playwright revealed at a recent New York screening of the film (which starred Burt Lancaster and E.G. Marshall). And he’s not particularly looking forward to Jan. 24, when PBS airs an “American Playhouse” version of the family melodrama about a young man discovering that his father sold defective airplane parts during World War II (James Whitmore and Michael Learned star).

“I don’t know of a great movie made from a play, because plays have just too many words. My plays are theater plays,” Miller said. He was a consultant on the PBS production and said, “It will be more modest than the movie, but it still has a lot of words for TV. Plays and TV are a difficult mixture. . . .”

But producer Michael Brandman assured us that the PBS version is “just the way Miller wrote it.”

Advertisement
Advertisement