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STUDY GUIDE: INTRODUCTION
The Man Who Had All The Luck
was Arthur Miller's first professionally produced play. It premiered
on Broadway in 1944, but the ideas in it had been forming in
Miller's mind long before being theatrically realized. Miller
first gave voice to the story through the form of a novel (never
published), then as a play which he revised even after its initial
debut. Of the play, he has said "It was through the evolving
version of this story that I began to find myself as a playwright,
and perhaps even as a person." In retrospect, we can also
see that the subject and issues in The Man Who Had All the
Luck laid the groundwork for his two important plays that
followed: All My Sons and Death of a Salesman.
The production of The Man Who Had All the Luck that is
being co-produced by Finesilver Shows and the Antaeus Company
offers a unique opportunity for audiences to become acquainted
with a long-lost work by a remarkable playwright; the production
marks the first time that this play has been seen in the United
States since its 1944 debut.
THE MAN WHO HAD ALL THE LUCK
IN A NUTSHELL
The play tells the story of a young man named David Beeves who
has the unlucky fortune of getting everything his heart desires.
Everything always goes his way, while the fortunes of his friends
and family rise and fall like those of normal people. The pressure
of wondering when he too might fall pushes him to the edge of
sanity as he struggles with his fate.
The play opens on an evening that is both ordinary and extraordinary.
Dave and his childhood sweetheart Hester have decided to speak
with Hester's father about allowing them to marry. Despite his
personal popularity and success as a mechanic and small business
owner, Dave fears his would-be father-in-law's gruff manner and
tight hold on his beloved. An accident settles the issue at the
same time that Dave is offered an unexpected business opportunity
in the guise of a broken automobile. A stroke of uncommon good
luck-the aid of a foreign stranger in solving the mystery of
a tricky mechanical part - seems to seal Dave's fate as the golden
boy of his town.
As we move through the play, Dave's fortunes continue to rise.
He and Hester own a large farm and Dave's business flourishes
while they await the birth of their first child. But Dave's friends
and family members just can't seem to make things work for themselves.
Dave himself becomes convinced of impending disaster: he is filled
with gnawing suspicions and a sense of dread that something bad
must happen to him because no one can sustain good luck for as
long as he has. His fear pervades every subsequent event, affecting
his relationship with Hester as well as those with the friends
closest to him. Only when a would-be catastrophe is averted through
Dave's common sense and earthy attitude towards life is Dave
reassured that good fortune truly is his-and it is here to stay.
IN A PLACE YET OUT OF TIME
The year is 1931. The Empire
State Building opens, towering over Manhattan, and the George
Washington Bridge connects New York to New Jersey. It was the
year that Americans ate Twinkies for the first time; were scared
by Bela Lugosi in Dracula; heard Ethel Merman belt out
"Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries;" and browsed through
the Whitney Museum of American Art. But the unemployment rate
stood at 15.9%; between four and five million Americans were
officially unemployed without even the comfort of a legal drink
because Prohibition was still in effect. In an effort to generate
income, the state of Nevada legalized gambling and the "six-month
divorce." And Will Rogers was prompted to declare "We
are the first nation in the history of the world to go to the
poorhouse in an automobile."
Yet somewhere in the mid-West, where Arthur Miller's play The
Man Who Had All The Luck takes place, there might have been
a small town that fostered young men like Dave and Amos Beeves,
the brothers around whom the play revolves. In their tight-knit
town-where everyone knows your name and your life story-the characters
seem unaffected by the larger world around them. While not exactly
prospering, Beeves' circle of friends are all employed and seemingly
secure. There are only little signs of the historical context
of the play. One of their circle was crippled during World War
I and another's marriage is threatened by his drinking problem.
Despite the prevalence of cars, the burgeoning automobile industry
is still a mystery to most folks. Because Dave seems to understand
the secrets of a car's mechanics, he possesses an aura that only
adds to the mystique of his unending good luck.
That is not to say that Miller was not affected by the times
through which he lived. He cites the years after the stock market
crash of 1929 as being eye-opening; he began to see real life
as it was lived by former bankers who now came begging to the
back door of Miller's family home in Brooklyn. Miller says The
Man Who Had All The Luck, his first professional play, "hardly
seemed a Depression story, but it was, with its obsessive terror
of failure and its guilt for success." The Man Who Had
All the Luck was written only fifteen years after that stock
market crash ushered in the Depression, and the events of the
play presumably take place only shortly after the crash. The
effects of the era were inescapable.
While our tendency is to equate Arthur Miller with American Realism,
we do the author a disservice by labeling this particular play
as such. While The Man Who Had All The Luck appears realistic,
the author makes clear to us that the struggle fought by Dave
Beeves, his friends and family, isn't tied to a specific era
or social problem. It could take place at any time, in any place.
In Timebends, his autobiography, Miller described the play as
"seemingly a genre piece about mid-America that has no connection
with any...political questions." The stage directions tell
us that the play takes place "not so long ago." In
a discussion, Miller replied to a question about location that
"[the play] doesn't take place in Ohio. It takes place hovering
about three feet over Ohio." In a timeless, boundary-less,
magical space above ground, Miller wrestles with unanswerable
questions, dramatizing enduring struggles of the soul and human
will. |
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