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Chester Erskine (November 29, 1905 – April 7, 1986) was an American director, producer, and writer. Biography. Chester Erskine was born in Hudson, New York and studied for a short time at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. His first directing job was Harlem, a 1929 all-black revue.
Chester Erskine was born on 29 November 1903 in Hudson, New York, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for All My Sons (1948), The Egg and I (1947) and Take One False Step (1949). He was married to Sally. He died on 7 April 1986 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Producer, Writer, Director
- November 29, 1903
- Chester Erskine
- April 7, 1986
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Sources
- Further Reading
Arthur Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in New York City. He spent his early years in comfortable circumstances, until his father, Isidore, a prosperous manufacturer, lost his wealth in the economic devastation of the Great Depression. After completing high school, Miller had to take a job in a Manhattan warehouse. He had not been much of a stu...
Act One
The play opens on a Sunday morning in August and is set in the back yard of the Keller home, located on the outskirts of an unidentified American town, a couple of years after the end of World War II. Joe Keller, who has been reading classified ads in a newspaper, banters pleasantly with his neighbors, Dr. Jim Bayliss and Frank Lubey. He explains that the apple tree had split in half during the night. It is a source of some concern, for the tree is a memorial for Joe’s son, Larry, and its des...
Act Two
It is late afternoon on the same day. Kate enters to find Chris sawing up the fallen apple tree. After telling Chris that Joe is sleeping, she asks Chris to tell Ann to go home with George. She is afraid that Steve Deever’s hatred for Joe has infected his children, and she wants them both to leave. When Ann appears, Kate returns to the house. Ann wants Chris to tell his mother about their marriage plans, and he promises to do so that evening. As he leaves, Sue enters, looking for her husband....
Act Three
It is 2:00 AM of the following morning. Alone, Kate waits for Chris to return. Jim joins her and asks what has happened; he then reveals that he has known about her husband’s guilt for some time. He contends that he hopes that Chris will go off to find himself before returning. Jim exits just as Joe comes in. Kate tells him that Jim knows the truth. Meanwhile, he is concerned about Ann, who has stayed in her room since Chris left. He talks, too, of needing Chris’s forgiveness and his intent t...
Annie
SeeAnn Deever
Dr. Jim Bayliss
Jim Bayliss is a close friend of Chris Keller. He and his wife Sue bought the house formerly owned by Steve Deever and his family; this makes him a neighbor of the Kellers. Although Jim suspects that Joe is as guilty as his former partner is, he likes the Keller family. He even tries to protect Joe from a confrontation with George Deever.
Sue Bayliss
Sue Bayliss, Jim’s wife, reveals that the town knows the truth about Joe Keller, and, unlike her husband, she basically dislikes the family. However, her animus is largely directed against Chris, not Joe. She believes that he knows his father is guilty and has profited from the situation. As a result, she deems him a phony, and she deeply resents his friendship with her husband.
American Dream
In a sense, All My Sons is a critical investigation of the quest to achieve material comfort and an improved social status through hard work and determination. In the Horatio Algermyth, even a disadvantaged, impoverished young man can attain wealth and prestige through personal fortitude, moral integrity, and untiring industry. Joe Keller is that sort of self-made man, one who made his way from blue-collar worker to factory owner. However, Joe sacrifices his integrity to materialism, and he m...
Atonement and Forgiveness
Paradoxically, Joe Keller’s suicide at the end of All My Sonsis both an act of atonement and an escape from guilt. It stems from Joe’s realization that there can be no real forgiveness for what he had done. The alternative is confession and imprisonment. Death offers Joe another alternative. Forgiveness must come from Kate and Chris. The letter written by Larry reveals that he deliberately destroyed himself during the war, profoundly shamed by his father’s brief imprisonment for fraud and pro...
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
1. Research the problem of profiteering during both World War II and the Cold War. Was it a prevalent phenomenon? What forms did it take (e.g., cost overruns, ridiculous pricing, fraudulent claims)? Describe the worst case you can find from your research. 2. Trace the influence of either Henrik Ibsen or Anton Chekhov on All My Sons. 3. Investigate Miller’s role in the investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee(HUAC), including his contempt conviction and eventual exoneration...
Climax
All My Sonshas a very traditional dramatic structure, with carefully orchestrated action that reaches a climax. Although it may be argued that each act has its own climax, with a particularly powerful one in the second act, the final climax occurs in the last act, when Joe finally realizes that he was responsible for the deaths of the American fighter pilots, his “sons.”
Conflict
Tension in drama evolves from conflict. In fact, conflict is virtually mandatory in what is termed the dramatic moment, whether in a play or in fiction. A good play generally evinces a sense of a deepening conflict that heightens the emotional tension as the play works towards its climactic moment. Conflict arises as a character strives toward a goal and is met by an obstacle to that goal. The key conflict in All My Sonsdevelops as a result of Chris’s desire to marry Ann Deever. Standing in t...
Exposition
Exposition in drama is often more of a problem than it is for writers of fiction. Somehow, information about past events and relationships must be conveyed to an audience so that the action in the present can be fully understood. Because All My Sons is a realistic play in which all the action occurs on the day in which the family crisis is met and tragically resolved, Miller has few options for revealing Joe’s fraudulent past. The action strictly adheres to a normal chronological order, allow...
In March of 1947, President Harry S. Truman presented the Truman Doctrine to the U. S. Congress. The Truman Doctrine was an anti-Communist declaration that would shape American foreign policy for over four decades. With the Cold War heating up, fears of an international communist conspiracy were rapidly growing. The Truman Doctrine was meant to all...
All My Sons was Arthur Miller’s first successful play on Broadway. In hindsight, it may seem that the work lacks the great imaginative force of his next play, Death of Salesman (1949), still widely regarded as his masterpiece, but in All My SonsMiller certainly showed that he could both use dialogue very well and construct a riveting drama in the t...
John W. Fiero
Fiero is a Ph.D., now retired, who formerly taught drama and playwriting at the University of Southwestern Louisiana and is now a freelance writer and consultant. In this essay he considers All My Sons as Miller’s first attempt to write what he would call a tragedy of the common man, comparing it with Sophocles’s great tragedy,Oedipus Rex. Writing in 1929, almost two full decades before All My Sonsopened on Broadway, critic Joseph Wood Krutch wrote a celebrated essay entitled “The Tragic Fall...
WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
1. Aristotle’s Poeticsoffers a descriptive definition of ancient Greek tragedy. For some theorists, it is the ultimate critical authority on the nature of tragedy. 2. Eugene O’Neill, in Long Day’s Journey into Night(1956), comes as close as Miller does to writing a modern, family tragedy. 3. An important sociological study, The Lonely Crowd(1969), by David Reisman, suggests that modern America has lost the capacity for guilt (necessary to tragedy). 4. Culture of Narcissism: American Life in a...
Arvin R. Wells
Wells discusses the merits of Miller’s play as a work of social thesis, but the critic also contends that the play offers a greater wealth of themes than that simple assessment—including the playwright’s probing insights into human nature. Looked at superficially, Arthur Miller’s All My Sonsmay appear to be simply a social thesis play. Such classification—a valid one if severely qualified—is suggested both by the timeliness of the story and by the presence of considerable overt social critici...
Atkinson, Brooks. “The Play in Review,” New York Times,January 30, 1947, p. 21. Atkinson, Brooks. “Welcome Stranger,” New York Times,February 9, 1947, sec. 2, p. 1. Boggs, W. Arthur. “Oedipus and All My Sons” in the Personalist,Vol. 42, 1961, pp. 555-60. Brown, John Mason. “New Talents and Arthur Miller,” Saturday Review of Literature,Vol. 30, Marc...
Adam, Julie. Versions of Heroism in Modern American Drama: Redefinitions by Miller, Williams, O’Neill and Anderson,St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Gross, Barry. “All My Sons and the Larger Context,” Modern Drama,Vol. 18, 1975, pp. 15-27. Hayman, Ronald. Arthur Miller,Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1972. Hogan, Robert. Arthur Miller,University of Minnesota P...
Midnight is a 1934 American pre-code drama film, the first directed by Chester Erskine, and starring Sidney Fox, O.P. Heggie, Henry Hull and Margaret Wycherly. It was based on a Theatre Guild play with the same name by Paul and Claire Sifton.
Chester Erskine (November 29, 1905 - April 7, 1986) was a Hollywood and Broadway director, writer, and producer. He was born in Hudson, New York and studied for a short time at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Chester Erskine (November 29, 1905 - April 7, 1986) was a Hollywood and Broadway director, writer, and producer. He was born in Hudson, New York and studied for a short time at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Apr 9, 1986 · Chester Erskine, a Shakespearean actor in his youth who became a successful director, producer and writer both on Broadway and in Hollywood, died Monday at the Beverly Hills Medical Center.
