The Man Who Had All the Luck

by Arthur Miller, Christopher Bigsby (Introduction)

The forgotten classic that launched the career of one of America's greatest playwrights
A Penguin Classic

It took more than fifty years for The Man Who Had All the Luck to be appreciated for what it truly the first stirrings of a genius that would go on to blossom in such masterpieces as Death of a Salesman and The Crucible . Infused with the moral malaise of the Depression era, the parable-like drama centers on David Beeves, a man whose every obstacle to personal and professional success seems to crumble before him with ease. But his good fortune merely serves to reveal the tragedies of those around him in greater relief, offering what David believes to be evidence of a capricious god or, worse, a godless, arbitrary universe. David’s journey toward fulfillment becomes a nightmare of existential doubts, a desperate grasp for reason in a cosmos seemingly devoid of any, and a struggle that will take him to the brink of madness. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction by Christopher Bigsby.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, Classics, Theatre, Audiobook, 20th Century

83 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Works of American playwright Arthur Asher Miller include Death of a Salesman (1949), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Crucible (1953).


This essayist, a prominent figure in literature and cinema for over 61 years, composed a wide variety, such as celebrated A View from the Bridge and All My Sons , still studied and performed worldwide. Miller often in the public eye most famously refused to give evidence to the un-American activities committee of the House of Representatives, received award for drama, and married Marilyn Monroe. People at the time considered the greatest Miller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_...

Reviews

[Linds · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the early “forgotten” plays of Arthur Miller. Originally a failure that played for four days and almost derailed Miller’s playwriting career, it has had some mildly successful revivals in the 2000’s and 2010’s. For some reason it seems to resonate with English audiences more than American ones and was quite successful on the West End.

David is a young man man (22) that builds a thriving auto shop. His beloved fiancé’s abusive and troublesome Father is a thorn in his side and threatens Davis with physical harm if he marries his girlfriend. Well, the fiancé’s Father dies suddenly and leaves her a large profitable farm and money in the bank. His obstacle is removed and he has everything he ever wanted. Meanwhile his brother, Father, and friends all are going through trials of life (broken athletic dreams, no wife/girlfriend to love them, infertility, bankruptcy, crippling injury, alcoholism, etc.)

He works himself up asking himself “why me?” when his family/friends are hard workers/good men that didn’t do anything wrong and wondering when it is going to be his time to pay the piper. His wife becomes pregnant and he works himself into almost a nervous breakdown worrying that something is going to go wrong with the baby or his wife will die in childbirth to balance the cosmic scales.

Or what if it there is no cosmic scales? What if life is random chaos and everything you build can be snatched away at any time with no warning? That is horrifying to David too.

There is an interesting scene that stands out. His best friend Gus’ auto-shop fails, despite Gus being an exponentially better trained and higher skilled mechanic than David. Gus is Austrian and customers weren’t going to a foreigner’s shop. They have a conversation about the concept of privilege but don’t have the modern language to know how to define it or describe it.

I’m in a bit of an Arthur Miller rabbit hole at the moment, the result of previously being in a Marilyn Monroe rabbit hole. I’m very annoyed with Miller for being supposedly so liberal but being unable to let go or “forgive” 🙄 Marilyn for her sexual past from before they were married. That, however, is getting way too into the weeds for a review about this play.

I definitely see parallels to ‘Death of a Salesman.’ The family dynamic of one Father and two sons. The less successful circle of friends coming to the realization that despite working hard their lives amounted to little more than struggle and bills.

Apparently Arthur Miller “missed out” of going to World War 2 because a football injury messed up his knee, but all his friends went. If this play has to be boiled down to one theme I would say it’s survivor’s guilt. It holds up (fairly) well to the test of time and is worth a read.

[Emilie · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the ashes of the American Dream, Luck demands a new system of worship. Its rules are elusive and David, a seemingly infinitely lucky man, becomes paralysed by the feeling of an imminent reckoning. Finally, the scales appear to balance when a fall presumably kills his unborn son. David, relieved, sinks everything into mink - eager to take cuts in domestic fulfilment to rationalise precarious investment. However, when his mentor is undone by a silkworm-in-mink-food incident, David both evades the plague and becomes a father. Now, pushed to the brink of madness, he reckons not with a capricious God, but an unknowing one, inexpertly flinging odd-looking kibble to one side.

The bad luck never comes, but neither is the good experienced in full. Familiar to anyone who has overpaid for pick & mix at a cinema, it is the pressure to judge the scales which undoes him.

[Pysia Idolkowska · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great play.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts off slow but grows in existential insight and tension as it progresses.

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Miller rightly mocks the American Dream. Our fortune depends on luck more than effort or merit.

[Sophie Bloor · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars really. Felt like the prequel to Death of a Salesman. I liked the themes a lot, even for an early play Miller is so good at dealing with existentialism, fate and, in this particular play, when we should act and when we should learn to let life pass by. Every man is born with a jellyfish- that’s what I took away.

[Bali Briant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't buy The Penguin Arthur Miller: Collected Plays with the intention of reading the book play by play, in chronological order. I thought it would sit, and I'd read Death of a Salesman, and occasionally I might sample the others. But after reading the introduction I was inspired; I continued right on to the first play, which was this one. A bit of research reveals that this wasn't Miller's first play written, but it was his first one on Broadway. It didn't do well, receiving poor reviews and closing after four shows.

I liked it a lot. I can conceive of the dialogue being better in some places, (a little more oblique, maybe) but altogether it was great. Miller maintained suspense by encouraging us, the audience, to share David's conviction that something tragic was set to come upon him any minute. We think, along with David, that his lucky streak is bound to end badly sooner or later. The story keeps us following the characters wants and ambitions while also providing ample thematic development. At times it's even comic, while still feeling like a tragedy, and the premise's final affirmation is hopeful despite itself. And I always hold hope as the best way to end a story.

[Razi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arthur Miller's earliest work and it is simply charming. A tragedy in reverse where fates conspire to destroy an honest person but fail while people around him go on living normally, meeting tragic ends! I loved this little piece and the concept of the jelly fish on water: floating not causing tides but going along and sometime living on to grab another tide while at others to end up on the beach only to be killed and dried stiff by the sun. This is 'Death of a Salesman' with a positive twist. When everybody else was busy trying to write the Great American Tragedy, Miller chose to make his start off the beaten path by writing this play which is not exactly a comedy but certainly not a tragedy either. Everybody else suffered and stayed positive, while David Beeves, our protagonist suffered from the 'European Disease' of existentialist angst, expecting and hoping for a disaster every minute while good things kept on happening to him. Excellent idea, great play.

[Ivonne Rovira · Rating 4 out of 5]

This must be Arthur Miller’s least-known play; I’m pretty knowledgeable about literature and theater, and I had never heard of The Man Who Had All the Luck.

It’s a rare happy ending for Miller, and, while this is no Death of a Salesman nor The Crucible, I enjoyed it pretty much. The play is a treatise on free will versus fate: Do we make our own luck through hard work and perspicacity, or is the way that one character says: “A man is a jellyfish. The tide goes in and the tide goes out. About what happens to him, a man has very little to say.” ​Definitely worth a listen, and, as always, L.A. Theatre Works’ capable actors do a fabulous job.

[Khadija Mohideen · Rating 5 out of 5]

*spoilers*

listen I know this is one of the less famous of miller's plays but I really enjoyed it, okay? I did think David's luck would wear out, and perhaps if he isn't the jellyfish riding the tides, letting circumstance wash him into sea, I thought maybe he would come across bad luck through his own hands, something rubbishy that he does, as opposed to outside elements knocking him down. but his luck is absolutely illogical, and thats actually how luck works. the end of the play ends faux-hopefully. David will have a good life materially, but his disbelief in his Midas touch will make him spend the rest of his days in anxiety for a chaos that'll never befall him.

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Arthur Miller. No one does it better. There are so many levels to everything he writes. R.I.P. Arthur.

[David Crumm · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Cautionary Tale about the Time It Takes to Mature as a Writer
I've always been fascinated by Arthur Miller, because we both studied writing at The University of Michigan and we both won two Hopwood Awards, which we both assumed would lead to a successful career in writing. Obviously, Miller's globally celebrated career ascended to heights far beyond my own modest career as a journalist, editor and publisher. But, in our earliest years, we both shared that experience as talented, anxious young men who left UofM with the wind of Hopwoods pushing our aspirations and we toiled for years with uncertainty.
In fact, neither of my own Hopwood-winning manuscripts were ever published, nor were Miller's Hopwood winners.
By the time he staged this little-known play in 1944, four years after he graduated UofM, he was uncertain of his future as a writer. When this play proved to be a miserable failure, lasting only a few days before it closed down, he seriously considered another line of work. In my own life, I found disappointment after four years at a small regional newspaper. I also thought, after my four years of toiling, I might leap into a much bigger publication nationally but was turned down repeatedly. That's when I decided to spend a couple of years in Central and Eastern Kentucky truly learning my craft as a journalist, which proved to be the most crucial years in my own career. From there, I wound up at the Detroit Free Press, a truly national-class publication at the time. It took Miller three years after the failure of this play to finally make his mark on Broadway with 1947's All My Sons.
I have never forgotten something my mentor at UofM told me about my early writing, even my own Hopwood winners. "You're learning the craft and you can be an excellent craftsman, but you won't have anything worth writing until you've lived long enough to have really experienced life." That mentor, Warren Hecht, said this to me more than once and it comforted me during my years of struggling. Of course, now in my 60s, it makes perfect sense.
Perhaps Miller had mentors who said something like this to him, because, even though he did consider taking up another line of work, he did continue as a playwright and thank goodness he did.
Once again: I would never claim to have Miller's skills and I've certainly not attained Miller's worldwide success, however, the parallels of anxiety and maturing in those early years of our lives in writing fascinate me.
I had never seen a production of The Man Who Had All the Luck. Although it was revived in more recent years, pretty much nobody has seen this play (well, only a small number of audiences have ever seen it).
I can see why the play failed. Miller sometimes referred to it as a "fable," but I think that's just an excuse for his lack of maturity in understanding such characters. In this play, he moves them around like pieces on a chess board to prove a rather esoteric point. None of these characters is more than a two-dimensional figure. And the rather abstract issue he wants to explore, which is whether too much success might drive a man crazy, seems like a pretty silly issue on which to hang a memorable drama.
I think it's only worth reading to see a young writer struggling at his craft.
I would never want readers to revisit either of my two Hopwood manuscripts or my early writing in my first journalistic years before my years in Kentucky. I cringe at the flaws in those early works.
For Miller, I guess fans do want to "read into" early works like this more value than really is present in these pages. I'm astonished that anyone ever tried to revive this play.
However, I am fascinated to read what he wrote, more as a cautionary tale exemplifying the length of time it takes a writer to mature than anything else.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd actually say this was more of like a 4.5 stars. I save the 5 stars for All My Sons, Death of A Salesman etc.

There's something about reading Miller where I feel like I'm talking to my grandfather. It's very familiar and relatable, even with the heightened period language...

As I was reading through, I highlighted text that reminded me of Death of a Salesman and All My Sons. This was the foundation for a lot of Miller's plays and after reading his autobiography Timebends: A Life... I can see how he came to write on these topics. I think what has always drawn me to Miller and, in my opinion, made him timeless is the philosophical questions he brings up that every human asks themselves at one time or another:

DAVID: How do you know when to wait and when to take things in your hand and make them happen?

Essentially Miller seems to be wrestling with God, or the idea of God, especially in the very Protestant America he's living in at the time this play was written. Who is in control here? Us or Him? Coming from a religious background where God was supposed to protect, pave a way for, and close doors for his followers, all we had to do was believe in Him, serve Him, and trust that He was making a way... and also in the same hand, know that He "giveth and taketh".

Being an actor and in an industry where we're told to do whatever it takes to get the job, but also encouraged to let go and not care too much, these questions resonated with me a lot... and I found myself understanding David's dire case of imposter syndrome. Later to be answered with these looming fears a very results-oriented culture has pulsating underneath their skin:

J.B: I'm only a failure, Dave. the world is full of failures. All a man needs is one mistake and he's a failure.

When I opened the play it said The Man Who Had All The Luck : A Fable.When I think of fables, I think of somewhat magical elements although I'm fairly certain those technically aren't the elements of a fable. But there is this looming godlike thing waiting to happen throughout the entire play that makes me think... maybe there is a god? Maybe?

I also find, as I'm detoxing from Christianity, Miller has a great way of showing how when good things happen, people are quick to say that God has his hand in it. However, when bad things happen, they just aren't favored by God... or whatever. Miller is smart enough to use the word "LUCK" as to not polarize anyone but still, how people can connect the dots in any way to make sense of life is something I found as a theme in this.

Overall, I loved this. I'm trying to read all of Miller this upcoming year. All the good, bad and ugly.

[Scripturiently Swag The Dragon-Hearted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yaws. I thought the minks were metaphors for something else throughout the whole play until the end HAW!

I also thought this was supposed to be an "upbeat" Arthur Miller play. It wasn't, but I could forgive that because it was an Arthur Miller play. Had it been written by any other playwright, I would have been let down :)

It had echoes of Death of a Salesman in it, but it read like an essay (in a way). Each instance was its own part. In other words, in act 1, I found myself thinking, "thesis." In act 2, I thought, "body paragraph #1." Act 3 was "body paragraph #2," and so on. Maybe I'm just too institutionalized to let go of this essay-istic conception I had of Miller's play. I don't know. I did like each instance though, and how they all built on each other.

This play definitely seemed more preachy than Death of a Salesman, but I give Miller a lot of credit. An artist has to find the balance between preaching and being impossibly bland and pointless. This was one of Miller's earlier plays (or so I understand), so I'm super-excited that he even had a thematic viewpoint to begin with :)

One last thing: I loved the hypocrisy of Dave's wife, Hester. In the last act, she was ready to move out because of the bad financial circumstances that loomed on the horizon. She thought Dave was crazy. And he might very well have been so. However, as the failure was averted, Hester did a 180 and actively decided to stay and enjoy her good fortune. She even encouraged David to come up the stairs with her to see their new child or whatever. And her nature was established even earlier in the play: after Dave had another one of his trademark successes, Hester said something like, "I wish you could always act this way!" (Which could be interpreted as her wishing he would always be successful) What's even more interesting is that Miller didn't explore this superficiality as much as he could have. Sure, it might have muddied the plot and the thematic message of the play, but Hester's character was really fascinating.

Anyway, I liked it. It was "upbeat" and relateable, but more could have been done with Hester's character.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Christopher Bigsby writes, ‘At the core of the plot is a profound apprehension with the magnitude of human liberty. Beyond offering an account of a man’s decline into madness, and eventual redemption, it explores the degree to which so many of the characters become complicit in their own irrelevance, the degree to which they collude in the idea of man as victim, as a subject of cosmic ironies. At its centre is the existential belief, resisted by most of the characters, including David in his madness, that we are the sum of our actions. If not believers in God, a number of them are believers in fate, which is the word they choose to give to their own personal and social paralysis.’ This play is about young David Beeves. David owns several prosperous business, has a successful marriage, and is a happy father. Viewing the frustration and unhappiness of other people in the small town where he lives, David becomes obsessed with the idea that some disaster awaits him, too, and he tries to precipitate it. A critic wrote about this play: ‘This is a strange play for a self-declared Marxist to write. Whatever else it is doing – and there is at its heart a debate about human agency and the capacity for change – on one level it seems to be concerned with the need of a rich man to justify his riches.’ [MIller -2001]

[Edna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Act-1
Hester and Dave want to get married, but Falk the father won’t allow it. Dan hits Falk in the night with his car. It was dark! He is dead
Dave is working on the Mormon car and Gus comes along wanting to open up a car repair shop. He helped Dave repair the car while Dave so tired falls asleep. He is getting paid $60 for the repair of the car but no one else knows that it wasn’t him. It was the man who left his coat covering Dave as he slept and that would be Gus.
Act-2
Amos plays baseball and a scout said he would go to his house and they’re waiting for him. Amos will never get a baseball contract because he has been trained in a basement and gets fearful when he’s in a real field full of people. Everyone says that Davey has all the luck and now he finds out his wife Hess is pregnant.
Act-3
Hess is in labour. Davie feels that he has had good luck undeserving. He thinks the baby is dead but he has a beautiful baby boy. More good luck. A month later, the mink that he is raising or 30 of them will be dying. Dibble had many and are dying. But for some reason, Dave did not give his mink the same food that Dibble did it looked like it had turned bad with worms. So all the money he had riding on the mink was saved, because none of his mink died So all the money he had riding on the mink was saved, because none of his mink died Again the man who had all the luck.

[Angelee · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those plays that really makes me wish Goodreads allowed half stars to let this fall in the 3.5 territory where it belongs. Rock solid and unfaltering in its parabolic message throughout the play, though maybe a bit overwritten in stage directions and the more expository elements of the setting. There’s certain a cosmic lesson to walk away with from Arthur Miller’s first “real” stage work, one I found surprisingly uneasy to digest for a few days. But despite its failure to launch back when Miller first got this in production, I think the unique collective despondency of the mid-2020s could use the catharsis of (and would really take to) a revival. As someone else on here said better than I could, the play is really a contemplation on survivor’s guilt, which is the precise lens through which I feel a modern adaptation or re-staging would really land today. Overall, a very good and way too harshly panned early work from Miller.

[6girlsmom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a nodding acquaintance with Arthur Miller plays, but never enjoyed reading them very much. I decided to try the audio production of this play, and found it very enjoyable, although listening to a play up is a little more challenging than watching one.

David is a self taught auto mechanic in love with his childhood sweetheart. The two have plans to marry, but my first face her father, a hard man with a dislike for David. A tragic accident renders this conversation unnecessary, and it is at this point that David starts experiencing what he thinks is extraordinary luck, while watching those around him fail to realize any of their own dreams.

David begins waiting for the other shoe to drop. After all, such fortune must eventually come with a high price, right?

[Abdul Alhazred · Rating 4 out of 5]

This play was like a tightrope walk between some very ugly dramatic pits, both the cosmic justice of that old time religion, and fatalism. In addition it very narrowly avoided a soap operatic piece of forced drama toward the end (thinking of the wife's "plan" here). By time of resolution though it gave a nice ambiguous secular jewish answer to the question and called it a day. Put me in the mind of the many stories in A Serious Man that deal with these same questions but resolve even more ambiguously.
Strong performances and a compelling perennial problem of luck felt this feeling very fresh despite the 80 year old setting. The age shows mostly in the peripheral role of the women characters which would need some fleshing out and real contributions in a modern adaptation.

[Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first play that Arthur Miller published. It drags a little in the first scene, but after that it’s a good read. Arthur Miller is probably my favorite playwright and I bought a book that contains all his published plays, from which I read this play. Going to make my way through all of them in the coming months. Wish I could see them performed, but reading them has its own pleasures.

[Zee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t know what minks were so there was a little bit of googling involved for context. The stage is set for a bunch of white men sitting around talking about whether their fortune has come, what is due, whether the American Dream is possible or whether it’s a coin flip. You can tell Miller wants to traverse this rocky ground without taking the same opining and emphasis he has in his more popular plays. Luck is the residue of design, or whatever the baseball people once said.

[Zac Stojcevski · Rating 5 out of 5]

A blessed, humble, fearful man with a perpetual imposter syndrome overlay in an entertaining play about the person who makes their own luck vs those who plan and fail. Overtones of Noah, Abraham - but minus God in discussion. Is the Godless man cursed to fear an inevitable demise. No faith in anything and when he does, he runs, believing he has to be punished. Intriguing that this was Miller's first Broadway play.

[Brandy Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life is good, and that makes David uncomfortable. He's living the luckiest 3 years of his life but finding them psychologically unbearable. While most stories grapple with the opposite scenario, this play asks the equally maddening question - Why do good things happen to people who haven't earned it?

[Kristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arthur Miller had such a knack for portraying the depths of emotion and the lengths people will go to for self preservation. This is one of his first plays, yet his talent is on full display. I can definitely see the roots for themes he tackles in later work.

It's my goal now to read everything he's written.

[Rinku · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another complex human juggernaut of a story. There were characters who wouldn't take ownership of their actions or destiny. There was another character who couldn't take life's joys and appreciate them. They were too busy waiting for bad news to come.

I found this to be a good lesson to stay present in your life and to take it as it comes the good and the bad.

[Anna C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Miller's theatrical debut, so it has some of the rough edges one associates with juvenilia, but it still connected with me. The most surprisingly part is that the play almost has a magical realism feel, which is completely antithetical to my understanding of Miller as the arch American realist.

[Mani Gobind · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am unsure as to what Arthur Miller wants us to feel with this one.

The reader neither feels any sympathy, nor jealousy, nor any connect with the protagonist.
Oh, and Hester, she's one annoying bitch.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a man who has had EXTREMELY good luck (think J.D. Vance), I was moved by this play. I remember before my son was born thinking thoughts similar to the protagonist in this book. I’m still digesting...

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the play generally, but couldn't tell if there was a deeper meaning that i was missing because I am dumb or if it just feels like that because I was searching for a deeper layer that wasn't there. Either way I couldn't find it, but am looking forward to the other plays of Miller.

[Andrew Hanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

really one of the great works about paranoia (not as good as the beast in the jungle but that’s ok). also what a crazy shaggy dog kind of plot how do you have mink farming and the detroit tigers in the same play.