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In 1951, just as Columbia Pictures was about to release the film Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller threatened to sue the studio. He hated the movie, but the real target of his wrath was a short subject, Career of a Salesman, that Columbia had commissioned to be shown before every screening of the feature film. Its purpose was to reassure the public that Willy Loman did not represent the "modern" salesman and, by implication, that the story was not anti- American.
Miller prevailed. Columbia agreed to withdraw Career of a Salesman, and this ten-minute prologue has lain neglected in archives for over fifty years. When I finally tracked it down in the Stock Footage Library of Archive Films in New York, I found that the script had never been copyrighted and may no longer exist. Consequently, I made a transcript- appended here- that includes framing comments by producer Stanley Kramer and short clips from the feature film, with classroom analyses by two "experts": Jack S. Schiff, a professor in the Business Center at City College of New York, and Robert A. Whitney, president of National Sales Executives.
Today, this odd artifact looks like a parody, and Miller characterized it as such at the time. To him, the speakers in the film "all sounded like Willy Loman with a diploma, fat with their success." Confronting the Columbia executives, Miller asked, "Why the hell did you make the picture if you're so ashamed of it? Why should anybody not get up and walk out of the theatre if Death of a Salesman is so outmoded and pointless?" (Miller, Time bends 315-16).
In fact, the short subject helps to clarify what went wrong with the feature film. Career of a Salesman also sheds light on the political climate of the time, and on later attempts by business people to distance themselves from Miller's story. Death of a Salesman is a canonical work of modern drama. Career of a Salesman is a mere footnote, but it is also a fascinating piece of flotsam from the 1950s showing how filmmakers tried to make Miller's work more palatable during the Cold War.
Within a few months of its opening on Broadway in February 1949, Death of a Salesman received its...