About the work
Arthur Miller's „All My Sons" was premiered in New York in 1947 — Miller's first success and forerunner of „Death of a Salesman". The play is based on a real Second World War scandal: an American defence company had delivered faulty aircraft parts, causing the deaths of American pilots.
Plot
A suburb, a summer Sunday in the late 1940s. Joe Keller, a middle-class manufacturer, lives with his wife Kate and his son Chris in a comfortable house with a garden. His second son Larry, a wartime pilot, has been missing for three years — Kate refuses to accept his death. Chris wants to marry Larry's former fiancée Ann Deever — daughter of Joe's former business partner Steve, who alone went to prison for the delivery of 21 faulty cylinder heads. The crime: 21 American pilots died because of the faulty parts. Joe claims he was ill on the day of the delivery and not at the factory — Steve alone decided to ship them. Ann's brother George, returning from a prison visit to her father, in the course of the day uncovers the truth: Joe knew all along and let Steve take the blame alone. In a letter from Larry to Ann — which she finally reveals — the family learns that Larry deliberately crashed his plane out of shame over his father's guilt. Joe, overwhelmed by the truth, goes into the house and shoots himself. Chris breaks down.
Cultural significance
All My Sons is Miller's first major hit and a key work of post-war American realism. The play is a moral indictment of American capitalism and its inability to accept responsibility — the famous closing line „They were all my sons. And I guess they were" gives the play its title. Filmed in 1948 with Edward G. Robinson; productions with John Lithgow, Stockard Channing (Broadway 1997), Sally Field and Bill Pullman (London/Broadway 2014, 2019). Required reading at American high schools.