Playwright Arthur Miller and theatrical designer Robert Edmond Jones '10, will give the Spencer lectures for 1953, Archibald MacLeish, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory and chairman of the invitation committee, announced yesterday.
It is the first time since the Theodore Spencer Memorial Foundation was established that two men will deliver the lecture.
Although the dates have not yet been definitely set, MacLeish said it is possible Miller will speak here shortly after the beginning of the spring term, while Jones will speak late in April.
Death of a Salesman
Miller, who graduated from the University of Michigan in 1938, is best known for this Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "Death of a Salesman." He also received the New York Drama Critics Award twice, in 1947 and 1949. Miller has written the novel, "Focus," "All My Sons," and several other plays.
Jones--a designer, producer, and director--is, according to MacLeish, "one of the foremost scenic designers in the country." He has done the designing for Marc Connelly's "Green Pastures," Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh," and Alban Berg's opera, "Wozzeck." He has also done "Oedipus Rex," "Macbeth," and "Richard III." Jones began work in designing for color films as early as 1933.
The Spencer Foundation was set up in 1949, in memory of Theodore Spencer, who held the Boylston professorship for the three years preceding his death.
T.S. Eliot '10 gave the first lecture, in 1951, on "Poetry and Drama." Last spring, stage and screen director Elia Kazan gave the second on "Show Business and the Realities."
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