Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller is considered one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century. His best known plays include 'All My Sons,' 'A View from the Bridge,' 'The Crucible' and the Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Death of a Salesman.'

- http://www.biography.com/people/arthur-miller-9408335

The crucible & McCarthyism 

Arthur Miller actually questioned and convicted by the (HUAC) committee, because his ex-friend Elia Kazan, actor/writiter who had given evidence against his fellow Hollywood starts to protect his own career, an argument between miller and Kansan ensued regarding his testomonys and the two didn't speak again for 10 years, shortly after this Miller went To Salem, Massachusetts to research the witch trials of 1692. After the play was written and first performed, he applied for a new passport, but was asked to come before the house committee of un-American activities, there he was asked to give names of people known to him to be communist sympathisers (they had people in mind already), when he refused they convicted him of contempt of congress in May 1957, he was found five thousand dollars, blacklisted and refused a passport to see the opening night of the Crucible in London, a light punishment compared to others. His conviction was although overturned in 1958 by the court of appeals . 

In 1957, Brooks Atkinson wrote about Miller’s stand against HUAC: "He refused to be an informer. He refused to turn his private conscience over to administration by the state. He has accordingly been found in contempt of Congress. That is the measure of the man who has written these high-minded plays."

The contempt ruling was overturned two years later.