Joseph Hirsch "The New Masses", following the July 1946 lynching of two black men and their wives in Monroe, Georgia. "The Burden" (1947) depicts a hollow-eyed American GI installing white cross gravemarkers in a military cemetery, while in the background a second GI unloads yet another jeep-full. Hirsch's poster for the original 1949 Broadway production of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" depicts a beaten-down Willy Loman trudging onward with his heavy suitcases. Hirsch was of German-Jewish heritage, but occasionally explored Christian themes. In "The Crucifixion" (1945), we see a close-up of the cross from behind, and the thick timbers block any
Dustin Hoffman and my brother, a high-school varsity football player, was Biff." Author Marie Brenner notes that Hoffman "has been obsessed with the play" throughout his career: "For years he has wanted to be Willy Loman; when he discovered that Arthur Miller was his neighbor in Connecticut, they began to talk about it in earnest." For Hoffman, the story also left a deep emotional impact from the time he first read it: Hoffman rehearsed for three weeks with the play's original star, Lee J. Cobb, and remembers seeing his stage performance: "I'll never forget that period in my life. It was so