My journey ends here...
ROSTEN Norman
Date of birth : January 1, 1913.
Date of death : March 7, 1995.
Address : 22 Remsen Street, Brooklyn.
Practise: poet and novelist. He also wrote the screenplay of the movie version of "A View From the Bridge" (1961) of Arthur Miller.
Story
Son of Russian immigrants.
He grew up in Coney Island (New York City) and lived during his whole life in Brooklyn.
He began to write when he attended the Brooklyn College and obtained a scholarship to go to the University of Wisconsin.
He published many poetry books, two short stories and few plays.
In September 1937, Arthur Miller met a comrade with the Brooklyn accent, native to Coney Island whose name was Norman Rosten.
He was a year older than Miller, had graduated from the Brooklyn College, and worked with the WPA Federal Theater and Writers Project when he had won a scholarship. Soon, he impressed Miller with his writing references which had been published in Partisan Review, The New Masses and Poetry Magazine.
Besides, Miller soon wrote an article about their first meeting in the humorous newspaper of the university, The Gargoyle.
Rosten also wrote some plays for the radio of the university, and for the campus theater. With Arthur, he shared not only the interest of writing, but also the same political convictions, maybe even more ardent than Miller's ones. One of the first thing Rosten did at the University of Michigan was to join the Young Communist League.
Thus, they formed a group of three friends, Arthur, Norman and Mary, until this one introduced them to her room-mate, Hedda Rowinski, who studied psychology, in order to work in the social world. She became Norman's girlfriend and would later be his wife.
Thus, the Rostens became Arthur's oldest friends.
In 1938, the Rostens had settled in New York, had got married and found an apartment in Remsen Street, Brooklyn Heights. They had a daughter named Patricia.
Mary Slattery was their neighbor, since she had gave up the university and followed Arthur.
He met Marilyn at the beginning of 1955, shortly after her moving in New York, through the photographer Sam
Shaw, a mutual friend :
.
He attended, with his wife, on December 12, 1955, the premiere of "The Rose Tattoo" :
Marilyn nicknamed him "Claude" because of his resemblance with actor Claude Rains.
At the time when her affair with Miller was still a secret, they often
met up at the Rosten's home or in their country house in Long Island.
,
,
On July 1, 1956, he attended the wedding of Marilyn and Arthur Miller :
,
She wrote him a letter dated September 11, 1958, from the Hotel Del Coronado where she was shooting "Some Like it Hot" :
.Card sent to Marilyn, 1958 :
.
.
Card for Marilyn's birthday, June 1960 : 
,
.
They remained friends until her death.
She showed them her gratitude for their friendship by bequeathing to
them the sum of 5 000$ for the education of their daughter Patricia, but the legal quarrels didn't allow to release this money before 1975, several years after this one had graduated.
Bibliography
"Marilyn : an Untold Story",
Norman Rosten, New York, Signet books, 1973.
"Marilyn Among Friends", Sam Shaw et Norman Rosten, New York, Henry Holt, 1987.
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