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Introduction
First performed as a one-act play in 1955, Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge" was later rewritten and restaged as a full-length, two-act play. In "Timebends", his autobiography, Miller speaks at length of his interest in the Brooklyn waterfront and of his relationship with Vincent James "Vinny" Longhi. Longhi and Longhi's friend, Mitch Berenson, sought out Miller to help them make known and keep alive the work of Pete Panto, a young longshoreman who had earned a gangland execution for attempting to foment a revolt against the union leadership of Joseph Ryan, the corrupt head of the International Longshoremen's Association. With Longhi and Berenson as his cicerones, Miller entered the dark, dangerous, corrupt world of Red Hook, the largely Italian, Brooklyn waterfront neighbourhood. From this experience and from a Longhi anecdote the story and atmosphere of "A view from the Bridge" seem to have been born.
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