Which version of "Death of a Salesman" is better?

Which version of "Death of a Salesman" is better?

I've only seen the Dustin Hoffman one but I really enjoyed it.

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Suspect's Reviews

I never saw it, but by all accounts the best Willie Loman was the original on Broadway, Lee J. Cobb. and this television version (with George Segal) might be the best. The Fredric March movie has a good rep, but I've not seen that either. Saw the Hoffman, didn't think he was right for the part.





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I didn't like the Dustin Hoffman one, but I enjoyed reading the play

Hoffman said Arthur Miller told him that he was much closer to what his own father looked like, though the character was based on an uncle.

The blustery and imposing Lee J. Cobb is I think what has become most people's vision of the character, if they haven't formed their own just from reading it, but while Hoffman is obviously very different than that, for me it works better than Cobb's or Fredric March's. I think with Cobb in particular, he's so physically imposing, even playing an older and broken man, that he comes off as a bully on what is I suspect an unintended level, instead of the power of his words and warped ideals being what so effects Biff and Happy.

But it'll be a matter of taste, whichever one speaks to you. All three are good, but the March movie version is the least of them, and that was certainly Arthur Miller's least favorite as well.

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There is a fourth version I have not seen with Brian Dennehy who also played it in a Broadway revival and physically is similar to Cobb.

Lee J. Cobb originated the role on stage, but of course there have been hundreds of productions, professional on down to High School auditoriums and Dinner Theatre, since then. Dennehy won the Tony for the the celebrated 1999 revival, and George C. Scott played the role in the mid 1970s in New York as well. But I think the Dustin Hoffman, Lee J. Cobb (from a 1966 production, not the 1949 original directed by Elia Kazan) and the movie version starring March are the only major productions available on R1 DVD.

I don't believe a full version of the Dennehy run was ever broadcast on TV or released on video.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is scheduled to star in another Broadway revival in 2011, directed by Mike Nichols. Hoffman's character in Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche New York is directing a production of Salesman in the beginning of the film.

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