In London I played Biff [on stage] with a great deal of anguish and determination and desperation to the point where the part became very personal to me . . . With the exception of
Fredric March, the principal actors of the movie had already played their parts in the play in one place or another. So during rehearsals, when [Frederic March] would be telling jokes right up until the director yelled, "Action!", I found myself resenting the way he worked. Not that he wasn't a nice guy . . . It's just that he had never done the investing of his intelligence and feeling in a study of what Willy [Loman] was about. In fact,
Arthur Miller thought March played Loman as if he was simply nuts, and never favored what he did in the film at all.