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. Miller's Introduction to the second version comments on both the expansion of the play and its source. Of the latter, Miller remarks: “I had known the story of A View from the Bridge for a long time. A water-front worker who had known Eddie's prototype told it to me. I had never thought to make a play of it because it was too complete, there was nothing I could add.” In Timebends, his autobiography, Miller speaks at length of his interest in the Brooklyn waterfront and of his relationship with Vincent James “Vinny” Longhi, whom he describes as “a new member of the bar with political ambitions.” 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 and probably Mafia-affiliated then head of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA).