She had perseverance.
She started out in the 30s, in some pretty big films, such as 1938’s You Can’t Take It With You and 1937’s Stage Door, then retreated to B films at Columbia, but got herself over to MGM and worked her way up to stardom.
Beginning with Easter Parade in 1948 and continuing on through the 50s Ann Miller was the studio’s go-to girl.
She topped this off with a brilliant late career burst when she and fellow MGMer Mickey Roony took to the stage in 1979’s Sugar Babies.
Miller came from a hard-scrabble Texas back round, and had to financially support her mother early in her career (her parents divorced when she was nine). She took on various dancing jobs in Hollywood in the early Thirties before RKO, one of our very favorite studios, signed her as a contract player thinking she was 18 (she wasn’t; Miller at 14 had faked a birth certificate).
In 1939, she appeared on Broadway in George White’s Scandals, and made a significant splash. Columbia Pictures picked up her contract and plunked her in a number of World War II morale boosters — including 1942’s True To The Army and 1943’s Reveille With Beverly
MGM stepped significantly into Miller’s career in the late Forties and used her wisely in several of the period’s best films: the as mentioned Easter Parade, 1949’s On The Town and 1953’s Kiss Me Kate.
Miller was known principally for two things: her long legs and her astonishing way with fast tap dancing routines.
For this reason it’s interesting to note who Miller most admired as a movie dancer. Answer: Eleanor Powell. Although Joe never met Eleanor Powell he did interview Ann Miller several times over the years. Miller told him she considered Powell the best tap dancer ever.
Miller’s movie career wasn’t especially prolific by classic Hollywood standards — just under 50 credits over some 65 years. Her last big screen outing — David Lynch’s 2001 mystery, Mulholland Drive — is a beauty, and Miller is solid in it as a blowsy but level-headed landlady (named Coco) with words of down-to-earth wisdom for a young female tenant (Naomi Watts) on the loose.
Miller died of lung cancer three years later. She was 80 years old.
Thanks so much for featuring Ms Miller today. Always a bright addition to anything she appeared in.
I think she was right to say Eleanor Powell was a (slightly) better tap dancer, but Ann had it all over Ms Powell as a personality. And eccentric to the max. Very cool lady.
Reading about her is a fun way to start the day. Thanks again. (As I said here not long ago, check out the Great American Soup commercial(s). A real treat).
As ANN MILLER said so often herself “I was never the star in films,” but she was a real showbiz trooper that’s for sure…
And never was that more evident than when I saw her on stage at the Pantages theater in HOLLYWOOD in 1979, appearing with Mickey Rooney in the smash hit SUGAR BABIES, before it went to Broadway.
As Joe said, Miller told him she considered Eleanor Powell the best tap dancer ever and who can argue with that coming from a great dancer herself.
Of course, if she was to rely on big screen musicals to support her she starved to death… So like so many other performers she adapted, finding occasional work in television, and even a small cameo on the big screen in 1976’s mediocre WON, TON, TON THE DOG WHO SAVED HOLLYWOOD, or at least the dog that found a day’s work for so many other old distressed stars, who just needed to work again.
Ann Miller did carve out a niche for herself by being available for so many interviews, whether it was to talk about the old MGM days, the stars she worked with and alike. But she was also very open about her sad marriages, like during an interview with Robert Osborne for Turner Classic Movies, Ann Miller said that when she was 9 months pregnant with her first husband Reese Milner’s child, he got drunk one night, beat Ann up and threw her down a flight of stairs. Ann broke her back and had to give birth with a broken back.
On the lighter side, in another interview on TCM, she told a story about how each time she needed to dress for a dance on screen, the tops of her stockings needed to be sewn to the costume she was wearing. This was a tedious process and needed to be repeated each time there was a run, etc. One day, she suggested to the man supplying the stockings that he add a top to the stockings so they could be worn as one piece… and that’s how pantyhose was born… Well, maybe.
Ann Miller has the same outgoing, snappy personality as Jane Withers, who’s also been a delight on numerous TV interviews. They could be showbiz sisters, as both gals had so many iconic highlights in their careers, and yet sadly their friend Ronald Reagan as SAG president in 1960, doomed their future pension plans by siding with the studios in not paying residuals for all those pre-1960 great performances… They didn’t call it the “big giveaway” for nothing in HOLLYWOOD labor history.
And to add insult to injury, when Ann and Mickey Rooney, and all the other MGM talent later appeared in the THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT trilogy, their compensation was a mere $300, but they did get some small residual to follow.
If any of these stars, writers, directors had any idea that we’d still be watching their movies 60, 70, 80 years later… And it’s the same for old TV shows, as through digital restoration they really do look their BEST, but somehow it’s the memories you had when you first saw them in your life, that really make them so special!