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FEATURED In This Month’s Body House Chronicles is the Very Beautiful… ANN MILLER

Ann Miller was born, Johnnie Lucille Collier, on April 12, 1923, in Chireno, Texas.

Miller passed away on January 22, 2004, (age 80) in Los Angeles, California. Her resting place is Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, CA.

She was an actress, dancer and singer.

Ann was the only child of Clara Emma [nee: Birdwell] who was hearing impaired and half Cherokee and her father John Alfred Collier, who was a criminal lawyer.

Her father represented the likes of the Barrow Gang (of Bonnie and Clyde infamy), Machine Gun Kelly, and Baby Face Nelson, among others.

Ann Miller is best remembered for her work in the Classical Hollywood cinema musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.

Her early work included roles in Frank Capra‘s You Can’t Take It with You (1938) and the Marx Bros. film Room Service (1938).

Miller later starred in the movie musical classics Charles Walters‘ Easter Parade (1948), Stanley Donen‘s On the Town (1949) and George Sidney‘s Kiss Me Kate (1953).

Ann’s final film role was in David Lynch‘s Mulholland Drive (2001).

In 1960, Miller received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 2017, The Daily Telegraph named her one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.

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Ann was known to be a fantastic dancer with 2 of the fastest feet in Hollywood.

Here’s a scene with Fred Astaire below from “It Only Happens When I Dance With You”

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EARLY LIFE

Ann Miller and her family lived in Chireno, Texas until she was nine. That’s when her mother left

her philandering father and moved to Los Angeles, California, taking Ann with her.

This was a significant event since the year would have been 1932 or 1933 which were the early years of the Great Depression.

As Ann’s mother was hearing-impaired and half Cherokee Indian it was extremely difficult for her to hold down a job at that point in history.

So at the age of 10, Miller began getting jobs dancing in various Hollywood nightclubs as she looked much older than she was. This is how Ann supported herself and her mother while being home-schooled by her mother.

After all, Ann had begun to take dance classes at the age of five, after suffering from rickets.

Her mother believed that these classes would help strengthen her young daughter’s legs and she was right.

It was during this time that she adopted the stage name Ann Miller, which she kept throughout her career.

Ann was considered a child dance prodigy.

In an interview for a “behind the scenes” documentary on the making of the film That’s Entertainment! Part III (1994), she said Eleanor Powell was an early inspiration.

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CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 170px-Ann_Miller_%28handprints_in_cement%29.jpg — The handprints of Ann Miller in front of the Great Movie Ride at Walt Disney World’s Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park

At age 13, in 1936, Miller became a showgirl at the Bal Tabarin.

She was hired as a dancer in the “Black Cat Club” in San Francisco. Ann reportedly told them she was 18 as her father had helped get her a fake birth certificate.

There, she was discovered by Lucille Ball and talent scout/comic Benny Rubin.

This led Miller to sign a contract with RKO Studios in 1936 at the age of 13 which she also backed up with the a fake birth certificate, procured by her father. Miller stayed with RKO until 1940.

In 1937, she played Ginger Rogers’ dancing partner in Gregory La Cava’s Stage Door.

In 1938, she played the quirky, constantly dancing Essie Carmichael in the best-picture Oscar-winner, Frank Capra‘s You Can’t Take it With You.

Ann signed with Columbia Pictures in 1941, where she started with Time Out for Rhythm. Then she starred in 11 B movie musicals from 1941 to 1945.

In July 1945, with World War II still raging in the Pacific, she posed in a bathing suit as a Yank magazine pin-up girl.

She ended her contract in 1946 with one “A” film, The Thrill of Brazil.

The ad in Life magazine featured Miller’s leg in a stocking tied with a large red bow as the “T” in “Thrill”.

She finally hit her mark in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals such as Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949), and Kiss Me Kate (1953).

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PANTYHOSE INVENTOR

In later life, Miller claimed to have invented pantyhose in the 1940s. It was a solution to the continual problem of tearing stockings during the filming of dance production numbers.

The usual practice had been to sew hosiery to briefs.

If the hosiery were torn, the entire garment had to be removed and re-sewn with a new pair.

Miller asked a hosiery maker to produce a single combined garment. Voila! The birth of the pantyhose.

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^{SPEED TAPPER}

Miller was known for her speed in tap dance.

Studio publicists concocted press releases (as they often did then as now) claiming she could tap 500 times per minute.

In truth, the sound of ultra-fast “500” taps was looped into the sound later.

Because the stage floors were waxed and too slick for regular tap shoes, Miller had to dance in shoes with rubber treads on the sole.

Later, she would loop the sound of the taps while watching the film while actually dancing on a “tap board” to match her steps in the film.

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STAYING ALIVE… WITH SOUP

Miller was known later in life for her distinctive appearance, which reflected a studio-era ideal of glamour: massive black bouffant hair, heavy makeup with a splash of crimson lipstick, and fashions that emphasized her lithe figure and long dancer’s legs.

Ann’s film career effectively ended in 1956 as the studio system lost steam to television, but she remained active in the theater and on television.

In 1969, she starred on Broadway in the musical Mame, in which she wowed the audience in a tap number created just for her.

In 1971 Miller starred in what became an iconic television commercial for “The Great American Soup” created by Stan Freberg.

It began with Miller rising up out of the floor on top of an eight-foot high cylinder designed to look like a giant soup can.

Check out the commercial below…

The ad was a spectacular song and dance number in the tradition of the movie extravaganzas which were her stock in trade.

In 1979, she astounded audiences in the Broadway show Sugar Babies with fellow MGM veteran Mickey Rooney, which toured the United States extensively after its Broadway run. In 1983, she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre.

Her last stage performance was a 1998 Paper Mill Playhouse production of Stephen Sondheim‘s Follies, in which she played hard-boiled Carlotta Campion and received rave reviews for her rendition of the song “I’m Still Here”.

At the age of 63, Miller sang and tap danced to “42nd Street” at the opening of the Disney MGM Studios on May 1, 1989. This would be her last live dance performance.^{[citation needed]}

She was the subject of This Is Your Life on British television in 1993 when she was surprised by Michael Aspel at the studios of CBS Television City, Hollywood.^{[citation needed]}

Miller appeared as a dance instructor in Home Improvement episode “Dances with Tools” (1993)^{[citation needed]} Between 1995 and 2001, Molly Shannon parodied Miller several times on Saturday Night Live in a recurring sketch titled “Leg-Up!” In 2001, she took her last role, playing “Coco” in director David Lynch‘s critically acclaimed Mulholland Drive.

Outside of acting, she published two books. Her first book was an autobiography, Miller’s High Life (1972). Her second book was Tapping into the Force (1990), about her experiences in the psychic world.

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PERSONAL LIFE

As most all of us do, Ann Miller decided to get married. However, in Hollywood, that counts as a serious career decision. So, Columbia, thinking Miller would not be as bankable a commodity as a married woman decided to released her from her contract.

Ultimately, Miller married three times. The first husband was;

Reese Llewellyn Milner in 1946

Ann was 23 years old.

Milner proved to be a cruel man.

It’s said that while Ann was pregnant with their daughter Mary in her last trimester, Milner threw Miller down the stairs and she went into early labor.

Their baby Mary lived only three hours on November 12, 1946. Miller had the marriage annulled soon after.

The next husband was;

William Moss in 1958

Pictures of Moss and Miller below….

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Ann was married one more time to;

Arthur Cameron in 1961

In between marriages Miller dated such well-known men as Howard Hughes, and Conrad Hilton.

DEATH

Ann Miller died at age 80, from lung cancer on January 22, 2004. Her remains were interred in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

For her contribution to the motion-picture industry, Miller has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6914 Hollywood Boulevard.

In 1998, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to her.

To honor Miller’s contribution to dance, the Smithsonian Institution displays her favorite pair of tap shoes, which she playfully nicknamed “Moe and Joe”.