April 12, 1923- I have made it my life’s work to school the baby gays about the great entertainers that came before Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, & even before Madonna, who came on the scene a long, long time ago. Today’s #BornThisDay notable may not be known to you kids. She was often the secondary lead in films even at her zenith, but I think she is fabulous, & fabulous does not come easy.
Ann Miller was born Johnnie Lucille Ann Collier in a small Texas town. Her parents had expected a boy. She began dance lessons as a 3 year old to strengthen her legs damaged by a case of rickets. When little Johnnie was 10 years old she met Bill “Bojangles” Robinson at a local theatre & he gave her a few quick tap dancing lessons. She liked tapping & decided to make it her specialty. Her parents divorced & she & mother headed to Hollywood, determined to make it in movies. Upon arrival, they hocked everything they owned, even the automobile, just to survive.
When she turned 11 years old, she was already 5’9’’. Johnnie pretended to be of legal age & she was hired to dance for $25 a week at the Sunset Club. She changed her name to Ann Miller. She performed her machine-gun tapping for the thrilled crowd. At the Black Cat Club, she gathered up the coins customers threw to help pay the bills. Her mother received no alimony or support & it was the middle of the Great Depression.
Miller was just 13 years old when was discovered by Lucille Ball while doing a gig at the Bal Tabarin Club in San Francisco. Ball introduced Miller to the studio execs at RKO. Using a fake birth certificate showing that she was 18 years old, Miller landed a 7 year contract & a role in New Faces Of 1937 (1937). Her first notable role was in the terrific Stage Door (1937), in which she danced with Ginger Rogers, & had scenes opposite Ball, Kathryn Hepburn, & Eve Arden.
During this era she had good supporting roles in You Can’t Take It With You (1938), & in Room Service (1938) with the Marx Brothers. Miller was the one who introduced Lucy to Desi Arnaz. Later, that famed couple bought RKO Studios. Miller’s final film at RKO was Too Many Girls (1940) with co-stars & friends Lucy & Desi. She won raves on Broadway in George White’s Scandals in 1939 & 1940.
In 1940 Miller was traded to Republic Pictures where she sparked many otherwise dreary films. In 1945, she dated powerful MGM boss Louis B. Mayer, who asked her to marry him. She turned him down. Mayer swallowed sleeping pills, & immediately sent his chauffeur to summon her to his death bed. An ambulance arrived first.
Instead, Miller married Reese Milner, wealthy heir to a steel business. They lived on the largest ranch in California & raised prized cattle. A bully & a cad, Milner tossed Miller down a flight of stairs at their home. She was 8 months pregnant & tragically lost her baby daughter. Miller filed for divorce from her hospital bed. Mayer told her: “If you’d married me, none of this would have happened.” In 1958, Miller married her second millionaire, an oil man who looked like the first husband. 3 months later, he broke her arm. A third marriage to another oilman was annulled within a year.
Miller was still in a back-brace when she danced to Shakin’ The Blues Away in Easter Parade (1948) with Fred Astaire & Judy Garland. Mayer gave her a 7 year contract at MGM & Miller gained roles in the studio’s spectacular Technicolor musicals: On The Town (1949), Small Town Girl (1952), Kiss Me Kate (1953) & Hit The Deck (1955). Her last musical film was an odd remake of the classic The Women (1939) titled The Opposite Sex (1956), which I caught on TCM while enjoying cancer treatment last year & I thought I might be hallucinating.
In the 1960s, Miller replaced the original stars in the Broadway productions of Hello, Dolly! & Mame. In 1970, Miller had her greatest popularity & became a true Gay Icon by tap-dancing on a giant can of soup surrounded by a bevy of high-kicking chorus girls, 20 foot fountains, & a 24-piece orchestra in a commercial for Great American Soups. In the spot, after her big finish, she tapped her way into a kitchen & her husband cried: “Why must you always make such a big deal out of everything?”
In 1972, while appearing in a stage production of Anything Goes, Miller was knocked in the head by the steel beam of the fire curtain. She was unable to walk for 2 years, but her life was actually saved by her famous, enormous, lacquered black wig. In 1979, Miller & Mickey Rooney both made comebacks & bunches of dough in Sugar Babies, which ran for 2 years on Broadway & went on the road for 7 more years. She was still working at the end of the 20th century appearing in a successful revival of Stephen Sondheim‘s Follies in 1998. Her last film was Mulholland Drive (2001). David Lynch & Ann Miller, what a nutty world. Miller published a pair of well-written memoirs, Miller’s High Life (1972) & Tops In Taps (1981), oddly a chapter title in my own memoir. She officially set a record for the world’s fastest tap-dancing at 500 taps a minute.Miller writes that she regretted never having children or finding true love:
“No matter what you’ve achieved, honey, if you aren’t loved, you ain’t nothing but a hound dog … I can still tap, but who wants to pay an old lady to tap sitting down?”
Miller took her final bow in early 2004, gone from lung cancer. She was 80 years old. A fan found the grave of her baby, who Miller had named Mary. Mary was exhumed & her tiny coffin was laid on top of her mother’s. They are buried together next to Miller’s mother at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City with a view of the former MGM Studios.
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