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And following the publication of this article, a tragic piece on the legendary Ann Miller appeared on the pages of the New York social diary. Here it is
Ann Miller, the dancing star of Hollywood musicals from the 1930s through the 1960s died in Los Angeles on January 22, 2004. I knew her in the 1980s through our mutual friend Hermes Pan who was the first man to give her a job in pictures – at RKO in 1936. They were lifelong friends after that. He called her Annie Crow because she claimed to be part Cherokee, and she in turn called him “Bear.” Pan’s voice often rumbled with laughter when he talked about “Ann Miller” as he’d refer to her. She told him when he hired her that she was only fourteen. He didn’t really (ever) believe her. But he laughed and accepted it. He admired her drive and indefatigability. She was a naturally funny lady on stage and off. The dumb blonde syndrome (although she was always raven haired); dumb like a fox, a mixture of show-biz smarts, (street smarts really), over-the-rainbow naiveté and an intense commitment to her job. It was Pan who first suggested she rip off her skirt as she went into her dance – a move she repeated many times on screen. She became famous to her audience for her tap-tap whirling-dervish twirls. These often produced amusement for her choreographer as well as thrills for her audience. When she was at MGM, she had had plastic surgery to change the shape of her nose. The result was less than flattering and reduced the size too much, so that when she was filming, the make-up artist had to apply a temporary piece to make the nose more photogenic. During the shooting of a dance sequence for Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me Kate,” (which was filmed in 3-D), Miller went into one of her twirls and the nosepiece went flying off right into the camera.
Photo: Ann Miller in Kiss Me Kate.
She went to work at a very young age to support herself
and her mother to whom she was devoted all her life. A number of
girls of Miller’s generation who became film stars were very close to their
mothers who often ruled with an iron hand – which is where those girls got a
lot of the discipline it took to maintain a career. (There were enough of
these “mothers” to have formed a “club” during the 1940s and 50s when the
mothers would meet a couple of times a month.) Ann Miller was married three
times, all never for more than a year or two. The husbands were all wealthy
but somehow they all cost her. She got pregnant by the first, Reese
Milner, a wealthy Los Angeles oilman. Milner had a legendary
temper, so vile that he eventually ended up behind bars. He was also an
alcoholic.
One night in the bedroom of their Holmby Hills mansion, when Miller’s
pregnancy was close to term, the couple got into a quarrel (although it’s
impossible to imagine Ann Miller ever having a fight with anybody). Milner
picked up a gun and threatened to shoot his wife. She ran and he shot.
Bang-bang. She was able to dodge the bullets by making a fast exit down the
grand staircase. He missed (the bullets ended up lodged in the wall next to
the staircase).
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